Debbie Does BitTorrent: 113 Sued For Sharing Classic Porn Movie

from the porn-porn-everywhere dept

We've pointed out recently that porn producers seem to be rapidly jumping on the mass automated "pre-settlement" bandwagon, and it seems that's only increasing. More and more porn producers are filing mass lawsuits, demanding people accused of sharing all sorts of porn pay up or go to court. One of the latest targeted is the porn "classic," Debbie Does Dallas, for which 113 John Does have now been sued. Apparently, the lawyer involved is the same one who filed a bunch of these types of lawsuits a few months ago, Evan Stone. So apparently he's joined the ranks of lawyers who are pitching this kind of "service." Over in the UK, various politicians have been condemning these kinds of lawsuits, even calling them a scam. With thousands of these lawsuits being filed in the US now, will any US politician speak up and do something about this clear abuse of copyright law?

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LVRJ Defends Righthaven Suits; Mocks Competitor For Highlighting Problems With Them

from the how-about-acting-smarter? dept

With the Las Vegas Review Journal continuing to massively abuse copyright law with its Righthaven lawsuits, the absolute best source for covering the story has been the competing Las Vegas Sun -- leading some to claim that its coverage was to spite its local competitor. However, the Sun put together a good editorial explaining why the story is so newsworthy. Now, Sherman Frederick, the publisher of the LVRJ has hit back with an editorial slamming the Sun and insisting that the Righthaven strategy is the right one.

I'd link to the story, but since the LVRJ has made it clear it doesn't like links, I figured it's best not to do so.

Also, I would normally quote Frederick's article to debunk it -- a clear case of fair use -- but since the LVRJ has made it clear it doesn't want anyone quoting its articles (despite the fact it still has 19 separate "share" buttons on each article), I won't bother. Instead, I'll just make some general statements about Frederick's column.

First, Frederick suggests that there are only two options for dealing with people copying your words online: you sue or you go out of business. He predicts that the competing paper, The Sun, is going to go out of business because it's not suing others. I will note, of course, that he doesn't point out the slight conflict of interest in the fact that he helped fund Righthaven, and thus has incentives to try to get other newspapers to make the same mistake he's making. But, of course, there are plenty of other options, such as putting in place a smarter business model. The idea that the cat blogger in Boston is taking any revenue away from the LVRJ is beyond laughable. No one reads the story on the cat blog post and says "gee, now I don't have to go to the LVRJ ever again."

Frederick also claims that getting others to link to you and to promote your site doesn't help you at all (which is partly why we're not). However, this suggests he's unfamiliar with the concept of "Google," and the fact that it ranks your site's relevance, in part, to how many others link to you and who those others are. But, his bigger problem is that he thinks people are saying that if you let others link to you the money will just roll in. But no one's saying that. They're saying that links in combination with a smarter business model help raise your profile and create lots of opportunities to make more money. Unfortunately, it looks like Frederick is taking the lazy short cut, which is pissing off all sorts of people, and serious hurting his brand.

While he claims that since the lawsuits began they haven't seen any loss of traffic to their website, that's a meaningless stat at this point. First off, it's still quite early. Second, the idea isn't just that the lawsuits directly would lead to a loss of traffic, but the inevitable chain of events following such lawsuits. It's as if Frederick can only think a single step ahead. He must be a hell of a chess player.

From there, he claims that even if he was losing revenue from these lawsuits it would be worth it, because protecting the writing is more important than revenue. Really. That's a paraphrase rather than an exact quote, because I don't want Righthaven to sue me, but it's basically what he says. The reason for that? He insists that it's the writing in the newspaper that is the key value. That's only partially true of course and sort of besides the point. These sites that he's suing are not competing with the LVRJ, so pretending that a random site posting a single story somewhere (with credit and a link back) is somehow damaging the LVRJ is simply wrong.

