The Readers Clubhouse website, also known as DisneyNation, was dedicated to Disney vacation enthusiasts. Founded in 1995, and funded by a venture investment group, the Readers Clubhouse was a successful and popular online community with thousands of vested members. Rita Aero's Walt Disney World was a best-selling guidebook that has been updated biannually for the past decade. The book series was developed and published by Random House and St. Martins Press. The website and book projects were strategically aligned for future exploitation by the investing corporations and shareholders.

• Explore Community Court (on the left) to learn more about the cyber crimes that were committed against this website and what's being done about it.
  
• If you are aware of the Internet-wide cybersmear campaign against the Readers Clubhouse website, or if you witnessed the harassment of community members and attacks on the message boards, please take the time to fill out a Clubhouse Crime Report.
  
• If you were an active community member or victim of the illegal actions that destroyed your community and disrupted your online enjoyment and access, please fill out the Member Damages Statements. Together, we can end the reign of anonymous social terrorism on the Internet, once and for all. Right here. Right now.
  

During April and May 2002, the Readers Clubhouse website was attacked and harassed by an organized group of outside agitators (hacktivists) intent on forcing their beliefs and agenda on members of this peaceful community. At the same time, they launched a deliberate campaign of derogatory and malicious lies against this online community, the website business, author Rita Aero, her Walt Disney World guidebook, specific members of this community, and the online community population as a whole. This conspiracy of deceit was propagated across the Internet and to the news media, in particular, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. Inflammatory and libelous statements appeared in AOL forums, on competing Disney websites and in their forums, and on the Usenet newsgroups, in particular rec.arts.disney.parks and fl.attractions. A cluster of fake hate-reviews about the Aero/Disney guidebook, which were generated by this same group, was published on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites.

The majority of the negligent and damaging statements is still in place across the Internet, and can never be removed from the eyes of an uninformed public.

Since April 2002, website community members have been victimized by threatening and harassing emails, malicious and disruptive posts on their community message boards, and inflammatory lies posted on private and public forums, resulting in further invasions of this community. During late July and early August 2002, some members received death threats, and threats of harassment during their Walt Disney World vacations. These crimes were committed as a result of an organized hate-rage campaign, originally directed at specific community members who show exceptional kindness toward strangers who are planning Disney vacations. As a result, and on the advice of counsel and law enforcement officials, we closed the website in the early morning hours of August 13th, to protect the community members.


A Six-Month Chronicle of Social Terrorism, Cybersmearing, and Extortion

The crimes we have all witnessed here on this popular website were committed by a core group of delusional vigilantes, who seem to believe that they are representing the interests of the Disney Company by destroying competing businesses on the Internet. The Disney Company appeared to bow immediately to the vigilante's extortion (delivered through a conspiracy of systematically generated emails and phone calls that flooded Disney management). As a result, Disney instituted a draconian ID policy for restaurant guests, and then publicly (in three separate articles published in the Orlando Sentinel) cast the blame for these drastic and insulting policies on us -- their guidebook competitor and highly visible Disney-vacation consumer-advocate website.

While Disney's policy change was transparent to our operations, Disney's highly-publicized acquiescence to this extortion scheme spurred the vigilantes on to greater boldness in executing their barbaric terrorism. They claimed that Disney's actions had proved to them that they were acting on behalf of the Disney Company's wishes, as they continued in their slash-and-burn destruction of our corporate property and in the egregious intimidation and silencing of our constituents.

We were told repeatedly, in unwelcome hate-posts to our own message boards, that the attacks would stop if we bow to their demands. The group repeatedly claimed they were enforcing Disney corporate policy. Our own business partners and advertisers received emails and phone calls suggesting that their association with us could hurt them financially. Several of our webmaster-colleagues in the Disney special-interest milieu, received emails from members of this group, recommending that they disassociate themselves from us, and implying that the same thing could easily happen to them. A number of our webmaster-colleagues were told preposterous lies connecting us with the World Trade Center bombings, and then were coerced by the vigilantes into denouncing us in public newsgroups, where their derogatory smears will remain on the Internet permanently.

