Chickenshit American Bar Association Scared Out Of Publishing Report Calling Trump A Libel Bully

from the chilling-effects dept

We've talked a lot about Donald Trump and his ridiculous views on defamation and the First Amendment -- including his penchant for threatening defamation lawsuits against basically everyone who says something he dislikes. He rarely follows through, though he certainly does sue sometimes.

In fact, someone has set up Trump-clock.com which lists out every known legal threat against the press or critics since his Presidential campaign began (ignoring the long list that predates the campaign). It also has a clock showing how long it's been since Trump's last threat.

So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that a group of media lawyers at the American Bar Association commissioned a report on Trump's litigation history, and the report (correctly) concluded that Donald Trump is a "libel bully" making a bunch of bogus threats and with a history of filing bogus defamation lawsuits in court (something he's outright bragged about). This shouldn't be controversial. Trump is, clearly, a libel bully, and even he has more or less admitted that with his comments on why he sued author Tim O'Brien.

But, apparently, the American Bar Association was too chickenshit and refused to publish the report, out of a fear that (wait for it...) Trump would sue them.

Alarmed by Donald J. Trump’s record of filing lawsuits to punish and silence his critics, a committee of media lawyers at the American Bar Association commissioned a report on Mr. Trump’s litigation history. The report concluded that Mr. Trump was a “libel bully” who had filed many meritless suits attacking his opponents and had never won in court.

But the bar association refused to publish the report, citing “the risk of the A.B.A. being sued by Mr. Trump.”

David J. Bodney, a former chairman of the media-law committee, said he was baffled by the bar association’s interference in the committee’s journal.

“It is more than a little ironic,” he said, “that a publication dedicated to the exploration of First Amendment issues is subjected to censorship when it seeks to publish an article about threats to free speech.”

With the ABA chilled into suppressing a report about Donald Trump chilling free speech, the Media Law Resource Center picked up the fumbled ball and released the report on its own. The opening executive summary is pretty clear:

Donald J. Trump is a libel bully. Like most bullies, he's also a loser, to borrow from Trump's vocabulary.

Trump and his companies have been involved in a mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years and sent countless threatening cease-and-desist letters to journalists and critics.

But the GOP presidential nominee and his companies have never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court.

The full article then goes on to examine in more detail seven speech-related cases, and uses the paper to argue in favor of stronger anti-SLAPP laws to prevent such speech chilling.

... this examination of Trump's libel losses also provides a powerful illustration of why more states need to enact anti-SLAPP laws to discourage libel bullies like Trump from filing frivolous lawsuits to chill speech about matters of public concern and run up legal tabs for journalists and critics.

The ABA's refusal to publish the report is really ridiculous, but only serves to highlight the issue here. When an organization that absolutely must know better is still too afraid to publish a report like this, it highlights just how successful Trump can be in stifling speech with just his threats. And, yes, this report eventually was released, thanks to some First Amendment lawyers who knew how ridiculous this was, but we don't know how many others have been scared away into silence.

Filed Under: chilling effects, defamation, donald trump, free speech, libel, libel bully
Companies: aba

Standards Body Whines That People Who Want Free Access To The Law Probably Also Want 'Free Sex'

from the bad-ansi,-bad dept

You would think that "the law" is obviously part of the public domain. It seems particularly crazy to think that any part of the law itself might be covered by copyright, or (worse) locked up behind some sort of paywall where you cannot read it. Carl Malamud has spent many years working to make sure the law is freely accessible... and he's been sued a bunch of times and is still in the middle of many lawsuits, including one from the State of Georgia for publishing its official annotated code (the state claims the annotations are covered by copyright).

But there's another area that he's fought over for many years: the idea that standards that are "incorporated by reference" into the law should also be public. The issue is that many lawmakers, when creating regulations will often cite private industry "standards" as part of the regulations. So, things like building codes may cite standards for, say, sheet metal and air conditioning that were put together by the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA), and say that buildings need to follow SMACNA's standards. And those standards may be great -- but if you can't actually read the standards, how can you obey the law. At one point SMACNA went after Malamud for publishing its standards. And while they eventually backed down, others are still in court against Malamud -- including the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), whose case against Malamud is set to go to trial in the fall.

