Street News has no street cred

Last month, I came across a web site called Memphis Street News that proported to be an online news service geared to Memphis. I noticed that the articles on the web site seemed vaguely familiar. A Google search quickly showed that the "articles" on the Street web site were originally published in The Commercial Appeal, a print publication in the Bluff City. Someone at Street News was simply cutting up the original stories published in the Commercial Appeal and piecing them back together for use on the web site. If the Street News was a college student, this would be known as plagiarism and expulsion would be in order. But in this case, the offender is guilty of copyright infringemnt for the unauthorized use of the Commercial Appeal's intellectual property.
The web site's owner, Tony Falasca, took exception to my criticism and threatened to sue me. This is the sort of bullying tactic I've seen before. Tony isn't the first person to threaten to sue me over words I wrote and published. Fortunately, it's just an empty threat, a bully's best effort to silence criticism of his questionable business practises.
Apparently Tony knows as little about the law as he does about journalism. In order to win a libel case, he will have to prove that I knowingly published false information about him and his web site. Nothing I wrote about his web site was untrue. A quick Google search of his web site and the Commercial Appeal archives will clearly demonstrate that he published stories taken directly from the print publication. No lies, no libel.
But even if the truth weren't on my side, I have yet another defense that Tony and his attorney should consider. I'm flat broke. In the unlikely event that Tony could somehow win a judgement in court, he will never collect damages because there's nothing to collect. I suppose he could win my 15-year-old car, but beyond that, there's precious little to collect.