
Copyright Troll May Have Set an Expensive Precedent for Copyright Trolls - rahuldottech
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190726/00143342658/copyright-troll-richard-liebowitz-may-have-cost-his-client-ton-money-set-expensive-precedent-copyright-trolls.shtml
======
mdturnerphys
Mr. Liewbowitz is currently under a contempt order and being fined $500/day
until he provides proof that his grandfather died back on April 12th, which
was his excuse for missing a court appearance that day [0].

[0] [https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-
suspicious-d...](https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-suspicious-
dead-grandfather/)

~~~
tarr11
Wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow ...

“Further, Mr. Liebowitz is hereby ORDERED to appear before this Court in
person on November 13, 2019 at 10 a.m., and there and then SHOW CAUSE why he
should not be incarcerated until such time as he complies with the above-
described orders (and, if applicable, the instant order).”

~~~
mark-r
There's nothing like a little jail time to motivate a person.

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inglor
Can someone please explain to me (as a non-american) why the losing party does
not have to pay legal fees? In Israel if someone sues you and they lose they
have to pay (up to a reasonable amount) for your lawyer and legal
representation.

The fact you can "shake down" someone through suing them in the US is
appalling and I am sure there is a good reason for it but I have not been able
to understand it.

~~~
saagarjha
Well, one drawback to the losing party paying legal fees is that it
disincentivizes "small" parties from suing larger ones, since they are more
likely to lose and less likely to be able to pay.

~~~
tomxor
If true then it highlights a deeper problem in your justice system (litigation
power outweighs correctness)

~~~
icebraining
The "more likely to lose", yes; but even if the system was perfectly fair, the
result is not always obvious beforehand (otherwise we wouldn't need a trial in
the first place!), and the risk may be too high for a poor litigant.

------
netcan
This is probably meta in the uninteresting sense but, thoughts:

1) _many trolls who focus purely on shakedown settlement letters, Liebowitz
runs straight to court to leverage the power of an expensive court case to
push for insane settlements._ \- - Worrying. Why isn't there a bugfix coming?
If the court system is so obviously exploitable...

I guess shutting down a troll business model is better than nothing, but..
This just basically shooos the problem away from courts and back into the
expensive exchange of threatening letters... which is also and abuse of the
legal system.

2) IP laws are important, and growing in importance as "intangibles" becomes a
major class of assets, by way of corporate books. Just IP related _lawyering_
(contracts, advice, courts, judges...) is a massive industry, nevermind the
stuff it lawyers about.

Precedent is not really supposed to be the tool for this job, is it? Laws need
to be written to be enforceable logically. At the least, they need to avoid
creating obvious messes like patent trolling. I'd argue the sheer level of
lawyering (measured in €) a type of asset attracts can be a sign it's been
poorly defined.

~~~
ikeboy
Why is suing over copyright infringement an "exploit" of the court system?

~~~
squiggleblaz
The court system isn't there to turn someone's mistake into your pay day. It's
there to put things back to order. It's like when you have information and ask
for a favor. You can ask for a favor, and you can publish the information. But
the moment you link the two, it's unlawful blackmail.

~~~
ikeboy
Copyright infringement is a tort, and statutory damages are provided for
precisely because the legislature wants people to get a pay day in such cases.

------
cft
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz)
:

"In April 2019 Leibowitz missed a court date in a copyright lawsuit. He told
the court that he missed it due to the death of his grandfather. The court
asked him to prove it, suspecting he was in fact missing hearings to run up
legal costs for his opponent. As of November he has failed to do so, and is
being fined $500 a day and threatened with incarceration.[6]"

~~~
scandinavian
From reading the source court document, he is to appear in court tomorrow,
otherwise:

> Failure to appear as directed will subject Mr. Liebowitz to arrest by the
> United States Marshals Service without further notice.

~~~
squiggleblaz
The judge has lost all respect for him, it's incredible. The order for him to
appear has a footnote "if you're already required to appear somewhere else,
you better attach the proof".

------
JimWestergren
Related from July 10 2019: $100,000 sanction against Richard Liebowitz and his
firm
[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad-4c72-93a2-0b425bdcf17e)

------
fastball
This is great for things with clear value, such as a photograph you are
already licensing for a specific fee. However, I can't imagine this is very
effective for anything less clear-cut, as it seems hard to guess what the
settlement will be.

~~~
taneq
If you don't have any idea how much something's worth, how can you sue for
damages for someone copying it?

~~~
mehrdadn
Aren't there some situations where you can ask the court to determine damages?
Pretty sure I've seen this before, though I'm not sure in what context (it may
not have been copyright).

~~~
rusk
I’ve heard of cases where the Jury is asked to decide ... without any
parameters!

~~~
lolc
What do you mean without any parameters? They had the whole legal argument in
which both sides will have tried to convince them of what the right amount is.

~~~
rusk
It's quite a number of years ago now, but a friend of mine did jury duty on a
civil case and they were just told to come up with a figure, so they all just
picked a number a random and split the difference between the highest and the
lowest. The rationale being that this would be a starting point and there
would be further litigation to determine what was "fair".

I think that was Ireland in the 80s or 90s though, I'd "imagine" things are
approached with a bit more rigor these days ...

------
briandear
I used to be a news photographer and had this happen to me before. My “deal”
with the publication: pay me my normal rate for the photo and hire me for a
future assignment. Turned out I had a pretty good relationship when them after
that. A win-win for everyone. But just going for the jugular is counter
productive: you lose out on a future customer by attempting to destroy them in
court over a $220 photo.

------
raverbashing
I'm sure the photographer will love his name being associated to a lawyer
showing such degree of professionalism.

Would make a lot of places think twice about touching any of your works.

Not saying Democracy now is in the right, but for 5x the original licensing
fee? Take the money and case closed.

