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Pastimes : Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank, Sues FBNers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Swift who wrote (3511)	11/12/1999 6:51:00 PM
From: jhild	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3795

Here's another interesting article about Janice, with more of the praise that we have become accustomed to. It is from the December 1999 issue of Money Magazine. I excerpt the part about Business Wire here for anyone that hasn't seen it. Lorry Lokey, President of Business Wire, is quoted, and by my reckoning looks like someone who has just damaged their own case. After all how does one calculate a money award for being parodied, over-reacting and feeling foolish? Looks to me like any damage to Business Wire's reputation is self inflicted by their own actions and their own remarks. But then what do I know? Art Historian, Message-Board Brawler She doesn't risk life and lawsuits slamming lame stocks for money. She does it for fun. By Borzou Daragahi It was bad enough when Janice Shell got e-mail from anonymous creeps vowing to kill her. Now one of the message boards' best-known penny-stock bashers finds herself plagued by lawsuits. "Frankly, I preferred the death threats," she says. "They were less expensive." . . . Another firm suing Shell is not one of her targets but Business Wire, a press-release distribution company in Los Angeles. On April Fool's Day, Shell and four of her buddies published an announcement via Business Wire trumpeting a fictional Net firm called Webnode, whose products include "satellite navigation, currency arbitrage systems development and armaments deployment." The release generated a few serious investment inquiries and lots of laughs from the web community, but the folks at Business Wire were not amused, especially when Shell and company kept bragging about their gag for months. "Not only did they pull this prank, they kept rubbing salt in the wounds," says Lorry Lokey, president of Business Wire, which is suing the group for fraud, conspiracy and trademark infringement. "We might not have filed the lawsuit if they'd kept quiet." pathfinder.com