One of the hottest businesses for lawyers these days is to threaten people with court actions because of supposedly infringing on copyrighted material but accepting settlement payments based on those accusations. Typically these are referred to as John Doe IP cases where lawyers attempt to bring suit in court based on just the IP addresses of those involved regardless of where they live.

One lawyer by the name of Ira Siegel has been doing this for some time it would seem but that time maybe up if one judge has his way.

In one case where Siegel came before the court the judge issued a court order telling him that he had to reveal how much money that he was making with this scheme, which Siegel has been avoiding.

Increasingly judges are beginning to see through this type of lawsuit and the judge in this case has followed suit with other judges and dismissed all but one defendant; which effectively scuttles trolling operations like this. Not only that but judges are becoming more than a little vocal about their irritation with cases like these as this judge has, and notes in his decision.

The Court’s concerns are heightened by plaintiff’s refusal to file under seal a copy of its settlement letter and related information about its settlement practices. The film sells for $19.95 on plaintiff’s website. According to public reports, plaintiffs in other BitTorrent cases, rather than prosecuting their lawsuits after learning the identities of Does, are demanding thousands of dollars from each Doe defendant in settlement. If all this is correct, it raises questions of whether this film was produced for commercial purposes or for purposes of generating litigation and settlements. Put another way, Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to enact copyright laws ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts’. If all the concerns about these mass Doe lawsuits are true, it appears that the copyright laws are being used as part of a massive collection scheme and not to promote useful arts.

via Techdirt

It is always nice to see troll lawyers like Siegel get their comeuppance, something that we would love to see happen more often.

It is unconstitutional to use copyright system in order to threaten people to pay up says judge is a post from: The Inquisitr

When I first read this over at the Recording Industry vs The People blog this morning I couldn’t stop laughing, which made it extremely hard to get my required daily dosage of coffee into me and not all over my keyboard.

Yes folks it is true. The RIAA in 2008 paid out to three lawyer firms more than $16 million in order to pursue copyright infringement claims. In return they were able to collect only $391,000 in settlements. However it gets even better than that when you look back a few years:

As bad as it was, I guess it was better than the numbers for 2007, in which more than $21 million was spent on legal fees, and $3.5 million on “investigative operations” … presumably MediaSentry. And the amount recovered was $515,929.

And 2006 was similar: they spent more than $19,000,000 in legal fees and more than $3,600,000 in “investigative operations” expenses to recover $455,000.

So all in all, for a 3 year period, they spent around $64,000,000 in legal and investigative expenses to recover around $1,361,000.

And of course they are doing all this to protect the musicians. If I was the musicians I’d be asking for a rebate and a plea to the RIAA to stop being so damn helpful.

RIAA pays $16M to get $390,000 – no wonder the record companies are going tits up is a post from: The Inquisitr

I only found out about AllRise because they posted a comment on FriendFeed about my story of the woman suing a zoo over dolphins splashing too much water had been added to their list of active cases being argued by site members. The idea behind the site, the brainchild of “Friendly Ops”, is that it supplies a way for people to take out their aggressions towards injustice, build a community of people who have something to say or to protest, and to fill a void for people wanting to debate in a smart and comfortable by supplying an innovative tool for debating.

The idea being that as a member you can add a case to the docket to which people can add both defense and prosecution arguments. The “trials” last for seven days during which you can pick guilty or not guilty, make objections to the arguments of others as well as strengthen the arguments of others.

Interestingly enough you can also embed a widget of the court case on your blog. The widget includes the voting and debating system so your readers can makes their votes without even leaving your blog.

This is the entry on the docket for the story I wrote here earlier and so far the Not Guilty is winning as you can see.

Further down on the page you can see the section that displays the defense and prosecution’s arguments as well the option to add your own arguments to the case. You’ll need to join first though but you don’t have to to vote guilty or not guilty.

All in all it looks like fun and a great way to improve your debating skills in the process.

Think you’d make a good lawyer? Sign up at AllRise is a post from: The Inquisitr

There are a lot of different arguments used by people brought to court by the RIAA and other entertainment trade groups in order to come out victorious. In the majority of cases they lose and the RIAA get’s to brag a little longer about how they are out their protecting the rights of musicians.

I’ll wait until you pick yourself up from the floor after the laughing fit that statement prompted.

All better know? good because there is a very interesting defense being put forward in the case of accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum. It would seen that well respected Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson will argue that what Tenenbaum did falls squarely within “fair use” and therefore he isn’t liable for any purported damages. Nesson claims that downloading of copyrighted works nor no other purpose than personal enjoyment satisfies the famous “four factor test” for fair use claims.

Those four factors according to Stanford University Library are

1. the purpose and character of your use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

While some of Nesson’s equals consider this stretching the fair use clause a bit too far he believes he can convince a jury otherwise

"Defendant Tenenbaum expects and plans to offer the jury evidence relating to each one of these four factors," Nesson wrote in his court filing, "just as they are articulated in the statute, with the jury to decide their meaning as they apply to the facts of his particular case."

Source: Ars Technica

We’ll have to wait until this summer sometime for the case to start in a Massachusetts federal court to see if this rather unique defense will survive.

P2P filesharing seen as “fair use” is a post from: The Inquisitr