mass overreaction to what looks much like a stock email.
I was with him that it was a bit silly till he decided to call them "retards" and to "piss off" right off the bat. He comes across as a bit of an idiot really.
Yeah, he does come off as an ass, but I don't think this is an overreaction. On most ISPs such an action gets a user booted permanently with no recourse for dispute. With great power comes great responsibility, and PayPal has shown no responsibility here.
Legal letters as a rule should never be sent by a crawler. If it is, I'm sure PayPal is doing something illegal. If it isn't, then someone at PayPal seriously fucked up and didn't do their job.
He's entirely justified there. That stock email could have cost him a lot of money and hassle if his ISP had been a little less clueful. Sending it was grossly irresponsible.
Sending legal threats like this, whose validity depends entirely on the context, with no idea of the context, is grossly irresponsible.
He did not sink to their level. If he sent them and their ISP baseless legal threats that might result in a temporary loss of internet access, that would be sinking to their level. If he tried to trick their domain registrar into transferring their domain to him, that would be sinking to their level. If he tracked down the families of the legal staff and threatened them in their homes, that would be sinking to their level. All he did was write some bad words in his blog.
We can't always keep our cool and merely explain factually what is wrong. We get angry and indignated and need to vent that. I don't think it's wrong to show that, as long as you also make the point using the proper arguments.
I was with him that it was a bit silly till he decided to call them "retards" and to "piss off" right off the bat. He comes across as a bit of an idiot really.