Lawyer ethics, champerty and maintenance, and I'm getting sued

[Nazrat]

Another lawyer IRL. 

Abagadro has given you the best advice that you are likely to get regarding the legal significance of an answer. 

There is a reason that many answers are simply general denials. 

However, please don't let that stop you from all of the fantastic ideas that you have for "pursuing" this case outside of the legal system. 

[taolurker]

Where is the countersuit for defamation and the part where you will agree to settle that out of court for $12,000, or double their original suit claim which names you?

Okay, no reason to be a dick. I don't see the problem with asking a court to look into the practices of a lawyer who files hundreds of suits in one day with no evidence other than a list of billing names and a plaintiff who accounts for 38% of all copyright suits filed in the United States. Especially when most of the money goes to a German investment company listed in the suit as an network technology investigation firm.

How was this me being a dick?? I was being completely helpful with actual advice.

This was serious advice for your case, maybe even something you'd hear from a real lawyer, because as long as there is no admission or evidence of wrongdoing, the suit against you can be defamation... Counter suing is a way for them to either drop their suit or realize that a suit against you wouldn't be worth it...

[Tebonas]

These things actually go to court? I always thought this was a scheme by shady law firms to get people to pay something in out-of-court settlements in the full knowledge the case would be laughed out of court by any judge.

[angry.bob]

This was serious advice for your case, maybe even something you'd hear from a real lawyer, because as long as there is no admission or evidence of wrongdoing, the suit against you can be defamation... Counter suing is a way for them to either drop their suit or realize that a suit against you wouldn't be worth it...

Okay, I apologize then. It just sounded like you were goofing on me for sounding like a jailhouse lawyer. But apparently a lot of the cases that go to court include that.

These things actually go to court? I always thought this was a scheme by shady law firms to get people to pay something in out-of-court settlements in the full knowledge the case would be laughed out of court by any judge.

Yeah, it depends on who the plaintiff is. Some never go to court, but Malibu Media does. They've been doing this a couple of years now and have been refining it with each iteration to make it harder and harder for defendants. Out of every 20 suits they file now about 15 settle, the rest may or may not go to trial. Sometimes they withdraw, and the defendand may or may not let them. As far as I am aware of they've only actually won one suit, and that was against a guy who admitted to the judge that he had actually downloaded all the stuff, panicked when he was served and formatted his drive, and then perjured earlier in the trial. The cases they do go to court for they're pretty vile about. Legal fees apparently run into the $200,000 range on both sides. There's also a lot of shifty shit like them faking computer expert testimony from people who don't exist, using other, unrelated stuff they find on people's drives to try and force them to settle, the Plaintiffs aren't actually involved at all except they get a check at the end for 10% of awards for letting this group "protect" their copyrights. http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ and http://dietrolldie.com/ are two great sites to read all about the industry. The whole industry is run by a German company called Guardalay, who sets up different shell companies like IPP, AGMC, etc. They're all the same place and the employees are all the same people, just sometimes working under different names. They seem to just keep chugging along in an area until things start going really bad where they're on the hook for a several suit's worth of attorney fees. They'll do whatever they can to wiggle out of them like contest the accuracy of opposing fee logging, offer $5000 to settle a $220,000 fee, etc. Then their plaintiff seems to make a big stink that they were never consulted with and that the attorney did everything on his own. Which seems to be true since every email and decision gets forwarded from the local attorney to a lawyer named M. Keith Lipscomb and then to Guardalay. Decisions are made there, sent back to Lipscomb, and then back to the local attorney. They'd do away with the local attorneys if they could but they need them to file. Honestly, I doubt I've even been dealing with the local guy, it's probably been someone in Germany since the hours they respond at are really, really odd at night. This all may or may not be true, but it's what 2+ years of lawyers, investigators, and interwebz detectives have pieced together. Plus, one of Guardalay's websites had their investor presentation accidentaly available for public download for a couple of hours and the whole thing can now be read and it details the whole thing.