In the midst of all of this, various standards making bodies, along with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), have been working over time to get the American Bar Association to adopt a proposal that limits publication of standards that are incorporated by reference. ANSI has pushed for a solution it prefers called "reasonable availability," in which the standard-makers decide by themselves how best to make the standards "available." ANSI, for example, hosts a bunch of incorporated by reference standards on its website -- but the only way to read them is to install a special kind of DRM (Windows and Mac only) that makes the documents purely read only. You are not allowed to save them. You are not allowed to download them permanently. You are not allowed to print them. And it's not all standards that are incorporated by reference. Why do they do this? Well, most of them sell their standards to professionals who need to buy them, and they don't want to give up on that revenue source (especially once those standards are incorporated by reference because at that point they become mandatory).

Either way, there was an attempt to push through a bad proposal at the ABA, getting it to take an official stance on standards that were incorporated by reference, but the first attempt was denied when various parts of the ABA pointed out that only a small group had worked on the issue. A larger task force was formed, but oddly, that task force was amazingly one-sided, including a number of people connected to ANSI or its supporters (including its former chair, Oliver Smoot, and its General Counsel, Patricia Griffin). Malamud asked multiple sections of the ABA if he could be a part of the working group and was denied. Not surprisingly, the final recommendation, which the ABA is about to consider next month, does not recognize that standards incorporated by reference should be widely and freely available, since they are the law. Instead, it takes a much more restrictive approach, whereby such standards would need to be made available (an improvement from the current situation), but that availability can still be in a very restrictive and locked down manner (such as with DRM and limitations).

The fact that it takes a small step in the right direction already has ANSI upset, and it's whining to its members asking them to tell the ABA not to support this proposal, dropping all sorts of FUD about how it will kill off various standards bodies, and complaining that the process by which this proposal was created was "closed" (leaving aside that ANSI and its friends made up a decent portion of the folks on the working group). Malamud has now sent a massive book detailing all of the problems with the proposal and noting that supporters of it are trying to rush it through, potentially looking to influence some of the lawsuits that he's currently involved in (such as the one about to go to trial). Some task force members raised the concern that it seems weird for the ABA to stake out a position on an issue that is about to be resolved by the courts. Either way, somewhat amazingly, both Malamud and ANSI agree that they don't want the ABA to accept the current proposal -- but for wildly different reasons.

Malamud's packet is impressive in the details and evidence that it presents. But his major complaint is that the ABA is making a huge mistake in trying to "balance" the interests of standards bodies that get money from locked up standards and the public. There's no need for balance here. General common sense says the public should win here and the law itself should be public and freely accessible. But that's not how the task force looked at this:

Think for a moment about the interests that are being “reconciled.” On the one side are the proprietary interests of a few nonprofit organizations, organizations that eagerly seek to have some of their standards incorporated into law, and also profit greatly from the sale of numerous products, such as the sale of non-mandatory standards, training, and certification. Nonprofit organizations such as ANSI have done quite well under the current system, paying million-dollar salaries to their executives and receiving numerous government subsidies, plus the all-important market positioning they get from being an official provider of an important segment of federal law. This is an enviable market position for a nonprofit, and they have profited handsomely from that position.

What is being balanced against those “proprietary interests” are the rights of the American people to read and speak the law. Joe S. Bhatia, the president of ANSI, put it well when he stated clearly that “a standard that has been incorporated by reference does have the force of law, and it should be available.” These standards are integral to the regulations, no different than any other edict of government. Public safety laws are too important to be carved out as a special category of edict of government, a category subject to arbitrary limitations on use.

The way that “balance” was struck is what disturbs those of us who wished to participate. The task force is asking the ABA House of Delegates to endorse severe restrictions on how citizens can access regulations, in the form of “read-only” documents on the Internet. The term “readonly” is a term that doesn’t make any sense to those of us who work on the Internet. What are being proposed are a series of licensing restrictions created by a click-through terms of use agreement, coupled with technical restrictions enforced by “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) technical measures. But the law is not a Hollywood movie and it is not a Tom Clancy novel. The law is special in our democracy, or in any society that observes the rule of law. The law belongs to the people and edicts of government are not subject to copyright under long-standing doctrines of common law and the clear and unambiguous policy of the U.S. Copyright Office.

And really, the principle here is pretty clear and shouldn't involve that much debate. If it's included as part of the law, it needs to be widely and freely available.

