I should disclose that for a brief period of time I worked at ZillionTV.  I was lured there by false promises of their technology, the state of their contracts with the studios, and the pedigree of the “Managerial Staff.”

Having your lawyer send a note to someone who has said less than flattering things about you is roughly the equivalent of taking the kick me sign off of your back and pinning it to your teeth instead.  I’ll demonstrate why.

Step One:  The party you sent the note to posts it to his or her website. (see below)

Step Two: The party then makes fun of you, and your law firm.  ShawValenza didn’t even care enough about the tone, and accuracy of this letter to grab a template of LexusNexus so that they wouldn’t sound like idiots.

If you are going to send a letter to a party who has said something untrue about you, as opposed to simply pointed out publicly documented facts about your goings on, you are not looking for defamation, but libel.  I can defame you all I want as long as the statements are true.  It is only false defamatory statements that are illegal.  The absolute defense to defamation is truth.

While many of my blog posts may not be of the highest standard of eloquence, because I am a firm believer in the first amendment I do my best to verify, and fact check anything I publish.

Step Three: The party then tells the world about the injustice of being sent a certified letter telling you to stop “prattling on the internet”.  See the nice thing about having a site in the top 100k of Alexa, and having the ear of several rags in the IPTV and Hollywood space is that even things I casually post to my blog, are news.  Which is why I don’t “Casually post” things to my blog.

Which brings me to the rules about using C&D for SEO.

Rule 1: Don’t.

Rule 2: Don’t.

Rule 3: If rule 1 and 2 have to be broken, don’t send a warning letter, send a court order, include in it that the party you are serving is given a gag order so that they can’t talk about you or post the court order.

Rule 4: Know your enemy.  Don’t send a C&D letter to someone who has a bigger hammer than you.  The general rule is don’t send a C&D to anyone with a better Alexa rank than you, or someone with more press mentions in the past year than you.

Rule 5: Be right.  The last thing you want is to stick your foot in your mouth, a recent prospect sent a C&D to a competitor only to have the competitor serve them an even bigger C&D.

XYHD.tv has a post related to this one about my history with ZillionTV.

C&D SEO works by eliminating pages that compete with you for a given keyword.  Rather than Snap-On Tools ranking for its own name legitimately through good press about their company, and what great tools they make, they instead look for everyone who has said anything about them and send them a C&D.  This doesn’t work well for SEO, because anyone with half a brain knows that you can’t use Trademark laws to force the removal of your name, unless they are attempting to use your name as their own.  I can say "I drank a Coke and it was good" and Coke can’t stop me.  Snap-On already has issues with a weak trademark because it is only a trade mark in certain contexts.  "Let me Snap on my coat and I’ll be ready to go skiing" or

Like in this photo:

"Dudes, that turtle really has his Snap on. Tools don’t let him bite you"

So here is the C&D Letter from SnapOn.com’s Goons.

Dear Registrant,

Snap-on Incorporated is the owner of the well-known trademark and trade name Snap-on. As you are no doubt aware, Snap-on is a trademark used to identify products, services, activities and events related to Snap-on Incorporated.

It has come to our attention that our trademark Snap-on appears as a metatag, keyword, visible or hidden text on the web site(s) located at:

Multiple Addresses Removed

without having obtained prior written authorization from Snap-on Incorporated.

In view of Snap-on Incorporated’s rights to the trademark Snap-on, we ask that you immediately remove all metatags, keywords, visible or hidden texts including trademark presently appearing on the above-cited web site(s) and any other web site(s).

Should you require additional information or wish to further discuss this issue, please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned.

Sincerely,

Snap-on Incorporated

Brand Protection

ChannelProtection@snapon.com

Technically we are complying because the pages are coming down so that they end up here.  Which I’m certain will be much better for Snap-On than the situation before they hired the corporate tools. (watched Dr. Horrible last night and couldn’t resist).

(Gee look at Dr. Horrible he has a Snap On his lab coat, as he get’s beat up by Captain Hammer Corporate Tool)

The Moral of the story.  Do good SEO through good PR and good will.  Using Legal to do your SEO for you will almost always end up damaging your brand, and creating more problems for you than you had in the first place, like being on the front page for the search "ScumBag".  And then you have to hire a reputation management company, and it becomes a downward spiral of expense that finally escalates to having to order a mob hit on the guys who have better lawyers, bigger brains, or more search authority than you do.