TLDR: Yes, they go to court and try to get the maximum statutory damages and legal fees. $125,000 per infraction. 30 clips X $125,000 = $3,750,000 plus +$200,000 avg defense + $200,000 avg plaintiff cost. That's why most people settle without going to court.

How that shit doesn't violate 8th amendment is beyond me.

[Ghambit]

Did you share this pron or just DL it?  I've always thought they only nail the folk at the top of the seeder list.  You must've left the torrent running for quite some time to cum on their radar.   

Would it make the situation better if you just purchased the video and sent them the receipt?  Or, if you seeded, purchase enough vids. to cover the amount of IPs you shared to?

[angry.bob]

I just DLed it, but only a few of the files ever completed. Most of them were stuck between 95-99% complete. Eventually I just deleted them out of the queue because they were never going to complete. That's one of the things they've been accused of doing, seeding torrents that will never complete because they dick with one of the files in the folder after the torrent is made. Frankly I don't know enough about torrents to know if that's bullshit or not. It wouldn't surprise me though.

I should consider myself lucky I'm in a later round of these suits. There are internal emails and suits from the earlier batches where they tried to get some sort of contributory damages too. Like if there were 2802 people leeching a file when they scanned they would add 2802 additional infringements.

[Rendakor]

That would be trivial to do; make a torrent of the video plus several screencaps, then delete one when you begin to seed. Of course, the video will still play if they do that; getting it to seed to 99% but not play the vid is a bit trickier.

[angry.bob]

That would be trivial to do; make a torrent of the video plus several screencaps, then delete one when you begin to seed. Of course, the video will still play if they do that; getting it to seed to 99% but not play the vid is a bit trickier.

Oh, well most of the torrents they allegedly uploaded were bigger "collections". Like 20-30 of their website features at 500-900mb each. That way people were downloading quite a while before they even got to the problem of it not completing, plus then they got 20-30 infractions instead of one. Even for files in the torrent you never actually downloaded. That might be one of the things that caused them some problems when pressed to explain it. Well, that and suits against network printers in office buildings and so forth.

Also, apparently someone recently used an unclean hands affirmative defense against them because they didn't have 2257 records for a bunch of their films, effectively making them child pornography until proven otherwise. How the fuck they're not in trouble for that is also pretty frustrating.

[Sir T]

Probably because charging people for crimes in another country is a very very difficult and murky area.

[Falconeer]

I am curious, how do you all feel about this? I mean, it's obviously kind of illegal. So how can they prosecute Bob but let this one live for so long? And it's only getting more and more popular. I know people who are closed their Netflix subscriptions because of this. ANother question: how do they makie any money, considering they don't even have ads?

https://popcorntime.io/

[schild]

That's not kind of illegal, it's absolutely illegal. They're just streaming off torrents though, and likely verify the contents of the torrents before doing so. Or it's a studio trying to honeydick a million people. Who knows.

[Falconeer]

Should you use it?

Well, that’s not an easy question to answer, but we at Make Tech Easier feel that it’s our moral responsibility to let you know the risks of using the app. The first thing that you should keep in mind is that most of whatever you view through Popcorn Time is pirated. Secondly, the application uses your system to seed the movie to others once you are done watching it. So, depending upon where are you based, that could be illegal and may attract a fine (or even a jail term).

For example, in the US, the Copyrights Group monitors bittorrent swarms of selected movies, records IP addresses of the file sharers, files suit in order to obtain subpoenas to force ISPs to release the identities of the users, and then sends out letters to these users threatening to sue and offering settlements in the $1,000 to $3,000 range. On the other hand, there are countries like Canada where it’s legal to download or stream content provided that you don’t try to reproduce it.

Although developers of Popcorn Time say that there is nothing illegal about the application as it just acts like a search engine to find content that is already available publicly, experts believe that the biggest legal problem is that the app encourages users to stream pirated content, making it legally liable for distributing unlicensed content (see Inducement rule).

 

[Paelos]

Yep, illegal.

