UNC Gave Racists $2.5 Million To Settle A Lawsuit That Hadn't Been Filed Yet, And The Racists Are Abusing The DMCA To Hide The Details
from the buckle-in dept
Last Wednesday, right before Thanksgiving, some very odd news broke about the University of North Carolina giving the Sons of Confederate Veterans $2.5 million and a bullshit confederate statue that had been torn down by protesters in 2018. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have a history of promoting racist ideas and movements, with a special focus on promoting Confederate monuments and symbols -- symbols of support for slavery from a bunch of literal traitors -- as well as promoting historical revisionism about the US Civil War. Contrary to the belief of some, those monuments -- including the one at UNC -- were put up many years after the Civil War, and were frequently put in place as a show of racist attitudes and beliefs, not as a historical remembrance. There's a reason so many places are choosing to take those down.
The NY Times story linked above had some oddities in it. It claims that UNC's Board of Governors agreed to hand the "Silent Sam" statue over to the group and give them $2.5 million, perhaps to build a museum to house the statue, to settle a lawsuit. But what lawsuit? And what possible standing could the Sons of Confederate Veterans have to sue over a statue it did not own and had no direct relationship with? There was one line that really stood out to me in the original story:
R. Kevin Stone, the commander of the Confederate group, said the settlement was fair. He said that his group was in possession of the statue at an “undisclosed location.”
He did not know specifically when his group had sued the university but said that negotiations had been going on for months.
The leader of the group doesn't know when they sued the University? Huh? It turns out that the same sentence caught the attention of tenacious lawyer, and producer of epic (and often impossible to follow) Twitter threads, Greg Doucette, who decided to investigate. Doucette discovered that the lawsuit was filed... Wednesday. Not some Wednesday in the past, but last Wednesday. The same day that the lawsuit was settled. And, even more insane? The UNC Board of Governors met an hour before they were served with the lawsuit to approve the settlement. That's... not how this is supposed to work. And then, UNC immediately filed an answer to the lawsuit, and then a settlement "consent judgment" was entered, and signed off on by the judge -- all on the day before Thanksgiving, all within a few hours. Oh, and as Doucette points out, the judge who signed off on the settlement, Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, happens to be a UNC and UNC Law alum.
Doucette even points out that the University sent out a press release about the settlement before the lawsuit even existed. Which is... very, very odd.
Still, that's not usual Techdirt fare. What makes it worthy of Techdirt is what happened this week. Doucette has continued his digging (and continued to lengthen his Twitter thread). He went to the courthouse to scan all the court documents related to the lawsuit. He posted all of the documents to a Dropbox folder. Except, if you go to that link as I type this you see this:
What happened? The Sons of Confederate Veterans sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice to Dropbox, claiming that it violated their copyright. Their copyright on public court filings. I am assuming that Dropbox will get this sorted out fairly quickly, but all of this may make you wonder just why would such an organization file a completely bogus takedown notice to hide documents in their own damn lawsuit?
Looks like the Grand Wizard of the Sons of Confederate Veterans *really* did not like me sharing his victory statement
They filed a DMCA complaint against me w/ Dropbox 🤣
Any copyright attorneys willing to share with me how I can resolve this? Maybe a lawsuit against the SCV? pic.twitter.com/dENqCmPZMW
— T. Greg "#SilentSham" Doucette (@greg_doucette) December 2, 2019
It seems what really, really pissed off the Sons of the Confederate Veterans was that Doucette had posted the "victory statement" which literally has the leader of this group giving away the entire game plan, including flat out admitting that they had no case at all, and everyone he spoke to agreed that any case would get thrown out of court:
As to option one, having the memorial restored to McCorkle Place at UNC, we have been trying for over a year to find a way to bring suit against UNC, the UNC Board of Trustees, and the UNC Board of Governors, and anyone personally, like Carol Folt, who could be held responsible. As we have mentioned dozens of times, despite consulting every known legal source, including those parties who have had success with SCV suits in Virginia and Tennessee, we could not get past the issue in North Carolina law of legal standing in the Silent Sam case so to bring a suit. Even if we had filed suit, our complaint would have been challenged and dismissed immediately without result. After extensive consultation (with judges, retired judges, etc.), we were 100% certain that this would be the outcome.
It also admits that the group and UNC had spent months negotiating this "deal" in secret, fearing that any media leak would torpedo the deal.
