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Yes, indeed this was the case.
Having become the classical example of a troll, Cherry found himself
the subject of a petition to his ISP, complaining of his persistant
habit of libeling his opposition (often, for doing nothing more than
asking him to move his postings to a more appropriate group. which he
said was proof of their part in the conspiracy). In my own case, he
did so in retaliation for a post made in opposition to his pet cause,
that of legalising prostitution. (One that was repeatedly subjected to
forged cancels before it finally stayed up). Also, there were
complaints of massively crossposted spams made by him in the course
of his crusade (if you wish to call it that). These would cover
dozens of groups at a time, in most of which it had absolutely no
relevance to the subject matter at hand. Many attempts were made to
reason with him, before the first complaint was ever made, but all
had fallen on deaf ears.
In this forum - where people have been shut down, losing the work
that went into writing their files, based on complaints like "he's
using big words that we don't understand" or "he's arguing for
positions that we disagree with", or even "we don't like him", this
being done to widespread popular approval - Cherry actually found a
large number of people insane enough to argue that it would be an
oppressive denial of his freedom of speech for him not to be allowed
to lie about what other people had said. Some went so far as to
compare the effort to put an end to his libel to book burning.
One of Fred's supporters was his current system operator, who,
confronted with a mountain of documentation supporting the complaints
of libel, simply refused to look at it. This lead to talk of legal
action but, regrettably, to secure justice through the American
court system requires large amounts of time and money, and Fred's
victims had neither.
For that matter, there seems little reason to suspect that Mr. Cherry
has many assets of his own. He has announced in court that he is
disabled and in ill health (not things that correlate with wealth in
a positive manner). Apparently, he has been representing himself in
court in suits against the state of New York seeking to overturn
the law against prostitution there - with the usual level of
success for self-filed lawsuits (none at all). This suggests that he
doesn't have the money to hire an attorney, and thus has few assets
to seize in the case of a judgement against him. As a result, there
is no possibility of getting an attourney to take this case on
contingency, and the case isn't 'stirring' enough for someone to take
it on a pro bono basis (done as community service, for free). Here,
instead of the powerful preying on the powerless, we have the
relatively powerless being preyed on, by the relatively powerless
with no lives (and all the time in the world).
So, the abuse continues to this day, and the victims can do little,
but salute the idiocy of then President Reagan's decision to scale
down the efforts of regulatory agencies, on the basis that the
victims of abuse or negligence can always file suits against those
who've wronged them.
Aren't you glad that you asked?
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