But, more importantly, he's overvaluing the content and undervaluing the community. He's never been in the business of selling content. He's always been in the business of selling the attention of his readers to advertisers. Forgetting that would be a big mistake. He claims that it's the quality and (artificial) scarcity of the content that drives readership, and that's partially true, but it only goes part of the way to explaining the business. It suggests that he's done little, if anything, to make that content more valuable and useful for that community. In fact, he's doing the opposite, by suing those who try to do something with the content. In the long run, that seems quite likely to backfire.

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Woman Sues Facebook After Getting Banned

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

Michael Scott points us to a story of a woman who not only drove from Maryland to California to go to Facebook's offices to complain about having her account banned, but (when that didn't get the account reinstated) then she sued the site for the ban. Facebook says she was banned for harassing others. The woman, Karen Beth Young, says she was just promoting causes she was interested in, and, in doing so, friending lots of people (about 4,000 by the time the account was closed). She claims the ban violated her constitutional rights... and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The constitutional claim is almost certainly a non-starter. As a company, Facebook certainly has the right to ban pretty much anyone it wants to ban. The ADA claim also seems like it won't go very far, but as Eric Goldman notes, with so much ADA litigation, there's always a chance that "a court could have sympathy for the plaintiff." In this case, she's claiming that she has a bipolar disorder, and Facebook "does not provide reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities," like her. But that implies the problem was with her mental health issues, rather than her actions on the site. This seems like yet another case of someone saying that if they don't like something it must be against the law... even when that's not the case at all.

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Court Refuses To Dismiss Righthaven Lawsuit Just Because Righthaven Bought The Copyright After Infringement Happened

from the trolling-allowed dept

We've noted a variety of creative defenses being tested in response to lawsuits from Righthaven. One attempt was to claim that Righthaven had no standing, because it did not hold the copyright when the actual infringement occurred. That's because the way Righthaven works is it searches for copies of parts of articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (or the new newspapers who just signed up) and only then buys the copyright in question for the purpose of suing.

While it may have been a novel theory to say that you can't sue in such situations, there was little legal basis for that claim, and a judge has rejected it as a reason to dismiss. The judge did say that the issue could be explored further at trial, but the defendant in this case clearly read the writing on the wall and quickly settled the case, realizing that it's cheaper to settle than to fight. That, of course, is exactly what Righthaven's whole business model is predicated on.

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Response To Righthaven Suit Claims That Las Vegas Review Journal Engaged In Entrapment

from the might-be-a-stretch dept

We recently noted that one of the sites sued by Righthaven, the company that buys copyrights from the Las Vegas Review Journal and sues websites that repost parts of its stories, had claimed that the LVRJ gave an implicit license by specifically encouraging people to "share" each of their articles, with quicklinks to 19 different services. It appears that another defendant is taking that argument a step further, and suggesting the LVRJ is engaged in entrapment with these lawsuits after encouraging people to share their content:

"Even if a defendant was to republish an article from the LVRJ.com website directly, he is not only within his rights to do so, but all users of LVRJ.com are encouraged to do just that. The LVRJ.com website offers and invites its users to 'Save and Share' all of its articles no less than 19 times per article. In addition, the LVRJ.com website encourages and invites its users to 'Email This,' 'Save This,' 'Print This' and subscribe to its 'RSS Feeds.' This not only puts the users of LVRJ.com in a quagmire, but it is the opinion of the defendant that LVRJ.com is guilty of entrapment, or at least setting up the users of LVRJ.com for a potential lawsuit. While the LVRJ.com encourages and invites its users to 'Share and Save' articles a total of 23 times per article, LVRJ.com will file a frivolous copyright infringement lawsuit against its users, if they follow LVRJ's directions and invitations to 'Share and Save' articles published on the website."

Legally, this sounds like a bit of a stretch, but it is quite fascinating to see the range of defenses that sites are coming up with to fight back against Righthaven.