For those of us in the American Bar Association, the concept of “read only” flies directly against the work practices of members of the bar who must use the law to do their jobs. Lawyers do not simply read the law, they cite the law and copy it, they publish extracts in documents such as briefs, treatises, and newsletters. If we entertain the notion that a category of our law requires a license in order to repeat those laws—and that is precisely the position today of ANSI and its fellow SDOs—the bar will be faced with a situation where permission to use the law may be granted only after the extraction of unreasonable rents and a request for permission, which may be arbitrarily granted or refused. This is not a theoretical situation; it is the current stance of the organizations that drafted this resolution and they are proposing that Congress codify those restrictions.

Most disturbing in the resolution that the ABA is being asked to endorse is the idea that the right to speak the law—to post it on the Internet in a transformative fashion that allows others to use it more effectively—belongs to a single private party, and that private party may require a license before others are permitted to work with the material. Just imagine if John B. West had needed a license before including court opinions in his National Reporter System, an innovation that became central to the practice of law in the United States. Allowing only a single party, or those to whom they arbitrarily grant a license, to control access to primary legal materials deliberately retards innovation in order to maximize revenue through a monopoly over crucial components of federal public safety law. Putting the brakes on innovation for presentation of the law not only hurts democracy, it hurts the legal profession, depriving lawyers of better tools and services.

The packet that Malamud put together also includes some of the emails that were sent around as part of the working group's deliberations, including one rather incredible one in which ANSI board member Dan Bart of Valley View Corporation, completely mocks the idea that standards that are part of the law should be available for free -- saying that "some people are still clamoring for free beer and free sex too." Apparently, this individual feels everyone should pay for sex. Even ignoring what one hopes is an inadvertent slip up in logical arguments, the email completely ignores the issue. People aren't just asking for random stuff for free -- they're asking for the law to be freely available to the public. If you don't want that to happen, don't get your standard included in the law.

If you go through the emails included in the packet there are even more details, including the co-chair of the ABA's SciTech Technical Standardization Committee stepping down for being effectively ignored during the process of deciding on the resolution and not allowed to join the working group.

The whole thing is a mess. It's not even clear why the ABA should be considering this point at all. And, if it must consider it, why would it not support the most obvious conclusion: if it's a part of the law, it's part of the law and needs to be widely and freely available, not locked down by DRM.

Filed Under: carl malamud, dan bart, incorporated by reference, joe bhatia, law, public access, standards
Companies: aba, ansi

Former NSA Lawyer Thinks American Bar Association Should Be Equally Outraged By Chinese Hacking Of Attorney-Client Communications

from the because-all-hacking-is-equal,-whether-it's-your-own-govt-or-not dept

Stewart Baker is still defending the NSA, but his latest piece advancing the agency's cause deploys a particularly disingenuous argument. He feels the American Bar Association acted hypocritically when it sent a letter to the NSA asking it to respect attorney-client privilege.

Baker begins his questionable attack by presenting actual hypocrisy in defense of his forthcoming argument.

When the Justice Department’s indicted six People’s Liberation Army hackers, it directly accused the PLA of stealing “privileged attorney-client communications related to Solar World’s ongoing trade litigation with China.”

This is not a surprise to knowledgeable observers. Chinese attacks on large U.S. law firms have been widely acknowledged, and last summer the American Bar Association condemned “unauthorized, illegal intrusions into the computer systems and networks utilized by lawyers and law firms.” But the ABA flinched from actually mentioning China or the PLA in the resolution…

When the DOJ made a lot of ridiculous noise with its indictment, it only managed to further highlight the double standard the US deploys in its foreign relations. The NSA's hacking of Huawei's servers went unmentioned, as well as its numerous interception programs (both for hardware and communications) currently in place worldwide.

Baker believes the ABA's silence on China's hacking efforts is hypocritical in light of its letter to the NSA on the subject of attorney-client privilege. This letter was the result of another leak that showed the agency had offered a solid "whatever" when an Australian intelligence agency informed the NSA that it was listening in on privileged communications between Indonesian clients and American lawyers. Baker pretends to cede some ground on the ABA's complaint before arriving at his supposedly damning "point."

Fair enough. But it’s now been three days since we saw a much more direct accusation that the PLA was spying on privileged attorney-client communications in the US.

Who’s taking bets on whether the American Bar Association will be as quick to call out the Chinese government as it was to call out its own?

