Personal Democracy Forum Accuses TechCrunch of Identity Theft

Through Robert Scoble's shared items, I learned about Micah Sifry, a founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and author of the TechPresident blog has accused Michael Arrington and TechCrunch of identity theft.  Micah says he sent Mike a nice email note asking to resolve the issue which went unanswered. He also sent it to another TechCrunch exec who promised to speak to Arrington.  Then Arrington went onto national TV talking about how he wanted TechCrunch to set criteria for the next president.

I have been chiding TechCrunch for the silliness of the apparent results of the Techcrunch Presidential Poll . If this poll means the tech community should seriously back Ron Paul whose currently way ahead, then I would argue the tech sector will have no real influence on the election outcome. On closer reading I've discovered that you can vote once per day, rather than just once, which hints that TechCrunch is looking for more traffic rather than an accurate pulse read on the tech community preferences.

Micah's charge is far more serious than mine. He has escalated his issue in a very short time and it is fair to wait to hear how Arrington responds to it and personally I think it would be wise for him to respond.