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Guy Sues Online Game Company NCSoft, Saying That Lineage II Is Too Addictive

from the personal-responsibility? dept

Apparently, a federal district court is allowing a guy to sue NCSoft for making the super popular online game Lineage II too addictive. Seriously:

Craig Smallwood, the plaintiff, claims NCsoft of South Korea should pay unspecified monetary damages because of the addictive nature of the game. Smallwood claims to have played Lineage II for 20,000 hours between 2004 and 2009. Among other things, he alleges he would not have begun playing if he was aware "that he would become addicted to the game."

Smallwood, who did not immediately respond for comment, alleged that the company "acted negligently in failing to warn or instruct or adequately warn or instruct plaintiff and other players of Lineage II of its dangerous and defective characteristics, and of the safe and proper method of using the game."

This sounds like the sort of case that should be easily dismissed, but not so fast according to the judge. You can read the judge's full ruling here: Reading through the details, the story just gets more and more bizarre. Not only does Smallwood claim that NCSoft failed to alert him to the addictive nature of the game... he also gets upset when he was later banned from the game. It's difficult to see how both of those issues can co-exist, though, he uses it to explain how the "addiction" and the sudden forced cold turkey cut-off meant that he was "unable to function independently, he has suffered psychological trauma, he was hospitalized, and he requires treatment and therapy three times a week."

Of course, we still haven't seen any evidence that video games create a real addiction issue. Yes, people can get very into games, but to the point of being "unable to function independently" seems a bit extreme. Anyway, the court does dismiss some of the claims, pointing out that he fails to make the case for "intentional misrepresentation," "negligent misrepresentation," "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and "unfair and deceptive trade practices." However, the court does find that Smallwood can at least move forward on claims of "defamation," "negligence and gross negligence," and "negligent infliction of emotional distress," though the judge still does sound a bit skeptical that those will really go anywhere.

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Could The Legality Of Google's Cache Kill Righthaven's Copyright Claims?

from the legal-theories... dept

As Righthaven continues to file lawsuits, it seems that various lawyers who are concerned about copyright, free speech and chilling effects online have been rushing to help defend some of those sued. I can't recall a situation (even with US Copyright Group) where lawyers have been so eager to take on a company filing copyright infringement claims. Of course, the really interesting part is how some of the lawyers are testing out a variety of defenses to the lawsuits, some which seem to have a much better chance of passing judicial muster than others.

For example, some are claiming that Righthaven has no standing to sue, since it waits until after it's found the infringement to "buy" the copyright to the article in question from Stephens Media/Las Vegas Review-Journal. Others have argued that the lack of any actual damages should get the lawsuits dismissed. Still others have challenged the jurisdiction.

One interesting argument, based on an earlier ruling on the legality of Google's cache, makes the reposting of these articles "fair use." Unfortunately, the fact pattern in that case does appear to be a bit different. It not only involved a guy suing over the Google cache, but that guy also first requested that Google scan his pages, then made the request to visit the cache himself. Still, in that case, Google argued that without a robots.txt blocking them from caching the article, the guy had given implicit permission:

"Even if Google could be viewed as having made or distributed these copies of Field's works, Field impliedly granted Google permission to do so. Field displayed his site on the Internet without including any label, including those that are industry standard, to instruct Google not to present 'cached' links to the pages containing his works," Google attorneys argued.

And, in that case, the judge agreed. So, with Righthaven, these lawyers are claiming the same basic thing. They're saying that the LVRJ gave an implicit license for a similar cache-with-link by putting the content up for free and by failing to limit the ability to copy & paste the text via technical means. On top of that, they point out that the LVRJ explicitly encourages people to "share" the articles on its site (something the LVRJ still does -- including quick links to share it with 19 different services).