In attempting to force their bizarre personal and political agendas on others, this vigilante group has relentlessly robbed hundreds of innocent people of their rights, freedoms, and liberties. They have irreparably damaged the long-range business goals of our investors and publishers. For six months straight, they have attacked our business and our constituents with brute force and delusion-based ignorance. They conspired to smear our business reputation and products with maliciously published lies and hate-speech designed to enrage their readers and influence them to do so likewise. As a result, they violated the rights of our members to gather and communicate, and they compromised their safety and security both online and off.

Since April 2002, the members of our online community have been harassed, maligned, silenced, frightened, marginalized, discriminated against, threatened, robbed of their intellectual property, and stalked -- all this happened inside the community's own online home, which was continuously defaced and its security compromised by outside attackers.

The people who committed these crimes insist that it is their RIGHT to do these things to others -- because they are on the Internet.

Where did they ever get such an idea? Do they torment and terrorize innocent people because they think they are anonymous? Do they attack because your online presence does not have a "human face" and thus they can violate your rights and vandalize your intellectual property with impunity? Do they believe they are "gaming" rather destroying businesses and wiping out investors and reputations with their vicious conspiracy?

Certainly, if criminals did these things to you or to your family or friends in the community where you live, they would be held personally accountable for the harm they did, they would pay restitution, and they would be punished for their crimes. Well, from now on, that's the way it is going to be on the Internet, as well.


How Internet "Citizens" Will Define the Future of Online Interactions

Personal liberty and freedom for all people on the Internet can only come about when all people value and honor the concept of social responsibility -- which is that fine, intelligent balance between acting in one's own self-interest and acting in the best-interests of society as-a-whole. Social responsibility is the foundation of a civilization that endures, and it is the salient quality that elevates a civilization into greatness and can lift a society into enlightenment.

Since our closing, dozens of community members have been working around the clock, researching, gathering, and sorting evidence; connecting names, events, and people; identifying and observing the bad guys; and building a new future for the Internet. We applaud them for their courage and commitment, and we hope you do, too. Together with Federal authorities, local agencies, and everyday citizens, we are involved in a great and pivotal moment in Internet history -- we are working hard to bring personal liberty and freedom to the Internet and to secure the rights of innocent users everywhere. All of us are sharing a vision of "certain unalienable Rights" that a civilized people must expect to enjoy on the Internet. And, holding to our unwavering commitment to this vision, we have the opportunity to shape the future of the Internet in a way that will "most likely effect the Safety and Happiness" of all who follow.

Good and decent people are something we have always had in abundance in this community. For more than five years (which is a very long time for an online community), we have enjoyed millions of civilized, socially aware interactions. (The interactions in this community have been painstakingly archived from the very beginning for the Library of Congress, and demonstrate as much.) Our members have carried this civilized behavior with them across the Internet, as they participated in other communities and on newsgroups. Those who endured the attacks on this community know exactly what personal freedom looks like. They now also know what it looks like when an entire population is silenced by terror and intimidation. Most important, they know that the liberties and rights of individuals on the Internet must be defined and protected without further delay.

We are very grateful to the people who have filed Crime Reports and Damages Statements about the destruction of this community and its reputation. We learned more from your reports than we ever dreamed was possible. Imagine a thousand reliable eyewitnesses to a crime, carefully documenting what they saw and experienced, and you will get some idea of the impact this has had on everyone involved. A socially aware and observant Internet population, such as our community, will make cybercrimes and social terrorism a thing of the past. And that's why the future belongs to us.

We are also indebted to our "Members in Black" volunteers. The MIBs are community members who stepped forward to help after the website was shut down. They contributed as much time as they could, and collected and researched volumes of evidence. They did this because they believe that enforcing laws that bring the bad guys to justice will rapidly civilize the Internet. As a result, all users can experience individual freedom and safety while becoming part of this evolutionary tool of mass communication. People helping people make a better world -- this is what the future looks like.