This is Baker's knockout punch, apparently, one that only manages to come within several inches of its target.

Of what possible use would it be for the ABA to call out the Chinese army? Even if US attorney communications were being intercepted, there's very little the Association could hope to accomplish with a strongly-worded letter. As the NSA's defenders often point out, foreigners are not provided with the same protections as natural citizens. The same undoubtedly goes double for China, which isn't exactly extending a great deal of rights to its own citizens.

Sure, the ABA could make a lot of noise about Chinese spying, but limiting its complaints to an agency of its own government makes more sense. Baker seems to want Americans to be more offended by something everyone expects the Chinese government to be doing, rather than by their own government doing things they never would have expected.

Baker also seems to be childish enough to believe that pointing out the wrongdoing of others somehow excuses the wrongdoing of the agency he's defending. This is particularly galling considering how often the NSA reminds world citizens that they simply aren't protected by US law and that their communications and data are fair game. The ABA addressed the real issue -- spying on communications historically awarded confidentiality by US statutes -- and the real problem in its letter. Its silence on the issue of Chinese spying isn't hypocrisy. It's reality. By petitioning its own government, it was able to have its complaint addressed. Complaining about China would be nothing more than angrily yelling into the void. The DOJ doesn't mind being greeted with little more than faint echoes, but those on the outside of government agencies aren't going to be nearly as reassured by the sound of their own reflected voices.

Filed Under: attorney-client, china, hacking, lawyers, nsa, stewart baker, surveillance
Companies: aba, american bar association

NSA About Attorney-Client Privilege Concerns: We'll Probably Grab Your Communications But We'll Try Not To 'Listen In'

from the sorry,-but-it's-not-like-everything's-going-to-collect-itself dept

A couple of weeks back we covered the American Bar Association asking for assurance from the NSA that attorney-client communications, even those involving foreign clients, would remain out of the agency's reach. This was prompted by a leak that showed the NSA had given an Australian intelligence agency the go-ahead to intercept communications between a US law firm and its Indonesian clients.

For whatever it's worth, the NSA has responded and is promising to respect the boundaries of not actively collect and access privileged attorney-client communications.

The outgoing head of the National Security Agency has a message to the nation’s lawyers: Your clients’ secrets are in safe hands.

NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander assured the American Bar Association in a letter that the U.S has policy and legal safeguards to prevent the mishandling of confidential attorney information collected during surveillance missions.

That's the summary version of Alexander's response letter. The letter itself goes into a bit more depth on minimization procedures, but Alexander also takes time to throw out a few statements and asides that are somewhat questionable, when not being entirely self-serving.

Alexander jabs the entities reporting on leaks not once, but twice, and that's just on the first page.

At a time when certain aspects of the reporting and commentary about the National Security Agency (NSA) shed more heat than light on important matters of security, liberty, and privacy worthy of meaningful public discussion, we also appreciate the thoughtful and constructive approach of your inquiry…

Although it is not possible to address press reports about any specific alleged intelligence activities--and thus to point out the absence of critical factual information in any such reports--we appreciate the opportunity to clarify our current policies and practices…

"They're completely wrong and I'd love to tell you exactly how wrong, but national security and all that. Just trust me."

Here's Alexander in the middle of a long-delayed rebuttal to the attorney-client surveillance story, making a statement that plays to the very edges of the "questionable" box.

Moreover, NSA cannot and does not ask its foreign partners to conduct any intelligence activity that it would be prohibited from conducting itself in accordance with U.S. law…

The agency doesn't "ask," but it's not as if it's in any hurry to say "no" when foreign agencies offer access to their surveillance treasure troves. Our own domestic telcos have been enthusiastic in their compliance with intelligence and investigative agencies, often offering services above and beyond what's actually been "asked" for. Likewise, the cozy "five eyes" relationship has resulted in a great deal of mutually beneficial data sharing, none of which any agency had to specifically "ask" for. Alexander's statement is not unlike a corrupt politician noting he never asked for a bribe but wasn't just going to leave the suddenly unattended suitcase full of money laying where anyone else could pick it up.

Alexander spends the bulk of the letter detailing the various minimization procedures the NSA must adhere to, with the most relevant procedure being handed down by the FISA court itself.

