AIT Files Lawsuit Against FPC
Posted by Webhost - 17/04/07 at 01:04 amWeb hosting provider Advanced Internet Technologies (ait.com) announced on
Monday it has accused the Fayetteville Observer (fayobserver.com) newspaper,
owned by Fayetteville Publishing Company, of click fraud, unfair and deceptive
trade practices and breach of contract.
AIT says after it became suspicious the Observer was over-billing the company
for advertising, it was able to monitor Web traffic to and from the Observer’s
Web site. It discovered that up to 50 percent or more of the online impressions
and ad clicks were manufactured or inflated and the traffic itself fell far
below the statistics the Observer used to attract advertisers in its online
policies and agreements.
After AIT complained to the company, FPC sued AIT demanding that its servers
hosted by AIT be returned. The Web hosting provider then filed a lawsuit
against FPC to protect its rights and the rights of other advertisers and also
filed a criminal complaint with the FBI. AIT is currently in the process of
appealing a court’s recent ruling stating that AIT had not been responsive in
discovery even though AIT produced over 60,000 pages of proof and the Observer
produced nothing.
“The rate card and other representations made by the Observer claimed they got
17,000 visitors a day to their Web site,” says AIT CEO Clarence Briggs. “This
is simply not true. We recorded and documented a few genuine visits a day but
the majority of visits were manufactured and fake. We wanted to open the
Observer’s Web servers up in front of everyone and the court to get at the
truth and prove the fraud but [FPC] did not want to do so. I find it ironic
that the newspaper is full of ‘Fayetteville Wrongdoing’ but when it comes to
reporting themselves, they cover up the truth.”