Prior to this point, we could not mention ANY of this to you at meetings or over the Tar Heel email list because all negotiations were required to be 100% confidential. For their part, knowledge by the media, the leftists, UNC faculty, and even other members of the Board not privy to the negotiations that their leadership was working with the SCV would have torpedoed the whole thing. On our part, with a minority of disgruntled and impatient members in our ranks, and those who have admitted that they gladly share information with our enemies, there was a very distinct risk that loose and uninformed talk would have ended the whole thing, and that nothing would be accomplished. A breach of this confidentiality would have killed the whole deal. This is why we could not share extensive details until now.
The statement also notes that it will reveal "more details than I will be giving the media and others," and boy does it ever. He more or less gloats over the fact that the University is literally paying them for this.
What we have accomplished is something that I never dreamed we could accomplish in a thousand years and all at the expense of the University itself. This is a major strategic victory, and I look forward to continuing to move the Division forward.
There's a lot more in the ongoing thread (as there always in Doucette's rather epic threads), but for the purposes of Techdirt, we'd just like to call out yet another example of how the DMCA is abused for censorship once again -- and how that sometimes backfires and helps draw a lot more attention to whatever it is that people are trying to hide (there's a name for that somewhere...).
What's truly hilarious about this whole thing is that, according to that "victory statement," part of the reason why UNC was so eager to do this deal was to... avoid bad publicity. That also explains why all of this went down the day before Thanksgiving. That strategy doesn't seem to be working out quite as intended, though.
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Filed Under: censorship, confederate statues, copyright, dmca, north carolina, racists, silent sam, unc board of governors
Companies: sons of confederate veterans, unc
Reader Comments
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"Grand Wizard" is all you need to know you're dealing with a bunch of assclowns.
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Looks like they step in something other than tar.
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A corrupt judge helping a corrupt board to help a racist group.
Yep, North Carolina.
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This also shows why cloud storage isn't really that great of an idea.
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Racists gonna race
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Half wit
It looks like SCV was smart enough to realize that their scam needed to avoid publicity in order for it to work, but apparently they weren't smart enough to take their own advice.
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Re:
It is.
However, you need to consider 1. the purpose and 2. the policy of the specific service you use. In this case, you have to consider that you want to use it for broadcasting, so you must consider a service that resists illegitimate DMCA requests. Or at least won't hold a "strike" against you after the DMCA claims proves to be unfounded.
As a personal storage backup, cloud services are a good option, but even then it should not be your primary storage.
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Re:
unless you have local backups, that is.
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SPLC, a group that needs to clean up its own house first.
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REALLY?
"and everyone he spoke to agreed that any case would get thrown out of court: "
OK, who believes this?
With a couple of persons in the right place, not accounting to law, can get anything done. Right or Wrong.
And a University that has an EXTRA 2.5 million, According to the Other universities, is Very good..at taking peoples money.
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Re: Re:
So Greg should have shared the file... how?
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Re: Re: Re:
He should have used .org.
ie TPB
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I can show far worse examples of judges who favor their former schools or schools at which they teach. Precedent seems to indicate that this is acceptable as there have been many rulings that deal with it.
This will never change. The system won't allow it to.
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Better a single settlement than a precedent that opens the floodgates, I'd imagine.
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Censorship is bad
Unless Google does it. Then it's moderation.
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Re:
Having a judge sign off on embezzling money from taxpayers and students is still embezzlement and theft by deception and fraud.
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Re: Censorship is bad
Good thing that neither of those concepts is relevant here, then.
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So now i wonder who has standing to sue UNC for this bullshit.
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Re: REALLY?
He meant that, under the law, the case would get thrown out of court.
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Re: Why you still here?
Do you ever tire of being a shithouse liar bro?
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Re: Censorship is bad
If it’s under color of law (that is, not removing it has legal consequences), then it’s censorship, and it’s (usually) wrong). When Google moderates stuff, it’s not using the law to enforce its decisions; it’s using the fact that it owns and directly controls the services and servers to enforce its decisions.
Demanding something be removed via the DMCA for non-copyright purposes (even if there is copyright infringement going on) is censorship. Removing the content yourself (rather than demanding someone else do so under legal pressure) of your own volition (rather than to comply with the law) because you find it objectionable is not generally “bad censorship” but moderation.
Also, when has Google removed something itself for wholly improper reasons?
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Re: Re: Re:
Well, there are several possibilities. In addition to Dropbox, there’s Google Drive, The Pirate Bay, Document Cloud, and others. Using multiple cloud services would make it harder for them to remove all of them.
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Re:
A good question. Perhaps black students at UNC? IDK.
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Re:
when they gonna realize it's a race they cannot win?
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Re: Censorship is bad
Is this the best you can do? It's just so underwhelming and impotent.
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Re: Re: Re:
The Free Law Project and/or archive.org, possibly via RECAP.