This does raise some tricky issues. If Google's cache is, in fact, legal and not infringement, then how is just reposting a story with a link back infringing? But, if reposting a story is found to be fair use, you're about to hear a collective gasp of horror from some online content producers who don't want people copying their stuff. Because of that general conflict, I'm beginning to wonder if some of the Righthaven lawsuits are about to become a lot more important than we initially expected -- and whether or not Google might have a very strong interest in supporting some of the cases against Righthaven.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal Thinks Suing Sites Over Copyright Will Mean More People Link To It

from the uh,-try-less dept

We've been following the lawsuits filed by Righthaven for a few months now. If you haven't been following the story, this is the company, funded by the owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that is suing a bunch of sites (over 100, and increasing rapidly) for reposting content from the LVRJ. In many cases, the lawsuits hit message boards, where the site owners have clear DMCA protections. Also, Righthaven does not issue any DMCA takedown notices -- it just goes straight to suing. Joe Mullin has a story about Righthaven that includes a few more details, including the fact that about 30% of those sued have settled -- but for amounts ranging from $2,185 to $5,000 -- well below the $75,000 demanded. And, none of the settlements have resulted in anyone turning over their domain, as demanded. So, if we assume 30 of the lawsuits have paid $5,000 (we'll take the upper bound), that's $150,000 over the course of about 4 or 5 months. Take away the "cost" of buying the copyrights, and filing the lawsuits (a few hundred bucks) and this hasn't been a hugely lucrative business. Some of the sites that haven't settled are gearing up to fight this in court (we've heard from a bunch), and suddenly whatever Righthaven earned seems to go negative fast if it has to spend time in a courtroom.

But, even more ridiculous are the laughable claims from Steve Gibson, the guy behind Righthaven, and Mark Hineuber, the general counsel for the parent company of the LVRJ. Hineuber is claiming:

"My hope," says Hinueber, "is we will raise awareness of copyright laws, and have more links back to our site, and have less of our material infringed on the Internet."

Yeah, right. Suing people linking to you is going to get more links? Considering that some of the examples of sites being sued included one that posted just 4 paragraphs of a 34-paragraph article... with a link, it seems that these lawsuits are almost guaranteed to lead to less linking.

Gibson keeps claiming that his is not a legal shakedown business, but a technology business. This is pretty laughable too. If they invested in technology beyond "searching Google," they've wasted money here. But even more ridiculous is the claim that this somehow makes business sense:

"Since the advent of the Internet, there has been an ocean of infringements of copyright that have gone unaddressed," Gibson says. "I've also seen that many media companies have been facing financial difficulties. I was inspired to pursue technological solutions and marry them with the available legal machinery."

Actually, no, that's not true. It hasn't gone unaddressed. Lots of companies have tried suing, and so far it's been a dismal failure, costing a lot more money than it ever brought it and calling much more attention to the ability to infringe. To ignore that basic history is pretty laughable.

Amusingly, the article also has the Righthaven folks admitting some "kinks" that need "to be worked out," such as the time it sued the very source for an article (apparently, this has happened more than once). In the one case that we wrote about, after that came to light, Righthaven dropped the lawsuit. I'm guessing that after some more lawyers start fighting back against Righthaven, it's going to discover quite a few more "kinks" in its system.

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Righthaven Continues To Stretch The Meaning Of Copyright Law In Filing Lawsuits

from the more-lawsuits-every-week dept

Righthaven, the company "grubstaked" by the Las Vegas Review Journal, which is basically going around suing any and every site that posts any of its content, continues to up the ante in abusing copyright law. Every week, it's filing more lawsuits. We've actually been hearing from some of the sites that have been sued, and many are lawyering up to fight Righthaven, because the claims are getting increasingly ridiculous. Righthaven appears to not take into account any of the context of the pages on the sites it's suing. For example, many of the sites it's suing involve users -- not the site owners -- posting content in forums. In those cases, the site owners are almost certainly protected by the DMCA safe harbors (assuming they've set themselves up with the Copyright Office for DMCA safe harbor protections). That doesn't seem to be stopping Righthaven, though, which is making some fascinating (and blatantly wrong) legal claims.

