Goldman Sachs threatens blogger but only ends up advertising the dissident blog

Goldman Sachs like any other big financial institution is more than a little sensitive to criticism since the global financial crisis exposed the greedy underbelly of financial institutions.

On 25 March 2009 Mike Morgan set up a blog at www.goldmansachs666.com aimed at airing information about this merchant bank.

The blog's banner is Info, Comments, Opinions and Facts About Goldman Sachs, its first post was on 26 March and its first legal letter on behalf of Goldman Sachs was dated 8 April.

Apparently the banking group is asserting that use of the wording goldmansachs666 is a breach of copyright, unfair competition and implies the blogger has an affiliation or relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Rather a thin argument to put forward I would have thought and somewhat misleading; as it is clear as day that what these bankers are really objecting to is information being published about such matters as the amount of taxpayer money Goldman Sachs received from the US Government's financial institutions bailout.
Information which unsurprisingly is already in the public domain at websites such as Market Watch.

It is very interesting to note that a copy of the legal letter was sent to the blog's host GoDaddy Inc. in what looks like a move to unsettle the host and have it bring pressure to bear on Mike Morgan.

This would have to be a first surely for a young blog - threatened with litigation within the first fortnight of its existence.

One wonders if Sinewave who created the Goldman Sucks blog in April 2009 will also eventually fall foul of these bankers.

Of course once Goldman Sachs decided to set out down the legal path the outcome was inevitable.

Now the blogosphere is discussing the situation with posts such as What's Goldman Sachs Hiding? Is it another Madoff scam?, Goldman Sachs is worried about its reputation ~ LOL and Goldman Sachs Seeks To Stifle Blogger Critic (GS)
While Google is returning over 2,000 results on a search for the term goldmansachs666.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein stated in a speech to the Council of Institutional Investors in Washington earlier this month:

To begin with an obvious point, much of the past year has been deeply humbling for my industry. We held ourselves up as the experts, and the loss of public confidence from failing to live up to the expectations that we created will take years to rebuild. Worse, decisions on compensation and other actions taken and not taken, particularly at banks that rapidly lost a lot of shareholder value, look self-serving and greedy in hindsight.

Might I suggest to Mr. Blankfein that trying to bully a blogger into silence when he does not appear to have actually breached any law (yet) is not the way to rebuild confidence in the Goldman Sachs brand.