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Re:
No, settling is what draws the vultures. Now that UNC has shown they'll capitulate to baseless threats, every vulture in the state is going to jump on them.
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Re:
Given UNC is a state university, the state should have standing. So the state's Attorney General. I wonder if he's a member of the SCV...
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Re: Re:
They don't need to win permanently, they just want to keep winning while they're alive, following generations be damned.
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Dropbox link already dead. Anybody manage to get the docs?
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Re: Censorship is bad
So you survived Shaken Baby Syndrome. Good for you!
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I somewhat doubt the link existed to begin with.
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Re:
Someone deep in one of the Twitter threads has posted OCR'd versions of the scanned PDF's to widely relied upon pirate site Scribd. Hopefully someone will mirror them onto something more user friendly and less parasitic.
https://www.scribd.com/document/437950085/SCV-20191127-1CivilActionCoverSheet-OCR
https:/ /www.scribd.com/document/437950087/SCV-20191127-2CivilSummons-OCR
https://www.scribd.com/document/43 7950109/SCV-20191127-3VerifiedComplaint-OCR
https://www.scribd.com/document/437950110/SCV-20191127-4 AcceptanceofService-OCR
https://www.scribd.com/document/437950115/SCV-20191127-5Answer-OCR
https://w ww.scribd.com/document/437950118/SCV-20191127-6ConsentJudgment-OCR
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'Look over there, a distraction!'
There's always one...
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That's not shooting your foot, that's blowing it off
What's truly hilarious about this whole thing is that, according to that "victory statement," part of the reason why UNC was so eager to do this deal was to... avoid bad publicity. That also explains why all of this went down the day before Thanksgiving. That strategy doesn't seem to be working out quite as intended, though.
Because taking a bunch of losers to court, losers that have admitted that they would have been laughed out of court because they had no gorram case, would have provided worse publicity than rolling over like gutless worms and giving them $2.5 million?
The admin that were involved are either so pathetically easy to pressure that they need to be removed before they hand over the entire freakin' campus due to someone threatening to tell their mom on them, or are sympathetic to the losers and decided this would be a great way to help them out. In either case public mockery and removal from their positions strikes me as entirely appropriate.
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Re:
The losers in question flat out admitted that they had no case, so barring a judge that recently took a headfirst trip down several flights of stairs the only 'precedent' that would have been set would be the losers getting laughed out of court.
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Re: Re: REALLY?
pssst..
Wow you can understand,
But do you understand my comment?
Humans are strange things..
we demand everyone be this, and that and the other..
But we act as if those were never there.
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Of course they'd use the DMCA. Copyright law is viable for everything from shutting down criticism to unclogging the drain. /s
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Re: Sad low energy trolling
Wow bro. You can’t even muster a whatabouthillary?
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The most revisionist history ever created is The Bible--good luck trying to get its believers to change their minds.
Just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean you have the right to tell them what heritage they're allowed celebrate.
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Payoff might be justified to avoid political row
Both sides knew the SCV lawsuit would lose, but the trustees might, for rational reasons, have decided to make it go away. UNC is dependent on State appropriations, and while the Governor is a Democrat, the House of Representatives is controlled by conservative Republicans whose voting base take monument disputes seriously.
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Re: Payoff might be justified to avoid political row
Though $2.5 million for an SCV exhibition site sounds rather steep. A more reasonable exhibition site might be at a Civil War cemetery or battlefield.
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Stinks to high heaven
So, to avoid some negative press (or whatever, embarassment?) that may have come out during a law suit which was certain to be dismissed UNC hands over a statue and 2.5 million to bunch of white supremecists (aka people who are proud to be the decendents of people who fought to keep dark skinned slaves enslaved).
I seriously do not understand politics in North Carolina.
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University of Nazi Confederates
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Re:
You're not wrong, but a diamond in a dungheap is still a diamond.
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The counter-PR just writes itself...
'After fighting a bunch of racist losers in court who wanted us to give them $2.5 million our funding, as decided by the state house of representatives, was mysteriously and purely by coincidence notably reduced. Make of that what you will.'
That might have flown locally, but if they were smart(clearly not the case) any attempt to 'punish' them for standing up to a pack of losers likely would have turned the politicians in question into national laughingstocks.
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""Grand Wizard" is all you need to know you're dealing with a bunch of assclowns."
You've got something against tabletop rpg gamers?
Oh, wait, you meant the Klan...
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And because they did so, they have now unleashed the kraken who says fuck a lot (credit @Popehat). Marc Randazza has been retained by Greg Douchette in this matter and has already sent them a response demanding that the 2.5mil they received be used as a scholarship fund for minorities and the removal of thr DMCA complaint.
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Re: Re:
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