For example, one of its recent lawsuits is against the political forum Democratic Underground, where a user (not the site owner), quoted a mere 4 paragraphs of a 34 paragraph story -- and included a link to the full story. No matter, Righthaven sued. As it does in all of these lawsuits, it's demanding $75,000. The number is carefully chosen, because it's less than what going to court will likely cost. The idea is to just get people to pay up, even if the legal claims are bogus. Beyond the $75,000, it's laughably demanding that the domain name of the site be turned over as well.

Righthaven tries to avoid the obvious DMCA safe harbor issue with the following:

"The defendants' failure to institute any proactive policies intended to address the posting by others of copyright-infringing content on the website constituted and constitutes the defendants' willful blindness to copyright infringements occurring on the website ..."

Nice theory. Too bad that nowhere in copyright law does it require service providers to have such proactive policies, and in the various lawsuits where this has been challenged (I'm looking at you, Viacom/YouTube, and you, Veoh/Universal Music) courts have pretty much laughed out loud at the suggestion that sites have any legal requirement to proactively police user generated content.

Given the fact that Righthaven seems to be suing more sites every week (it's about to crack 100, if it hasn't already), it seems like the plan is to basically just sue everyone that a Google search turns up, no matter how dubious the legal merits might be -- and hope that enough sites settle before this operation is put out of its misery. Nearly everything about this setup is questionable. The fact that it doesn't issue DMCA takedowns or alert sites before suing, while legal, can't look good in court. It suggests, quite clearly, that the copyright holder did not make use of clear tools at its disposal to "minimize" any harm. Courts generally don't like that. On top of that, suing site owners for actions of forum users won't look good either. Nor is claiming infringement on just a small snippet of a much longer article that includes clear attribution and a link back. It's difficult to see how anyone at Righthaven can legitimately claim "harm" here.

The only "good" that may come of this is that Righthaven is really doing an excellent job demonstrating what a laughingstock copyright has become.

In the meantime, if you'd like to hear Righthaven's CEO challenged on some of his assertions, be sure to tune into an audio "IP roundtable" from the law firm Bryan Cave on September 8th. Steve Gibson will be on the panel, as will Eric Goldman -- who I fully expect to challenge Gibson on many of his claims. The panel will also include Barbara Wall from Gannett who hopefully will explain why Gannett has chosen not to follow the LVRJ in suing people for advertising their content.

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US Copyright Group Dumps Two Of Its Lawsuits... But Only To Refile Lawsuits Against Individuals

from the begin-speculation dept

Well, this is interesting. Slyck is reporting that the US Copyright Group has withdrawn its lawsuits in two cases, covering 944 as-yet-unnamed defendants. The two lawsuits, filed on behalf of G2 Entertainment (Uncross the Stars) and World Wide Entertainment (The Gray Man) were the first two lawsuits filed by USCG. Slyck takes a few guesses as to why the lawsuits were dropped, but the main lawyer behind US Copyright Group, Thomas Dunlap has told THREsq (which still seems like Dunlop's favorite "go to" source) that this is just a part of the process. They're going to now file lawsuits against the individual defendants in those two cases. Perhaps some of the lawyers in the audience can explain how this works? Why do they get to file one lawsuit to find out names, and then, rather than just inserting the names into that original lawsuit, instead file a totally different lawsuit? I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for this, but it does seem strange.

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RIAA Defends Lawsuit Spending... But Reminds Everyone How It Helps Screw Over Musicians

from the who's-rationalizing-now? dept

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of attention paid to the story of how the RIAA had spent $17 million and got back $391,000 in settlements. The RIAA is now defending its legal strategy by claiming that the lawsuits had other benefits, such as injunctions against certain sites and (my favorite) to "foster a respect for the rights of creators." It's difficult to see how that's working, as the legal strategy has not only mobilized many music fans against the RIAA and ridiculous copyright laws, but has even gotten top musicians to speak out against the RIAA and its views on copyright. On top of that, given the continued increase in file sharing usage, the whole claim is a joke.

Separately, though, the RIAA says that the numbers are misleading because "sometimes recoveries go directly to record label plaintiffs."

