Indiana Gregg and Ian Morrow: Still mastering the internet

"When your only weapons are lawsuits, everyone looks like a defendant."

rmuser, The Banality of Gregg (2008)

On 14 July, "Tim Hardwell" posted a comment expressing mild disagreement with my article about Indiana Gregg. Yesterday, "generationx" posted a similar comment. Both comments originated from the same IP address, 82.9.58.47, owned by Virgin Media of Britain. If I were the RIAA, I would consider an identical IP to be conclusive proof that they're the same person, but the idea that one IP corresponds to one person doesn't accurately reflect reality—that standard of evidence has led the RIAA to legally threaten printers. Many British ISPs, running out of address space, use network address translation, which makes many users appear to have the same IP. In the past, I've inadvertently banned a large region of Britain by blocking a single IP. I haven't been able to determine whether Virgin users are subject to NAT^[1], but even if they are, this still indicates that "Tim Hardwell" and "generationx" are using the same ISP and live in the same area. Moreover, they've commented within two days of each other, on a site with only 1,400 readers^[2], making it very likely that they're the same person. With some trivial internet detectiving, I've uncovered evidence suggesting that this person is Indiana Gregg, or her husband Ian Morrow, or both of them.

From April to September of 2007, the IP 82.9.49.104 (also owned by Virgin) edited Wikipedia several times, focusing exclusively on articles related to Indiana Gregg. Both 82.9.49.104 and 82.9.58.47 are part of Virgin's Renfrew area, a town six miles west of Glasgow. Indiana Gregg currently lives in Glasgow, and on 17 May 2007, 82.9.49.104 made an edit to Gregg's Wikipedia article, replacing it with a link to her website and MySpace page. The edit was signed:

Thankyou...... Ian Morrow Gr8pop Ltd

There's those pesky ellipses again! Wikipedia generally doesn't like it when one person makes the unilateral decision to delete an entire article that dozens of people have collaborated on, especially if they replace it with blatant advertising. Morrow's edit was treated as vandalism, and reverted in less than a minute. 12 minutes later, Wikipedia user IanMorrow erased the article, saying it was "now unavailable, subject to our enquiries with wikipedia". Once again, this was reverted four minutes later. Morrow blanked the page again. His edit was reverted again. Rather than learning something from this, he opted to fire off a legal threat for no apparent reason:

To whom ever it may be, constantly editing this page.... The violation of our artists page is now subject of legal action in the UK. If you continually edit and defame our artist you will become subject to legal proceedings also.

This page is now down

Ian Morrow

Diector Gr8Pop Ltd

The "Diector" failed to specify exactly what was defamatory about Gregg's article, and this page was now up again in less than a minute. Morrow then blanked the talk page for Gregg's article, and blanked the article thrice more in the next 10 minutes, at which point he was blocked indefinitely for making legal threats. User:Littleredm&m registered the day after Morrow was blocked. This utterly thrilling Wiki-drama simmered down for a year, before flaring up again when Morrow and Gregg began threatening The Pirate Bay.

Morrow's first email to TPB on 22 June 2008 originated from 82.9.50.198, another IP in Virgin's Renfrew area. From 2 July to 12 July, User:Carribeanqueen made numerous edits to the Wikipedia articles on Indiana Gregg and The Pirate Bay, nearly all of which contained material heavily promoting Gregg's point of view, and several links to her personal blog. Carribeanqueen also changed the phrase "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" in Gregg's article to "Digital Millineum Copyright Act". Gregg referred to the "Digital Millineum Copyright act" in her 23 June 2008 email to TPB. Carribeanqueen also claims to be a journalist, and was warned to stop reverting everyone else's edits to the Indiana Gregg article. Two days after Carribeanqueen stopped editing, Littleredm&m made their first edits since registering in 2007. Nearly all of their edits revert the Indiana Gregg article to contain material contributed by Carribeanqueen, including many links to Gregg's websites.

82.9.58.47, who replied twice to my post under different names, made two edits to Wikipedia while this was all going on. Both were edits to the Indiana Gregg article, and the latest edit, made on the same day as the reply of "Tim Hardwell", added the same Gregg-promoting material contributed by Carribeanqueen and Littleredm&m. On that day, Littleredm&m made another edit referring to the G8 summit's handling of piracy, which is also mentioned in the reply of "Tim Hardwell". A Wikipedia administrator has now listed Carribeanqueen, Littleredm&m, and 82.9.58.47 as suspected sockpuppets—one person using multiple identities. The article about Gregg was then protected from editing until the sockpuppet issue can be conclusively resolved.

To Indiana Gregg, Ian Morrow, Littleredm&m, Carribeanqueen, Tim Hardwell, generationx, and whoever you'll be masquerading as tomorrow: What is wrong with you? I'm honestly curious. What could possibly make you think this was a good idea? That's precisely the problem with your ignorance of contemporary technology: When you try pulling a stupid stunt like this, you'll be caught in the act by people more capable than yourselves. This advice will serve you well in any situation: If you don't know how something works, don't touch it. Maybe instead of legally threatening Wikipedia for no reason, flagrantly disregarding its guidelines and attempting to hide behind different names, you should just stop. Stop it. Stop all of this, right now. This is not the behavior people expect from professionals, and it speaks very poorly of you when you're unwilling to even defend yourselves using your real names.

I suppose that's the responsible thing to say, but on the other hand, this sort of insanity is hilarious! Keep it up.

Update, 20 July 2008: The Master of Sockpuppets made three more comments—each with its own identity, of course. The first was from 82.9.58.47; evidently she didn't bother reading this post before replying. After I called her out on this, she posted the next two from 212.183.134.66, which is shared among British subscribers to Vodafone's 3G internet service. Plug in one of their USB modem sticks or datacards, and you're on a whole other ISP. Tricky! The problem is she clicked here from another page where she had replied thrice under her real name, and her user agent was identical to that of 82.9.58.47.

Hey, at least she was observant enough to notice my website is pink. I've also noticed her websites autoplay crappy music that nobody actually wants to steal.

Update, 23 July 2008: User:Littleredm&m removed the entire section on the talk page for Gregg's article that accused her of using sockpuppets, which also included a link to this post. I'm pretty sure this is considered unacceptable under some obscure Wikipedia policy.

Update, 26 July 2008: Yesterday, User:Littleredm&m and 82.9.58.47 were blocked from Wikipedia for being the same person, as identified by CheckUser, and for having a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, Gregg and Morrow had some tabloid run a puff piece uncritically promoting their idiotic claims of "cyber-bullying", "250,000 illegal downloaders", "policing of the web" and "internet passports". You know, it's not "cyber-bullying" when you make such obviously stupid statements, and everyone else points out exactly how stupid this is. Seriously, these people are acting like facts are tear gas. I'd also really like to see how they came up with the figure of 250,000 that they keep repeating. They haven't explained this at all, and I'm starting to think they might be lying or something.

Notes

¹ Update, 18 July 2008: Reliable sources have informed me that Virgin Media allocates one IP address per customer, which can remain static for months.

² Approximately 0.0001% of about 1.4E+9 global internet users.