Anti-Piracy Informant Who Thought He Was A Paid Informant Sues Adobe For Not Paying Him
from the WE-RAT-ECONO dept
An interesting case has been brought to our attention by Eric Goldman. What happens when someone takes it upon themselves to play IP Policeman for a large corporation? The plaintiff in this case, David Heller, uncovered piracy of Adobe products in Florida (referred to in the opinion as the baseball-esque "Florida Pirates"). He brought this information to Adobe's attention. Adobe was pleased. So was Heller… at least for a little while.
The problem seems to be that Heller felt he should have been paid for his investigative efforts while Adobe felt he should have been satisfied with being a Good Citizen.
Shortly after publishing his discovery on his personal blog, Heller was contacted by Adobe's outside counsel, David Pham. A meeting between Heller and Adobe reps was set up.
The meeting included Pham, Heller, and other individuals from Adobe and Pham’s firm. Heller requested that Adobe provide him with physical protection and compensation for the additional information he was prepared to provide Adobe. An Adobe employee, Michael Draper, agreed. Heller provided the information to Adobe.Adobe took the information Heller gave them and sued the Florida Pirates. A settlement was obtained (the opinion provides no further details on this). Everyone got paid but Heller.
So, Heller sued Adobe, claiming at least $75,000 was owed him. Heller offers no supporting documentation for this dollar amount, which is apparently based on nothing more than being the minimum needed to file a suit in federal court, rather than a state court. The court takes note of this.
Here, Heller has alleged that the amount in controversy is met, but Heller does not allege the value of the underlying promise or the value of the work that Heller did for Adobe. Therefore, the Court cannot determine if federal jurisdiction is proper.That settles the point of where the case actually belongs: PROBABLY NOT HERE. Going from there, the court finds it extremely difficult to pinpoint anything about this case that might allow it to go forward -- at least in an unaltered state.
As alleged, the complaint sets out that sometime in late 2013, Heller met with Pham and Draper who promised to pay him in exchange for information about the Florida Pirates. The amount of payment was not specified at that time. The complaint does not set forth when Heller was supposed to release this information, to whom, and when Adobe should have paid him, or how much. The parties apparently did not agree on a compensation range or mechanism to determine compensation in the future. In total, Heller alleges a vague promise, and without more specificity, the Court cannot determine the scope of the duty or an assessment of the damages.The court grants Heller leave to amend this part of his complaint, but without a written agreement in hand, it's doubtful a reconstructed allegation will do much to address the lack of evidence for his claims.
Similarly granted leave to amend is Heller's equally vague claims about the $75,000 worth of anti-piracy efforts he performed for Adobe.
The complaint states that Heller performed substantial work on investigating the Florida Pirates before Adobe requested the information. Heller states that he only seeks recovery of reasonable value of the time that was spent after Adobe explicitly asked Heller to spend the time to provide further information. Dkt. No. 13 at 4. Heller’s explanation of what services he performed and their reasonable value are conclusory and vague in the complaint.The same goes for Heller's claims of intentional misrepresentation. Again, without an agreement in hand specifying what work was to be done and what amount of compensation would be due, there's nothing for Heller to work with. It's very difficult to claim a defendant misrepresented something that was never put down on paper or existed in any tangible form.
It very well could be that Adobe and its counsel maneuvered Heller into performing free anti-piracy work for it. It wouldn't be the first time a large company exploited an individual. Or it could be that Adobe felt any further investigative work would add little value and didn't allow itself to be put in the position of cutting large checks for information of limited usefulness. Either way, Heller doesn't appear to have much in his corner other than his firm belief that he was screwed.
One of the more interesting questions this lawsuit raises (but will never answer) is how often this sort of thing happens? Who reports piracy and what do they expect to get out of it? Do larger companies rely on a network of paid informants or are they more likely to accept tips without handing out anything in return?
These questions will likely remain unanswered as it appears that Heller doesn't have enough damning information to sustain a lawsuit against Adobe. An amended complaint can't fix deficiencies related to a complete lack of verifiable claims. Since this one won't be moving to the discovery stage, we'll all have to wait until the next screwed informant files suit against a major IP player.
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Filed Under: copyright, david heller, piracy
Companies: adobe
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Who Reports Piracy
http://zbrella.com/financial-risk-never-considered-software-piracy/
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BSA
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Re: BSA
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Guy sleeps with jackals & gets nothing but fleas
Perhaps Adobe will give him a free line or two.
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So, they 'give away' 'PDF' 'readers' until the whole universe is aboard, then move your $paid-for 'AcrobatX-pro' into their 'DC' cloud and lie to you about your purchased software every time you open it.
Sorry, hard to write when I'm this pissed off
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Take a guess who provides the most information to the IRS concerning tax fraud? Yep, pissed off ex wives.
Typically, the payment to the dime dropper is a percentage of the amount recovered for the piracy.
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searchable DB exists
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/
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Antipiracy is pretty much notorious for not paying people to enforce it on their behalf. This knucklehead really should have known better.
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A corporation is a "legal entity", which was incorporated ("given corporeality=life"), by law, to accumulate more money this year than it did last year, forever.
Thus, like a corporeal counterpart, it must gather more money every year, to grow ever larger, or die (dissolve).
It has no other purpose, goal, or direction, and can be used by anyone for the desired result of continuously collecting capital, for capital's sake under any guise, offering any service, product or result, forever, even though it is obviously impossible to drain a closed system, infinitely.
It may; in this endeavour, use any and all legal weapons at its disposal, and consider all "legal ramificiations" as expenditures against the curve of profit.
By law, any and all punishments will consist of holding the legally-born "corporation" entity, to blame for infractions of law, morality, society and humanity, incurred through this single-minded policy, by its human board of directors and associated members, rather than accuse the members of the board or any associated members of any wrong-doing whatsoever.
The corporation may indeed profess any morality it pleases without breaking any laws, as long as it actually pretends to make some attempt toward actually fulfilling the edicts of that chosen or stated morality, at least publicly, but is otherwise free to lie at will - because: legally created entities have no God and do not go to heaven for being good and thus need obey no law, nor consider any social more, as having any bearing upon their use as support for those who succumb to legally induced addiction to eternal wealth mongering.
And because one cannot arrest and incarcerate a legally-born entity, a fine consisting of a small percent of the typical annual profits of that offending incorporated entity, will suffice to gain the court's favour, for any crime for which such a legal entity is caught and charged - barring unexpected evidence over which the courts have no control and other such boo-boos.
When the law is written by Merchants, the governed-by-law become property, a commodity to buy and sell among the privileged Merchant Class, according to their own secret version of Human Rights.
If you're an evil genius (or organized crime member) bent on power via wealth and connection, the corporation is the way to go.
See the Panama Papers for an intro to Corporate Cool. :)
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Heck, Techdirt led the charge against SOPA, and look how that turned out.
We CAN make a difference if we stand together and don't let the identity politics crowd divide us. We can argue about our differences later.
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My bad. I missed the linked text.
Yes you are. :)
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He forgot the first rule of contracts
(Legally not always true, but practically it's nearly always true.)
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This reminds me of my Favorite Judge Judy quote
LITIGANTS!
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Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. :)
Sometimes, its all you get.
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