As soon as it becomes apparent that a communication is between a person who is known to be under a criminal indictment in the United States and an attorney who represents that individual in the matter under indictment (or someone acting on behalf of the attorney), monitoring of that communication will cease and the communication will be identified as an attorney-client communication in a log maintained for that purpose. The relevant portion of the communication containing that conversation will be segregated and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice will be notified so that appropriate procedures may be established to protect such communications from review or use in any criminal prosecution, while preserving foreign intelligence information contained therein.

Of course, the problem here is that anything not related to someone "under a criminal indictment" is still fair game. And the rest of the letter, while reassuring, also notes that it's inevitable that attorney-client communications will be swept up, simply because the agency runs a variety of bulk collection programs. So, the response is more of a "we'll do our best to minimize" rather than a promise it won't intercept attorney-client communications.

That's the problem with bulk, untargeted surveillance. All anyone has left is the hope that the agency rigorously adheres to its minimization policies, and there's plenty of evidence that suggest the NSA has overstepped its boundaries in the past. In the end, the ABA is right back where it started -- operating under an "uncertain privilege" which, as it pointed out in its earlier letter (quoting the Supreme Court), "is little better than no privilege at all."

Filed Under: attorney client privilege, law firms, minimization, nsa, surveillance
Companies: aba, american bar association

Best Response To A Copyright Threat Ever? Lawyers Explain Why ABA Is Full Of S**t In Claiming Copyright On Routing Numbers

from the enjoy dept

In our time we've seen some pretty epic responses to bogus legal threats, but it appears we have a new contender for the throne. As a whole bunch of lawyers suddenly emailed me this morning, it appears there's been a followup to our earlier story on the American Bankers Association claiming that bank routing numbers are covered by copyright, and threatening a website that had created a useful way to look up those routing numbers. The website, run by Greg Thatcher, was doing a public service, getting such info from the Federal Reserve's website, and making it much easier for people to find the numbers.

Thatcher is now being represented, pro bono, by Andrew Delaney of Martin & Associates, and his response letter to Nigel Howard, the lawyer from Covington & Burling LLP (the ABA's lawyer who sent the threat letter) is one of the most beautiful responses to a bogus threat letter you'll ever see. It gets bonus points for its usage of footnotes (which is to say, do not skip the footnotes). You really need to read the whole thing. I'd quote parts of the legal analysis, but you have to see the whole thing in context with the footnotes (linked above or embedded below). I will, however, quote the closing paragraph, to give you a sense of the tone of the letter:

If you do feel it's necessary to sue our client, we are open Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and we have lollipops for people who serve process. So if you do file a complaint and send someone over with a summons, please have them wear something with a bit of purple... we all like purple.

Oh, and then there's this:

© Andrew B. Delaney and Jorge V. Pivar-Federici. All rights reserved. But wait . . . fair use allowed and encouraged. Actually, go 'head and publish the whole thing as is. We don't care.

Nicely done. Nicely done. I may have to send them a bag of lollipops.

Filed Under: andrew delaney, copyright, facts, fair use, federal reserve, greg thatcher, nigel howard, numbers, public domain, routing numbers
Companies: aba, american bankers association

Is It Ethical For The American Bar Association To Claim Copyright On Its Ethics Opinions?

from the encouraging-unethical-lawyers dept

It sometimes amazes me how some copyright holders exert copyright when it makes absolutely no sense at all. There are plenty of times when -- even if something is covered by copyright -- it would be silly to use it. And, yet, sometimes, it still happens. Take, for example, this story sent over by Aaron DeOliveira. A lawyer, Ernie Svenson, posted a PDF file containing an American Bar Association "ethics opinion" on his blog... and the ABA threatened him with a copyright infringement claim. Remember, this is an ethics opinion from the ABA -- basically telling lawyers how they should act. You would think that they would want such things spread as far and wide as possible. I mean, that's what you would think if you were sensible. But... this is the ABA, and they just think "copyright infringement." Svenson is bewildered by the situation, noting that he would have thought the ABA would also want more lawyers aware of its ethical opinions.