[angry.bob]

Probably because charging people for crimes in another country is a very very difficult and murky area.

The couple that own the porn production company live and film in Malibu. In fact they film a lot of stuff in their multi-million dollar house. Which is also illegal to do in Malibu. If you want to see what owning one of the smallest and least successful porn sites will get you, watch some X-Art video. They're pretty boring but they have a really great house.

Also, a general update on the lawsuit thing. The lawyer made a big deal about the potential judgement and I told him that there was no way he would get anything close to 3.5 million dollars even if the only answer I made to the suite was box feces and used condoms. I countered with an offer of $400 for the filing fee and another $20 for a one month subscription to their website. I also re-enforced that this whole thing was a waste of time on his part because he was going to get nothing from me and he'd be better off just withdrawing the suite. In the end we came to a lump sum settlement of $6600 dollars due in 30 days. How amazing that the settlement was just a little bit more than hiring a lawyer, but with none of the risk. Anyway, a condition of the settlement was that if it took longer than 30 days to pay I would have to pay interest and be put into collection for it. I told him fine, whatever because I wasn't going to pay him that much on that little notice.

So the 30 days comes around and I still hadn't payed. shortly after that I got a thing from the court that a couple days after the due date for the settlement he asked for and was granted a default judgment against me. Which I thought was pretty fucked up since part of the agreement was that he was supposed to withdraw the suite. Fucking lawyers.

I think I'm going to go to school this coming fall and get a JD for a hobby. The whole thing seems pretty tedious but simple when you learn the process, and it appears to be the most awesome way of trolling people in real life. Plus, there's also probably something really awesome that pays a ton of money for an RN with a JD to do. I'd love to work as a bullshit detector in medical suites/cases. THen I could write a book based on my awesome adventures and eventually get it made into a movie or TV series.

[Abagadro]

 

[Sophismata]

Holy shit dude get some help. If you treat their kind of legal bullshit seriously by actually replying to it you are digging your own grave. It'll be hard to climb out.

[Tebonas]

I don't now the legal situation in the US, but over here that was about the dumbest thing one could do in that situation. Never sign anything admitting any kind of guilt (we even have modified cease-and-desist declarations you can download over here because you never ever sign the original one where you admit guilt or make concessions), but when you do, at least keep to the terms of the settlement since now they have the chance to easily screw you over in court once you violate the settlement (due to you likely already having admitted guilt by signing).

[Rendakor]

Stop giving him real advice and let him go full-Nerf, dammit!

[Paelos]

Don't get in the way of Bob fulfilling his dream of becoming a legal beagle

[CmdrSlack]

This sums up my opinion as well.

[angry.bob]

I don't now the legal situation in the US, but over here that was about the dumbest thing one could do in that situation. Never sign anything admitting any kind of guilt (we even have modified cease-and-desist declarations you can download over here because you never ever sign the original one where you admit guilt or make concessions), but when you do, at least keep to the terms of the settlement since now they have the chance to easily screw you over in court once you violate the settlement (due to you likely already having admitted guilt by signing).

Part of my demands for settlement agreement was a section saying I admitted no guilt, was only agreeing to the settlement to make it go away for the Christmas/New Year holidays, and that the IP address they recorded may or may not have been assigned to me, may or may not have been in use by me, and may or may not have been spoofed.

Frankly he/they had a lot more to lose signing that than I did. It's a pretty clear admission that (in my opinion) they filed suite against me recklessly in violation of Rule 11 by not doing any investigation at all past my IP adress being logged by their "proprietary" software. Software that's been shown repeatedly to be shit-tier and unreliable. There was also a lot of other stuff involved like me wanting the "tech experts" from Germany, Colorado, and the people from Malibu to come here for statements. And that they should all bring records of how, when, and how much they all get paid from the settlements because there's some really interesting things going on there.

Also, fuck your country Germany in it's legal system for letting these greasy ass disco weasels exist. And yes, I've seen pictures of the guys in Germany running this thing and they're greasy and shady as fuck. Like Romanian Mafia shady.

