Last week one of the oldest satire web publications was taken offline due to complaints by former Playboy playmate Alicia Rickter and/or her Major League Baseball slugging husband Mike Piazza. The complaint allegedly stemmed from a less-than-flattering depiction on the satire site GlossyNews.com, but ended with the site being completely removed from the internet for almost a full day.

Glossy News has been publishing satire articles lampooning sports, Hollywood and political figures for almost seven years, with tens of millions of readers to date. But where Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, Brittney Spears and Barack Obama found no reason to complain, D-list washup nudey model Alicia Rickter took exception and exacted vengeance with costly laser precision.

"I logged in to post an update to the site," explained Brian White, editor of Glossy News, "and the site was simply gone. I had no access to see it, and I couldn't even log in to my host."

According to White, it took half a day to determine that Mary Ball, a paralegal for Playboy, had filed the complaint. White says she claimed that, "Mike Piazza and Alicia Rickter didn't care for the article. [He] explained that it doesn't matter if they like it or not, it's still a valid story, and it's a satire site at that."

Mary Ball claimed that attempts were made to remove the allegedly infringing image, but not through his posted email or telephone number, both of which are plainly posted on the site. "Instead they filed a DMCA complaint, which may or may not have merit, and got my entire site shut down, and put me out of business," explained White.

When asked why they wouldn't have just simply contacted him, White speculated that, "It had nothing to do with the image, as I was told by [Mary Ball, paralegal representing Playboy], it was that they didn't like the way they were depicted in the article. A simple letter would have solved the image problem, so all I can assume is that the intention was to cause me harm for exercising my constitutionally protected right to free speech."

The article in question carries the headline Mike Piazza Weds Alicia Rickter, Still a Homo, and has been online since February 1st, 2005. It's estimated that more than 136,000 had already seen the article before the complaint was filed, and since it was already buried deep in the archives of the site, it's reasonable to assume that very, very few new readers were seeing the story at this time.

"The article hasn't appeared in our top-1000 stories any time in the last six months, so I'm not sure why all the sudden they decided to put me out of business," explained White. "But I've seen enough of mega-millionaires to know that what they do to working class people like us should never come as a surprise."

White insists the image was used under provisions permitted by the Fair Use Doctrine, and that complaints were wholly without merit, but he was not afforded any opportunity to say as much before his entire business was shuttered indefinitely. "When I called, I just wanted to find out what was going on, but I got snapped at like the representative was a collection agent or towing company. It was really unprofessional and a bit shocking," said White. "I just wanted to figure out what was going on and how I could fix it to get my business running again, and the first thing she told me was that Mike Piazza didn't like my article."

To put it in perspective, imagine if you owned a newspaper, and some so-called celebrity you've never heard of disliked an article that named them, so without warning, your Sunday edition didn't go out. That's effectively what happened. While Mary Ball apparently said it was not her intention to entirely dismantle the site, research shows what she must already know, which is that DMCA complaints only result in wholesale removal of entire sites.

If Alicia Rickter and Mike Piazza are looking to improve their public images, one method for doing so might not necessarily include shuttering publications that were critical of them four years ago. It may bear some mention that an angry lashing out like this could be indicative of steroid use, such as the steroid abuse Mike Piazza has been accused of. While we're certainly not claiming to have any knowledge of Mike Piazza's use or non-use or steroids, it would certainly go a fair distance towards explaining his behavior.

White says the matter has been resolved, and that the GlossyNews.com site is back online, though some matters have yet to be resolved. "My biggest advertiser has suspended showing ads, and they won't tell me why." When asked if it was because of complaints issued by Mike Piazza or Alicia Rickter, White refused to speculate, saying only, "it happened on the same day, but I can't get an answer, so I don't know if it's just coincidence, or yet another way the wealthy are trying to punish me for an article published four years ago that I never even read until this week."

Editorial Note: White, as mentioned in this article, still holds editorial ties with Puerto Rico Lifestyle Magazine, though this article was not written by him, nor at his request.