Lawfare and Public Participation (Does Dozier know better? Should it?)

I am confused.

What happened at first at least made sense. Three blogs (i-Blog, i-Ratings, i-Scams) criticize DirectBuy. DirectBuy hires a lawyer, Dozier Internet Law. A lawyer sends a threatening letter (excerpts, original pdf). Public Citizien responds with its own letter (pdf) and with a blog post. The original blogger makes noise. Other blogs join in.

That makes sense. Strategic lawsuits against public participation are a form of lawfare in which lawsuits are used to silent discussion, allowing other operations to proceed normally.

But then Dozier writes inflamatory letters (not legal correspondence, but comments) to a blog and to Public Citizen. Predictably, the blogger replies, and Public Citizen replies. (Even tdaxp comments, for that matter!)

From a lawfare perspective, this seems to make no sense. Jumping into a discussion grows the discussion, because it has more participatns, is more interested, etc. A traditional lawfare approach tries to go around the discussion, cutting it off at the knees.

So has Dozier Internet Law developed a new form of lawfare? Or are they just foolish?

(And for that matter, is there any easy way to integrate all of lawfare in a 5GW/xGW discussion? PurpleSlog?)

Update: Eric Turkewitz asks himself the same question:

I can only think of two reasons for Dozier to publish such a letter on their site: The first is sheer folly, since it draws yet more attention to the charges against the company they wish to defend.

The second is more troublesome. Is Dozier simply trying to create more controversy, and thus more links to their website and hopefully more business? That will surely be one result of publishing a letter to Public Citizen on their website instead of reaching out to them privately. But this would also raise very troubling issues regarding attorney ethics and legal malpractice since this is seems to me clearly detrimental to their client. I prefer the first explanation — that it is sheer folly and not an ethical breach — though a savvy Internet based business must surely anticipate the repercussions to their client of additional commentary on the subject.