[angry.bob]

This sums up my opinion as well.

I know two people who will be portrayed as joyless curmudgeons in the glorious hit that is the franchise of me. Lawyering for nearly all purposes is expensive real life min-maxing stuff with D&D rulebooks. Plus I met a lot of law students at school, it was not impressive.

[Tebonas]

Also, fuck Germany in it's legal system for letting these greasy ass disco weasels exist. And yes, I've seen pictures of the guys in Germany running this thing and they're greasy and shady as fuck. Like Romanian Mafia shady.

I don't doubt they are. They have a long tradition of fucking people over, the first I remember was a lawyer from my beloved northern neighbor country that specialized in letting a "girl" answer to classifieds in Computer magazines and when somebody sent "her" a list of games the lawyer sent them a cease-and-desist letter or sued them. That was back in the early 90s. So yes, those lawyers had a long time to perfect their tactics, and they haven't gotten more ethical I presume.

I really think we will have more frivolous lawsuits in the future thanks to their new "Leistungsschutzrecht" law they passed recently, for example. Basically a company can sue anyone if he uses parts of their articles on his website. Recently a court in Berlin convited a company for having the  screenshot of an article of another company on one of their webservers (not even openly, you only found it if you knew the adress). Want to know why they had that screenshot? To show that the other company had used one of their photos in that article without permission, essentially stealing from them and being able to sue them on top of it.

Oh, brave new internet world.

[CmdrSlack]

This sums up my opinion as well.

I know two people who will be portrayed as joyless curmudgeons in the glorious hit that is the franchise of me. Lawyering for nearly all purposes is expensive real life min-maxing stuff with D&D rulebooks. Plus I met a lot of law students at school, it was not impressive.

More like keeping my mouth shut (can't speak for Ab) because opining at this point puts me into a grey area that verges into black letter ethical rules territory. Also, don't go to law school. It's for rubes and asshats at this point.

[TheWalrus]

So Bob's in, then? 

[Signe]

Here's my unlegal advice, from a place of personal XP:  Hang up on everyone, Don't sign anything, don't admit anything including who you are, and don't give anyone any money. 

[NiX]

Here's my unlegal advice, from a place of personal XP:  Hang up on everyone, Don't sign anything, don't admit anything including who you are, and don't give anyone any money. 

This explains why you haven't returned my call about borrowing $20.

[schild]

HEY EVERYBODY NIX IS ALIVE

(the wiki is not)

[Sophismata]

There's a wiki?

[taolurker]

So, are you forwarding them a countersuit for defamation? <totally serious

If you have $6000 that you're willing to give away... Can you spare a dime, buddy? <also totally serious

Still never would've done "settlement" where you give anyone any money, even with protecting yourself (somewhat) from admission of guilt.

Don't know why you thought a lawyer you'd give $5000 to wouldn't have been the better option, you might've owned yourself a porn company and website.

[CmdrSlack]

Generally, filing a lawsuit is not defamatory (nor is sending someone a letter accusing them of doing something wrong). There'd be other kinds of liability (if the lawsuit was false/baseless), but not for defamation. Also, truth is an absolute defense to defamation; I'm pretty sure that Bob admitted that he did download some pr0n.

[Sophismata]

Also, truth is an absolute defense to defamation; I'm pretty sure that Bob admitted that he did download some pr0n.

Reminds me of Oscar Wilde oddly enough.

[Signe]

Here's my unlegal advice, from a place of personal XP:  Hang up on everyone, Don't sign anything, don't admit anything including who you are, and don't give anyone any money. 

This explains why you haven't returned my call about borrowing $20.

She doesn't live here anymore.

[Phildo]

Here's my unlegal advice, from a place of personal XP:  Hang up on everyone, Don't sign anything, don't admit anything including who you are, and don't give anyone any money. 

This explains why you haven't returned my call about borrowing $20.

She doesn't live here anymore.

[tazelbain]

Signe uses "You're breaking up. We must have a bad connection." in face to face conversations.