It’s October, the month of creepiness and fright. Shocking. It’s all here at Willowbrook… the black shroud, the cacophony of ear-splitting noises, the torment, people fleeing; implements of destruction, heavy equipment; plastic and cardboard walls easily breached; every creak and noise magnified during the lengthening darker-than-dark nights.
And I’m not even talking about Halloween. This is real and getting more bizarre by the moment. Referring to the recent lawsuit filed in federal court by the national home builder against five of my neighbors. Three of the five defendants departed months ago to escape the years of mold, collapsing decks, water intrusion and other relentlessly unforeseen problems. An attempt to get on with their lives. Now being dragged back.
Cybersquatting is one of the charges in the lawsuit. My understanding is that using a domain name that is trademarked or otherwise the property of someone else is illegal. Paradoxically though, if a product or a company is harming people, the buyers cannot find each other to compare notes unless there is some mention of the product or the company in the domain name. This is the case with the electronic bulletin board here where people have come forward to share their stories and seek help. Because of this BB, there is an abundance of heretofore unknown facts and information about the national home builder.
There is also the element of validation or reality testing (is this just me?) since so many people have been given questionable reasons for why they have problems with their homes, and then been refused repairs. Here is the reason given to me. Historically it appears many buyers accepted responsibility for the problems and just gave up. Or if they were convinced they were being deceived, put up websites/ BB’s and attempted to find others to put pressure on the builder to fix their homes or buy them back. Or to circulate a home-buyer-lemon-law petition. Which begs the question: Why doesn’t the law protect the home buyer?
Apparently extortion is a motive for cybersquatting. Holding a domain hostage for money. As the domain becomes more popular, it’s obviously worth more. Does intention matter? That there is a legitimate reason for people to want to compare notes? For people to seek validation? The truth of the matter is that there would be no need for an electronic bulletin board if we had gotten what we paid for in the first place.
Four years of personal experience in this nightmare just confirms something I have always believed: the living are far more dangerous than the dead. Happy Halloween.