But that raises a different question. If the labels are getting this money... has any of it been passed on to artists? In the discussion on the original story, we had one commenter, who works as an auditor in the music licensing field, who pointed this out and noted that this money isn't going to artists or songwriters at all. We had pointed this out back in 2006, when part of the Google buyout of YouTube involved paying off the big record labels... and that deal was structured in a way that those labels didn't have to share that money with artists.

We've already seen how record label accounting is used to screw over musicians, but this is an important point as well. The RIAA positions itself as defending artists' rights. It talks about how these lawsuits are carried out to protect musicians and help those musicians earn a living. But it's becoming increasingly clear that of the money that actually comes in from these lawsuits, very little of it ever is seen by the artists the labels claim they're protecting.

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Documentary Filmmaker, Legal Spy... Or Both?

from the crossing-boundaries dept

We just wrote about a lawsuit involving a documentary filmmaker who was trying (but failed) to protect unused footage from being subpoenaed for a lawsuit involving Chevron's involvement in Ecuadorian pollution. It raised questions about whether or not a documentary filmmaker could be seen as an investigative journalist, and thus could be covered by a shield law. Apparently, documentary filmmakers involved in films in that general part of the world are expanding their job titles all the time. THREsq has the fascinating story of a "documentary filmmaker" who went to Nicaragua to interview people about pesticides used on Dole banana plantations, who recently admitted he was also on the payroll of a law firm that was looking to sue over problems with the pesticide:

"I decided the film wasn't going to change a lot in this world," Glaser said on the witness stand in a case involving six men claiming they were left sterile by pesticide exposure. "I decided to work with the firm and help with the legal process...I decided to use the film for that purpose."

So he was still making the film, it's just that he got financing from the law firm looking to use the evidence collected in a case. It's a neat trick, though the report questions if this will make people more nervous about talking to filmmakers. I'm not sure that's really true. If the film was being made anyway to "expose" problems with the pesticide, then the company was probably already afraid of talking to the guy, and those impacted by the pesticide are probably happy about both the movie and the lawsuit. Still, I find it an interesting type of "business model" for a documentary filmmaker to also be a law firm investigator...

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US Copyright Group Kicking Off Next Round Of Lawsuits [Updated]

from the can't-stop-now dept

Despite the fact that there are still some serious legal questions about the methods of US Copyright Group (really, DC-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver), the firm is apparently about to file its next round of lawsuits, suing thousands more, with the hope that they'll just shut up and pay up, rather than actually wanting to go to court.. Update: As pointed out in the comments, this is actually an announcement of the second round of the initial lawsuits, actually filing suit against the named participants who failed to settle when sent the "pay up or we'll sue" notice. This makes it a bit more interesting, seeing as actually filing specific lawsuits would make this program a lot more expensive, which is why other, similar, organizations haven't done so....

The same article also notes (without much surprise) that despite orders from the judge for USCG to work with the EFF to craft a more informative letter to be sent to people who are targeted in the lawsuits, the two sides are having quite a bit of trouble agreeing on the language. Apparently, they're already going back to the judge to say that this isn't exactly working. Shocking.

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RIAA Spent $17.6 Million In Lawsuits... To Get $391,000 In Settlements?

from the business-as-usual dept

Last month we discussed the question of whether or not the RIAA's legal strategy was a success or not. An RIAA supporter had claimed that it was clearly a success, since most of the people the RIAA sued chose to settle. We questioned that, pointing out that the bottom line of the major record labels was shrinking fast, and the rate of file sharing was increasing. At the same time, we pointed out that the record labels themselves had admitted that the lawsuits were "a money pit." Ray Beckermann has done some digging and is pointing out just how big a money pit it really was. In looking through the RIAA's financial statements, he notes over $17.6 million spent on big name law firms who were the key players in the lawsuit campaign. And all those settlements? In 2008, they brought in $391,000. The 2007 numbers were even worse. $21 million in legal fees, plus another $3.5 million for "investigative services" to bring in... $515,929 in settlement fees. 2006? $19 million in legal fees, $3.6 million in investigative services... $455,000 in settlements.

