Court Rejects Liberty Media's Attempt To Say NY Defendant Can Be Sued In California

from the jurisdictional-issues dept

We've been quite critical of some of porn company Liberty Media's copyright trolling efforts, in which the company is using what we believe to be questionable legal theories to pressure people into paying up. We still find it interesting that the lawyer for Liberty Media, Marc Randazza, is also the main lawyer who has been putting so much pressure on Righthaven in many of its cases. Marc continues to see the two situations as quite different, but to us they still seem to be the same basic situation: using broad copyright claims, with sometimes questionable evidence, against individuals -- for whom the threat of statutory damages could be crippling. In some ways, Liberty Media's efforts could be seen as worse than Righthaven's, because as a gay porn producer, anyone they threaten who is not publicly "out," may feel a much, much stronger threat, as being named in such a lawsuit may effectively out what they considered to be private information about their sexual interests.

Either way, it appears that Randazza and Liberty have been getting enough info on IP addresses to file lawsuits against named defendants rather than just John Does, but one of the big issues in these lawsuits has been the jurisdictional question. Suing someone far away from their home makes a lawsuit even more challenging, and potentially makes them more willing to just settle up, even if they're innocent. Many previous court rulings have suggested that, for activities online, plaintiffs can't just assume that their home turf is the proper jurisdiction, because they have to show actual harm in that jurisdiction. In fact, we were a bit surprised and disappointed earlier this year, when a ruling in NY seemed to go against that precedent and suggest that a copyright holder could sue anyone on its home turf. Of course, that ruling only applies to NY.

In one of Liberty Media's filings -- which was done on Liberty's home field in California -- a defendant asked for dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, which the court has granted, dismissing the case. Liberty argued that because it was in California, and the defendant knew that the company was in California, any file sharing was enough to show harm in California. The court didn't buy it. In part, some of the problems were specific. Liberty pointed to the terms and conditions on its website (of which the defendant had been a member), but the court points out that nothing in this case seemed to involve the website. The content was claimed to have come from a DVD, rather than the website. The court also notes that there doesn't appear to be any conduct by the defendant expressly aimed at California, and points out that "mere web presence is insufficient to establish personal jurisdiction."

Thus the case was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. Of course, the court left room to amend the complaint, and Randazza has indicated that he intends to do just that, with enough info to establish the personal jurisdiction in California.

Filed Under: copyright, jurisdiction, marc randazza
Companies: corbin fisher, liberty media

US Porn Company Wins Default Judgment Against File Sharer In Canada; Guy Told To Pay $64k

from the suing-fans-is-not-a-business-model dept

Suing fans is not a business model. And yet, so many companies still do it. We've written a few times about porn producer Corbin Fisher/Liberty Media, who has become a very aggressive supporter of mass lawsuits against fans who it accuses of sharing its works. This is a dumb business strategy. The company, obviously, thinks it will reduce infringement, but I can't fathom how it thinks this will get anyone to ever want to purchase from the company again. Perhaps it thinks it can stay in business through legal fees collected. For example, it sued some guy in Canada for sharing two of its movies, and since he didn't come to the US (though he had sent a letter) to defend himself, the court granted a default ruling in favor of the company, though (thankfully) it disagreed with the company's ridiculous assertion that merely using BitTorrent proves willful infringement. There are some who believe that a default judgment (when the defendant doesn't show up), means that the plaintiff always wins. It doesn't need to work that way, and we have seen courts actually rule against plaintiffs even under such circumstances though it's incredibly rare. Still, the end result is that the court has ordered the guy to pay nearly $64,000.

Filed Under: canada, copyright, default judgment, movies
Companies: corbin fisher, liberty media

Porn Company Says You Owe $25k If Content In Your Account Ends Up Pirated... Even If You Prove You Were Hacked [Updated]

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Liberty Media/Corbin Fisher continues its somewhat aggressive attempts to blame everyone but itself for failing to put in place a better business model. Remember, we just noted the bizarre claim that it made in the mass infringement lawsuit it filed that anyone who did not secure their internet routers to block all infringing material was negligent. In the comments to that post, someone pointed out that the company also had recently changed its terms of service to say that if anyone with an account had content from that account end up pirated, the user owed $25,000 even if they could prove that the account was hacked (see update below):

6.6
You agree to take all possible measures to keep your username and password secure.

6.7
You agree that if your password security is breached, you are solely responsible for any damage or liability occurring by this breach.

6.8
You agree that, even if you can prove hacking by clear and convincing evidence, you are still liable for any 3rd party use of your username and password.

6.9
You specifically agree that if your account is used to download any of Our content and that content is later found on a one-click hosting site, a file locker site, a torrent site, a tube site, or any other site, service or server or any other medium used for sharing content, that You will pay liquidated damages of $25,000 to Us."

Whether or not you can give up such a right via a terms of service, I'm not sure, but from a business standpoint, this seems like a really, really dumb move on the part of Liberty Media/Corbin Fisher. As this information gets out, who's actually going to sign up for an account? A move like this puts tremendous liability on customers, and makes a clear case for interested people not to become customers in the first place. Who wants to take on the possibility that, even if you're hacked and had nothing to do with it, you might owe $25,000? The entire strategy here seems brain-dead from a business standpoint.

Update: It appears that after the original site posted this information, the company did, in fact, change their terms of service, adding a line noting that you would not be liable for the $25k if you could prove that you were hacked.... There was a comment made on the site that explains:

I brought your issues to to our general counsel. After reviewing your concerns about the terms and conditions on Corbin Fisher we adjusted the language to be more relaxed. We do not want to punish our users for our own security issues or system breaches. We are specifically targeting users who share their accounts with infringers or are direct copyright infringers who lie and use the "my account was hacked" excuse.

Filed Under: copyright, hacked
Companies: corbin fisher, liberty media

Unicorns And Leprechauns Aren't Real... But Trolls Are (And They Have Lawyers)

from the reality-bites dept

A whole bunch of you have been sending in the silly story of Liberty Media's latest antics. As you may know, the porn producer has been crazy aggressive in going after file sharers, even going beyond the standard mass pre-settlement threat campaign, with a ridiculous amnesty offer to get people to pay $1,000 even if they haven't been accused of file sharing. Someone in Sweden, a guy named Ryan, apparently decided to taunt Liberty Media, sending an email to them "confessing" to regularly sharing Liberty Media works... along with mentioning the unicorns and leprechauns advising him. The whole thing was clearly a joke, but Liberty Media's parent company, Corbin Fisher, is apparently without much of a sense of humor and issued a subpoena to try to get the guy's info, claiming that they're taking his "confession" seriously. The guy says he's never shared or downloaded any Liberty Media stuff and isn't in the US anyway. Of course, Liberty is able to do this as a part of the discovery process, but do they really think this is going to go anywhere? I think, in the future, there should be some measure of how much of a sense of humor a company has, and people should learn to only deal with companies who can take a joke.

Filed Under: copyright, humor, jokes, trolls
Companies: corbin fisher, liberty media