Another lawyer, Carolyn Elefant, who has apparently complained about this stance by the ABA for a while, has set up an online petition asking the ABA to stop copyrighting its ethics opinions, and has also written a fantastic blog post about why it's so stupid for the ABA to do this. She notes that even if you think the RIAA's copyright tactics are ridiculous, at least it can legitimately claim that it thinks it's protecting its constituents. But, you can't make that argument here:

... whether you agree with the RIAA's tactics or not, at least its copyright enforcement activity is intended to protect RIAA's constituents; artists, musicians and record companies who lose money when their music is misappropriated. By contrast, the ABA’s policy of copyrighting ethics opinions -- the source of authority that govern lawyers’ conduct and inform many state bodies regulating lawyers — and locking them behind a paywall hurts lawyers and the public.

She goes on to point out that while she's argued that locking up ethics opinions harms lawyers, she's now realizing that it also harms the public -- for no good reason.

But now I realize that the problem caused by the ABA’s policy goes way beyond lawyers and affects the public.  Members of the public may not realize that lawyers can’t just outsource work to non-firm members without supervision (Ethics Opinion 08-451) or are limited in their ability to change fees in the course of representation  ABA Formal Opinion 11-458 (still online free!). Deprived of access to ethics opinions, clients may tolerate lawyers’ unethical conduct, ultimately prejudicing their case.

I really wonder what the ABA's defense for copyrighting ethics policies are, and why it would go after lawyers who share them. This really feels like a "because we can" situation, no matter how ridiculously counterproductive it is. Unfortunately, when it comes to intellectual property, there are way too many lawyers who seem to think "we can" automatically means "we should."

I wonder if someone could get the ABA to issue an "ethics opinion" on locking up crucial information on lawyer ethics from other lawyers and the public. It seems to me that it would be quite easy to make the argument that it's incredibly unethical.

Filed Under: copyright, ethics, ethics opinions
Companies: aba

Internal Fight Within The ABA Over Position On SOPA

from the legal-food-fight dept

We've noted in the past that there's been a bit of a debate within the American Bar Association concerning the position it should take on SOPA/PROTECT-IP. It seems that the fight is heating up, and different kinds of lawyers are fighting about it. The Trademark Legislation Committee agreed to and adopted (by a pretty wide margin) a resolution saying that SOPA needed significant changes to prevent abuse. A key change? That the private right of action should be filed "under penalty of perjury," rather than the toothless sanctions for those who file bogus takedowns. This seems like a reasonable suggestion to prevent abuse, and the Committee agreed.

But... then the copyright lawyers flipped out. Despite this and other suggestions already being agreed to, the copyright folks proposed a bunch of changes -- including deleting the "penalty of perjury" inclusion. Another change? The trademark lawyers had agreed that the private right of action definition of "dedicated to theft of US property" should be much more limited, adding significant qualifiers to what is covered to deal with the vagueness of the definition. The copyright lawyers want that deleted as well.

Further on that point, the letter the trademark lawyers prepared highlighted serious concerns about how vague the definition of "dedicated to theft of US property" is, and pointed out how it has significant inconsistencies that "need to be addressed." The copyright lawyers? Apparently they don't want to address the inconsistencies and want the whole complaint about the language dumped. Specifically, here was the recommendation that had been approved:

As worded, the definition of web sites that are �Dedicated to Theft of U.S. Property,� which forms the basis of liability pursuant to this bill, is vague and requires some clarification. Specifically, § 103(a)(1)(B)(i) provides three different ways in which a U.S. directed site could have exposure to action under this bill: 1) if it is �primarily designed or operated for the purpose of . . . offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates� a violation of 17 U.S.C. § § 501 or 1201, or counterfeiting under 15 U.S.C. § 1116(d) or 18 U.S.C. § 2320; 2) if it �has only limited purpose or use other than . . . offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates� the same violations; or 3) if it �is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates� the same violations.

Option three in this series does not require a showing that the marketing efforts have a primary purpose of, or have a limited purpose other than, infringing these intellectual property rights. We believe this inconsistency needs to be addressed to reduce possibility of abuse that could result in the effective shut down (by disabling a revenue stream) of an otherwise legitimate web site that offered a single product later determined to be a counterfeit.

In order to effectuate this purpose, option three in the series identified above should be modified to reflect a narrow interpretation of the definition of �Dedicated to Theft of U.S. Property.�

The copyright lawyers? Want that whole section left out. Basically, it looks like anything that highlights the serious problems of SOPA should be taken out, according to the copyright lawyers. The stuff left in is minor and inconsequential.

Filed Under: copyright, lawyers, perjury, pipa, private right of action, protect ip, sopa
Companies: aba