I am Spartakus too

Boing Boing via Brad DeLong

Phillip Lenssen blogged some material about a 'Search Engine Optimizer' (a company that helps web-developers inflate their rankings with search-engines) called Search Engine Optimization, Inc. [SEO, Inc] The service had all but vanished from Google's database, and Phillip, a commentator on this industry, noted that this boded poorly for the company, indicating that they'd probably done something wrong to incur the wrath of Google (the 'Google Death Penalty'), which meant that they ended up looking totally incompentent: not only couldn't they improve your site's PageRank, they couldn't get themselves ranked on Google.

The company responded with a threatening, bogus Cease-and-Desist letter telling Phillip that he had to take his page down or face legal action.

Link to Google Cache of Lenssen's article

Link to PDF of cease and desist letter