Good afternoon, Mr. Smart! Thank you for finally responding to this petition! It certainly is a more welcome response than your original attempt to file a defamation claim against it. :) I am going to do my best to reply to the few (often repeated) points you make in your reply to us on your blog - http://www.dereksmart.org/2015/08/sc-blackknightsmatter/ To start off, it's clear that you've entirely missed the point of this petition. It is not intended to bully, intimidate or harass you. If you feel bullied, intimidated, or harassed by this petition, I recommend seeking professional assistance in overcoming your fear of online petitions. The point of this petition is to attempt to get it through your stubbornly thick skull that you have no right to be doing what you are doing, and the manner in which you are going about it is absolutely unacceptable. To be honest, most of us would probably be entirely happy if CIG chose to perform a full audit and share that data with the public. It is, of course, our money which we have given to CIG to build their company and game. I'm sure 100% of us have genuine interest in seeing how they've been managing their funds. The problem here is that you've decided to appoint yourself as the supposed face of the backers, claiming that there is a significant portion of us who are unhappy with CIG's progress on the same level that you apparently are. You claim to have a database of 5,000+ backers who share your sentiments. I believe this claim of yours to be a huge misrepresentation. At best, you've accumulated the usernames of any and every person who has ever posted a comment that could be perceived as negative of CIG's progress in some manner, including posts as simple as "Man, why is CIG taking so long? They keep delaying modules!" and "Wow, yet another ship sale! It's all about the money...". At worst, you never removed the list of corporation members that you joyously added to your database when somebody tricked you into believing were all dissenters. You claim that you censor posts on your blog in order to allow a discussion to go on "without the usual personal attacks, harassment etc" where people "can engage me in meaningful discourse". I find this laughable. Have you ever actually read your own blogs and comments before? If you actually stuck to your own rules of discourse then most of us would have probably never heard of you as all your content would have been deleted by yourself as soon as you posted it. Let me list a few choice examples (just from your most recent blog post, at that!) where you do the exact opposite of what you say you stand for: (From this point onward, everything in quotations are comments Derek Smart has made) "But first, there’s this petition that a bunch of anti-social misfits are using to attack me." "a bunch of crazy German (big Star Citizen fans) gamers who don’t know any better" "these clowns don’t even have a freaking clue wtf is going on" "THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MORONS" "anti-social clowns" *Don't forget the several immature meme images dispersed throughout your article* Needless to say, pretty much all of your posts in the history of you posting online read in this same manner - insulting, condescending, rude. All I can say to you is, don't dish it if you can't take it. - "The petition creator is simply misguided in thinking that the defamatory missive in her petition, not to mention the infantile “Bring it on, Derek” comment in her Aug 25th update, are the sort of statements that are likely to bring about change. They are not." Infantile? You are certainly an amusing man, Derek, I'll give you that. My invitation to you to respond to this petition with something other than a defamation claim (which you retracted, probably once you realized that your claim is absolutely baseless) is absolutely mild compared to the ridiculous rants you've posted on your own blog, and your Facebook letter to Chris Roberts and other industry members was extremely infantile. Don't be a hypocrite. - You say "There is a saying that goes like this, and you should probably look it up: 'You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar'". Again, all I can really say in response to that is - don't be a hypocrite. Every post you've made since you've began your crusade against CIG and the vast majority of backers have been drenched in vinegar. - "given the approach that the petition creator took, not to mention the rhetoric in the comments"; "Trying to petition someone into doing something, while insulting them, making legally actionable defamatory comments etc is not exactly the sort of road to take if you want to be taken seriously." You mean like all of your own posts which drown in rhetoric and defamation? You're so far down that road that I'd never be able to catch up with you. - "THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU PICKED A FIGHT WITH THE WRONG PERSON" When is this moment going to occur, exactly? We all knew that this petition wasn't going to stop you or change your mind. Those of us in the community simply wanted to make it clear to you that we aren't against your goal of having CIG performing a legitimate audit so much as we are against your personal crusade, your mannerisms, your very being - everything you touch becomes tainted, and your own acidic proclamations and statements which clearly indicate you humor a fanciful wish of dethroning Chris Roberts and taking over his company and game, are what have set us all against you. We will do everything we can to ensure that your attempts to harm this game will have as minimal an impact as possible. - "In short, you clowns don’t scare me." Likewise, Mr. Smart. Thank you for your time, and for proving to us all once again how oblivious you are to your own ignorance, hypocrisy, abrasiveness and outright pettiness.