Re:uh, whatever! (Score 1)

Pat did not demand $300,000 for anything. He only provided that number as a representation of what the site (design, maintenance, hosting and bandwidth) had cost so far. Though I believe that number could be true, that is not the point.

The only thing he did was ask the sheriff to help him pay for part of the future cost of the website. He didn't 'give anything back' because it was all his from the beginning!

If you go and look at the wayback versions, most of the stuff on the site was public documents -- owned by the people of the state, not the sheriff's dept. As far as I can see, there wasn't any special 'sheriff only' info there. If you find something, point it out...but I didn't see anything.

Domain and server were both owned by Pat and the content was (as far as I can tell) accumulated from public documents. How this is extortion and larceny is totally beyond me.

A civil issue? Probably. A criminal issue with penalties of 50 yrs in prison? Not a chance.