~~~
laurent123456
It seems the photographer is as responsible as the lawyer in this case. I'd
expect he needs to give his approvement to reject the initial offer. Also
"Mango sought bankruptcy in 2004, and records from his bankruptcy filing show
that his liabilities greatly exceeded his listed assets", so sounds like he's
trying to make some easy extra cash, that turns out not be so easy.

~~~
owenmarshall
This lawyer is about to go in to court today to explain why he lied to a
federal judge no less than four times, and was also accused by another of his
clients of forging their signature and submitting it to the court.

Who knows what he’s told or has not told this client.

~~~
MertsA
I think you're underselling it a bit. He's going before a federal judge, not
even for the lie itself but for failure to provide documentation to prove that
lie. He's facing increasingly severe monetary sanctions and possibly
imprisonment _tomorrow_ even if he actually could provide a death certificate
that substantiated his earlier claims. We haven't seen the full extent of the
blowback from that lie yet even if he comes clean today there's still more to
come.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU)

Failure to appear will immediately subject him to arrest by the US Marshals
Service regardless of any other delay shenanigans by Liebowitz.

~~~
owenmarshall
Oh yeah. I’m not a lawyer myself but when I’ve read about other shady lawyers
the message is always seemingly the same: justice can be slow but when it
comes - especially at the hands of a federal judge who you lied to, multiple
times - you should be happy if the only outcome is that you never get to
practice law again.

I only want to highlight the client may have very little to do with the case
and what’s happened with it so far, as everything this lawyer has done is out
of the bounds of the legal system. I don’t think the average person is
equipped to deal with the impact of a lawyer who is themselves a criminal.

------
fortran77
Democracy Now! _did_ use someone's photo without paying for it. What this man
does which is nasty is instead of simply pointing it out and asking for their
fee for licensing, he goes directly to court and asks for much more.

~~~
cool_dude85
I think that's what's being missed in this. DN ripped this guy off and
published his photo without paying him for it. When he does the work of
tracking them down and figuring it out, AND after he went to a lawyer to go
after DN, they offered him their standard fee plus a couple hundred bucks for
his trouble. And when he's not satisfied with that, he's the bad guy.

This apparently happens enough for there to be a cottage industry of lawyers
going after big publishers who are ripping off small-time photographers. It
seems like this whole thing needs serious reform, but probably not by going
after people trying to get paid from a big org using their work.

~~~
Pfhreak
I don't think you have the story straight.

DN did infringe, and when called on it, they immediately pulled the photo and
offered 5 times the photographer's highest recorded fee charged per photo.

The photographer felt $1100 was insufficient, and took DN to court.
(Apparently, based on the discovery requests, with an intent to rack up
significant legal fees for DN.)

So yeah, I'd say the photographer is the bad guy. Or has bad lawyers. Maybe
$1000 for a $200 photo isn't enough, but it's probably the sort of thing that
could be negotiated reasonably rather than heading straight to court.

~~~
joemi
I don't think anyone's debating that the lawyer is a bad person. But why not
take a big company to task? This is a serious ongoing problem for
photographers these days. I highly doubt this is the first time this has
happened to this photographer. And I doubt it's the first time DN has used
someone's photo without permission.

~~~
cwkoss
I feel like news organizations shouldn't even have to pay to use images in the
public interest for news broadcasts.

What was the context that DN used this image?

~~~
cool_dude85
You could maybe make a case like this for someone like DN, which is a
nonprofit. But do you really want ABC News Brought To You By Disney to be able
to use your picture of some newsworthy event in their primetime TV show for
free? They're not giving away those ad spots for free in service of the public
interest.

~~~
cwkoss
My main concern is that it is in societies best interest to make the cost of
reporting news low. Would be horrible to be in a situation like "all the good
pictures of this event cost at least $2000, so if you won't pay for that, your
audience can't see a visual of it"

Do news agencies have to pay royalties on pictures which are 'adversarial'?
ex. Trudeau in blackface? Seems like there are a class of images which society
benefits from having them be free and not subject to intellectual property
restrictions.

Seems like capping royalties as a proportion of revenue earned by ads on that
broadcast would be a sensible method of addressing this.

------
basicplus2
For all his behaviour Richard Liebowitz should be struck off

~~~
dannyw
How about disbarment?

~~~
piker
That's what "struck off" generally means in jurisdictions that have lawyers
who are not barristers (i.e., members of the bar), such as the UK.

~~~
0xffff2
This is super confusing because in the US lawyers are members of the bar, but
are not refered to as barristers. As an American I've only ever heard the term
"disbarment"; never "struck off".

------
hinkley
I'm sure you've heard the term 'hanging judge' in movies.

The last time frivolous lawsuits were getting a lot of journalistic attention
I would joke to my friends that if I ever became a judge I'd cite people for
contempt of court for bringing in bullshit cases. I'd easily set a record for
number of citations.

~~~
jayess
Define "bullshit cases."

~~~
hinkley
If only there were some context I could provide that could illustrate my
point. Like previous sentences, threads, or links at tops of pages...

What to do. What to do.

------
Roark66
A very nice project, but the sooner they add monetisation feature the better.
I think ability to sell ads should be closely tied with federation. One of the
main reasons why there is so much content on Youtube is the ability for
content creators to make money off their videos.

Peertube has a chance to be a serious become Youtube competitor only if there
is way to add ads to videos.

Also a way to have donations a-la patreon would be great.

~~~
zshift
This is not the comment page you’re looking for.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310)