So if we're doing some quick math, over a three year period, the RIAA spent over $64 million on this lawsuit campaign... which brought in about $1.4 million in settlement money. We're talking about getting back about 2% of the money spent.

Wow. These lawsuits weren't just a money pit. They were an economic disaster. And don't buy the argument that this was the cost of "educating" people not to file share. If that were the case, then file sharing wouldn't still keep increasing. There's no way you can look at these numbers and not realize just how disastrous the RIAA's legal campaign was. And yet the RIAA bosses are getting raises? Incredible. It's been a dozen years since the RIAA had a very real opportunity to lead the recording industry into the digital era by adapting and embracing what the technology allowed. Instead, they've fought it the whole way, costing millions of dollars, and severely impacting the labels' bottom lines. Can anyone explain why the labels are still supporting the current RIAA leadership when it appears that every step of the way they've made exactly the wrong decisions?

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Newspaper Publisher Sues Guy For Posting Article Based On Research He Gave The Paper For Free

from the going-a-bit-far? dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the company Righthaven, which has some sort of connection to the Las Vegas Journal Review (or, at least, its lawyer), who is now going around suing lots of sites for reposting LVJR content. What was interesting about the lawsuits is that Righthaven never sent any cease-and-desists or DMCA takedowns or anything. It just went straight to suing. That's allowed... but odd. On top of that, many of the repostings weren't competitors or sites that were trying to take business away from the LVJR. In fact, in many cases, it involved organizations mentioned in the LVJR who were trying to promote the LVJR.

Apparently, Righthaven and LVJR continue to file these kinds of lawsuits, and they just keep getting more ridiculous. Michael Scott points us to to the fact that Righthaven has sued a guy named Anthony Curtis, who reposted an article from the LVJR that talked about research Curtis had done on ticket prices for entertainment shows in Vegas.

If you're playing along at home, the LVJR published an article based on research -- which it got for free -- from Curtis, and when he then tries to highlight that article, the LVJR sues him. As the MediaPost story notes, the LVJR article about Curtis' research even notes that his annual survey is a "thankless task." Thankless, indeed.

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Zombie SCO Rises Again, Appeals Latest Ruling

from the will-it-ever-die? dept

Last month, when a court ruled against SCO for the... oh heck, we've lost count... 'th time, we wondered if the whole bizarre saga might finally be over. No such luck. Hephaestus points out that SCO has, in fact, appealed. Not much to say about this one, but just shake your head in amazement. Some day, will someone please do a full case study on SCO's elaborate decade-long suicide through bad litigation choice followed by even worse litigation choice?

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Hurt Locker Still Shared Widely Online; Wonder Why Producers Aren't Issuing Takedowns?

from the why-interfere-with-the-business-model? dept

By now we all know about how the producers of the movie Hurt Locker, Voltage Pictures, are suing thousands of people for file sharing their movie. And, you're probably also aware of the claims from Nicolas Chartier, who runs Voltage, that anyone who thinks these lawsuits are a bad strategy is a moron and a thief. You might also be aware that Chartier's "morality" on such subjects does not extend to paying the soldier whose story the movie is based on, but we'll leave that for another day.

However, it is interesting that despite all of this publicity and all of this attention about lawsuits, that file sharing for the movie has not dropped at all. It appears to still be quite popular on file sharing sites. More interesting is that Voltage, and the lawyers they've hired to file these thousands of lawsuits, US Copyright Group (or, more accurately, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver) apparently have not issued a single DMCA takedown notice to get the file removed from various file sharing networks.

