As many of you know, content belonging to the recently closed pattaya-chat site, much of it private and sensitive, recently appeared on another site called pattayaspy. I am posting this on all the Pattaya forums in order to clarify, amidst all the rumors, what really happened:
1. Tabmule had absolutely nothing to do with the copy site. A few comments have been made on various boards suggesting that this was the latest twist in the Tabmule saga but that is 100% not the case. I had a long phone conversation with Tabmule tonight, my first time to actually talk to him in person, and a lot of the preconceptions I had were dispelled. One thing that was crystal clear is that he took his duties to his users seriously and would never betray their trust, would never “shit on them” in this way. But I already it wasn’t Tab because… I know who did it and I, myself, am partly to blame.
2. Just before the closure of Tab's site, I was emailed by someone living in Pattaya who wanted to use but not buy pattayachat.com, a domain I have owned since before Tab registered pattaya-chat.com. I didn't really know the guy, met him once or twice, but, apparently, he had seen me ranting on one of the boards about Tab closing his. He told me that he was going to set up a new forum to fill the vacuum. He didn’t mention ANYTHING about ripping the material on Tab's site.
3. I told him he could use the domain and gave him some free space on my server to get himself started. I didn't ask for or receive any money; my interest was partly that I felt the members of chat (or any forum that closes at short notice) were being left high and dry but I was also curious to see what the reaction would be. That was a tad mischievous but, again, my understanding was that he wanted to create another chat-like site, an actual working forum, not a rip of Tab’s site.
4. He then went out and bought his own domain, pattayaspy.com, and used my domain merely to forward traffic to his, probably because he realised that I would take it back from him when I discovered what he was up to.
5. After about a week, he had done nothing with the space I gave him, so, I presumed that he had lost interest. I give out hundreds of free accounts to people with various weird and wonderful ideas but only about 10% make it as far as even putting up a basic site, very few get any further. So, with a bunch of exams looming, I stopped checking up on his progress – to me, it was just another unused account on my server, nothing to worry about. There are almost one thousand accounts on my server, I hand them out like candy.
6. He apparently launched his site within the last two days. It was a badly stitched together rip of Tab’s site and, putting aside any and all board rivalries, an outrageous violation of the golden rule that makes any of our Pattaya boards viable: the presumption that they are private, viewable by trusted members only.
7. I only found out about what he had done at around 6PM GMT yesterday. As an active member of Pattaya boards since 2004, with around 800 posts under my belt and as someone who appears in plenty of photos, I was appalled, immediately terminated the account (destroying all the material) and emailed the guy explaining just how bad what he had done was. I made it clear that he risked serious consequences if that material ever appeared anywhere else, in any form. He has not yet replied.
8. I then PM’d Sexy Beast, one of the community leaders at Addicts, because that is a board that both Tab and myself are members of. I gave him the full details, holding nothing back. He advised me to PM Tabmule and let him know what had happened. Unfortunately, by now, things were starting to kick off in the forum, so, instead, Sexy Beast wisely arranged for a phone call between Tabmule and myself.
9. As you can imagine, it was always going to be an interesting conversation because, although we’d never met, Tabmule and myself have been prime adversaries for ages – there was no real reason for it, it was just one of those board things that get blown out of all proportion and, frankly, I’m a real asshole when I get going – that came home to me with a thud about three weeks ago when, having written a particularly scathing and skeptical response to his farewell thread, it finally dawned on me that he really was sick and really was shutting up shop. I had quietly decided, at that stage, to stop sniping at Tabmule.
10. The first thing Tab suggested was that we should put past problems behind us and deal with the matter at hand. He had a lot of questions and, as an IT guy and forum admin, was able to expertly grill me on every little detail but was never aggressive and, although he had every reason to be furious, remained calmly determined to reach the best outcome for everyone. Despite our past disputes, he was magnanimous in recognising that I never intended for this to happen, couldn’t have known it would happen. We spoke for a long time, hours, and I came away astonished that someone who has a reputation on the other boards for being unreasonable was able, in a very upsetting situation, to deal with it all in such a professional manner.
11. I do not own the domain pattayaspy and it could, very easily, be set up again on another server. This would not, however, be a smart or even healthy thing to do for the owner to do. For my part, I will use any technical and legal means at my disposal to bring down any such site.
12. In my own defence, it is important to note that pattayaspy could have been just as easily set up without the space on my server; he could have paid as little as $5 to set up his site elsewhere. He ultimately decided not to use my domain, buying his own elsewhere for around $8. Also, he did not have enough access privileges to perform the site rip from my server, he must have used his own computer or a café. My bad luck is that I managed to get myself involved anywhere on that chain.
Essentially, I trusted someone I didn’t know well enough, giving them a domain and server space. I have done that hundreds of times before and never imagined that a basically generous act could harm anyone. I’m sure that several of the people reading this will have been offered space on my server at some point; it’s usually something that helps people that is a big part of my nature (as opposed to tearing people’s marriages, lives and careers apart by posting their indiscretions online). In this case, however, I should have guessed that this particular domain, or indeed anything involving Tab’s board, with which I had a history of antipathy, had at least the potential to cause problems. I just never imagined it would explode so spectacularly.
Another mistake was that, if I had been paying closer attention, I would have caught this thing before it had 2 days to generate the alarm and inconvenience it has for Tabmule, the contributors to his site and the wider Pattaya forum community. Unfortunately, I’ve had my head in my law books for the last month and this slipped under my radar. The only bright spot is that I managed to take down the rip site before it got archived by Google or listed in any of the 12 biggest search engines. My logs indicate that the overwhelming majority of traffic that site received in it's short lifetime, 96.7%, came from Pattaya forums when the news broke yesterday.
This violation of trust was the last thing I ever wanted to see happen but, obviously, I am partly responsible and for that I apologize to everyone involved in the Pattaya scene. This is one of those situations, like being the guy who delivered milk to Auschwitz: it doesn’t matter how small your involvement, the crime itself is so big you’re in the shit regardless. I hope, though, that the community as a whole will accept my apology.
I have, of course, apologised to Tabmule and would also like to specifically apologise to anyone who had to go to the trouble of taking down their photos. I didn’t spend much time looking at the site before rushing to terminate the account but Tab told me that, among the many affected, Pentire, Bazzap, Ferocious had particularly large amounts of photos. Photos posted on any site are an unrewarded gift to all, this situation spat that generosity back at you.
I would also like to thank Sexy Beast for steering us through this storm, Bassgod for being the first person to alert us to the rip site and Tabmule for spending his day dealing with the fall-out from this when he should have been resting.
If anyone has any questions about any of this, please post them here or PM me.
Donny