That's pretty telling, of course. It certainly suggests that this has nothing, whatsoever, to do with stopping file sharing or any sort of moral position. The law gives Voltage and US Copyright Group the tools, via a DMCA takedown to mitigate damages. But they're not using them. Instead, they're suing as many people as they can and threatening to take them to court if they don't pay up. That feels a lot more like a typical shakedown. If USCG and Voltage were really interested in stopping file sharing, why wouldn't they use the tools within the law to improve the situation for themselves? It does make you wonder, should any of these lawsuits actually reach a court, if those who are sued will point to Voltage's own failure to mitigate the infringement through the tools provided by the law....

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Court Orders US Copyright Group To Work With Time Warner, EFF To Craft More Informative Letter To Those Being Sued

from the it's-something dept

The saga of US Copyright Group (really DC-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver) continues. As you may recall, the firm is filing lawsuits against tens of thousands of people accused of file sharing certain movies, such as Uwe Boll's Far Cry and the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker. The lawsuits lump thousands of "John Does" into a single suit located conveniently (for Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver) in Washington, DC. Time Warner Cable has been resisting the demands to identify so many of its subscribers, and EFF, Public Citizen and the ACLU joined forces to point out that it isn't legal to lump together so many different totally unrelated defendants into a single case in an unrelated jurisdiction. US Copyright Group defended the lumping together by claiming that since BitTorrent worked by different people sharing little bits, perhaps all of the thousands of people shared together. The judge seemed skeptical.

However, rather than throw out the lawsuits against all but one of the defendants, the judge is asking the various parties -- US Copyright Group, Time Warner Cable, EFF, Public Citizen and the ACLU to all work together to craft a note that can be sent to individuals targeted in these lawsuits. The idea is that this note, unlike the one people get directly from USCG, will inform people of their rights, including the right to challenge the jurisdiction of the lawsuit (and, I assume, the fact that they're randomly lumped in with other people).

My guess is that the judge is still uncomfortable with all these lawsuits being lumped together, but realized that none of the parties in the court room are really the right ones to be challenging the specifics of the lawsuit. That needs to come from someone actually being sued. Thus, this agreed-upon letter could still lead to a lawsuit that says such joining of massive lawsuits into one is not allowed.

Still, given USCG's statements in the lawsuits to date, and the text of the current letters it sends, I'm guessing that there's going to be a lot of disagreement about what goes into this new mutually agreed-upon letter.

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Guy Who Isn't Even Being Sued By US Copyright Group Files Response To Lawsuit

from the um...-that's-not-going-to-work dept

As a court is about to hear oral arguments concerning the legality of one of US Copyright Group's (really law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver) lawsuits which attempt to lump thousands of alleged file sharers into a single lawsuit, something odd has happened in response to US Copyright Group's most famous lawsuit against 5,000 people accused of sharing the movie Hurt Locker. Despite the fact that no one has yet been identified in that particular lawsuit, some random guy has stepped forward and filed a response to the lawsuit, supposedly in "protest." It seems like a pretty weak protest, however. In fact, the guy says he does download some files, but didn't even download Hurt Locker. And, on top of all that, he seems confused. During an interview with News.com, he also says that he was trying to "take a stand against file sharing." In the end, this seems like it's all a really weak and confused publicity stunt by a guy who is apparently running for some form of public office. The courts will likely make this one disappear quickly.

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LimeWire Sued Again... How Many Times Does The Industry Want To Kill It?

from the adding-lawsuit-to-injunction dept

The RIAA is still fighting to force LimeWire to shut down completely after its legal win over the company. Given the nature of the initial ruling, it seems pretty likely that LimeWire is fighting a losing battle. Recently lots of folks were discussing the ridiculous damages that the RIAA is claiming LimeWire owes. On top of that, however, it looks like the music publishers have decided to pile on as well, and have filed a separate copyright infringement lawsuit against LimeWire. Honestly, this seems like it's just for the sake of vanity, or to be able to primp and preen for its members about how it's "doing something." The initial lawsuit will almost certainly kill off Limewire as a company. This new lawsuit can't kill it again. It's just a waste of time and money. Meanwhile, LimeWire users will have just moved on and will continue sharing files.

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