Collections Company Named In KlearGear Lawsuit Dismissed After Reporting $3,500 Charge Was 'Erroneous'

from the perhaps-the-first-time-a-collections-agency-has-received-positive-attention dept

A little bit of good news has made its way out of the KlearGear debacle. (Quick recap: tech tchotchke store KlearGear screws up order, customer writes negative review, KlearGear bills her $3,500 for violating an extortionate "non-disparagement clause" [which wasn't even in force when it screwed up her order] and then sends that bill to collections, thus screwing up her credit record.)

Scott Michelman of Public Citizen, which is suing KlearGear on the customer's (Jen Palmer) behalf, reports that one of the defendants (Fidelity Information Corp.) has fixed its contribution to Jen Palmer's woes.

Our suit also named the debt collector Fidelity Information Corp., who by this point owned the debt. Now Fidelity has done an independent review of the case and reported to the credit agencies that the debt was erroneous. So the Palmers have a measure of relief – the KlearGear debt is off John’s credit report, finally, after 18 months. Today the Palmers voluntarily dismissed Fidelity from the lawsuit.

That's good news for the Palmers, whose credit was damaged enough by KlearGear's fraudulent tactics that it prevented them from getting a loan to purchase a new furnace when theirs broke, as well as hampering their efforts to buy a new home.

That just leaves KlearGear, which has yet to respond to the lawsuit Public Citizen filed more than two months ago. KlearGear's social media accounts remain shuttered and silent. The company, however, remains open for business, however, with whoever's behind it presumably revising future earning estimates.

Filed Under: collections, jen palmer, public citizen, review, scott michelman
Companies: fidelity information corp, kleargear

Nearly 3 Years After Issuing C&D Notices, NSA & DHS Finally Admit Parodied Logos Don't Violate Federal Law

from the sticking-it-to-The-(lampooned)-Man dept

It took nearly three years for the NSA and the DHS to get the joke. The good news is that people like Dan McCall from LibertyManiacs.com is once again free to parody the two agencies, more than 2-1/2 years after being hit with C&Ds from both agencies for "misusing" their logos.

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are acknowledging that merchants who use images and names of the government agencies on parody merchandise are not in violation of any federal laws.

The admission settles a lawsuit Public Citizen filed against the agencies on behalf of Minnesota activist Dan McCall. Public Citizen argued that McCall has a First Amendment right to sell parody merchandise using the NSA and DHS seals.

“This is an important win,” said Paul Levy, the Public Citizen attorney representing McCall. “Citizens shouldn’t have to worry whether criticizing government agencies will get them in trouble or not. This settlement proves the First Amendment is there to protect citizens’ rights to free speech.”

The C&Ds were issued in 2011. The first one, from the NSA, arrived in March. Someone must have told the DHS that it too was being mocked because it sent its own C&D a few months later. Paul Levy of Public Citizen went to bat for Dan McCall, filing for declaratory relief because issuing C&Ds over parodies is generally considered to be a stupid idea, especially when the plaintiffs attempt to use federal law to stifle speech.

With the host of McCall's merchandise, Zazzle, being at least as complicit in this debacle, Levy's settlement takes care to address future issues with two pre-written letters that the agencies will sign and send to the company that folded oh-so-willingly three years ago. In addition to the two agencies admitting they were wrong and that the statutes quoted in the C&Ds don't actually mean what they said they mean, there are instructions for Zazzle to "review" its users' content in light of this ruling.

While full concession from the government agencies is nice, one wishes they would have been a little more willing to take a joke rather than become the joke themselves with their C&D notices. Fortunately, McCall has been cleared to return to his mockery of uptight government agencies, something he should have never been forced to give up. And Zazzle needs to do a bit more to protect users of its service. A baseless C&D is only as powerful as the host allows it to be and Zazzle played government doormat to the detriment of McCall's business. That's unacceptable.

Filed Under: dan mccall, dhs, nsa, parody, public citizen

Charles Carreon Tries To Intimidate Parodist With Bizarre List Of Demands Plus DMCA Takedown Threat

from the declaratory-judgment dept

Another day, another story about Charles Carreon digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. This time, it starts with him threatening to sue both the person who set up the parody site charles-carreon.com and Register.com, where the domain was registered. Register.com failed to live up to its own "privacy" promises regarding registration info, and exposed the name and personal info of the person who registered the site after receiving a letter from Carreon, despite direct promises to the person's lawyer. After another phone call in which the lawyer, Paul Levy, warned Register.com that it faced breach of contract charges, it made the info private again.

However, Carreon continued to threaten the blogger, leading to a rather bizarre exchange between Carreon and Levy, which relates to some history that Carreon has had with Levy's organization, Public Citizen, and a case we wrote about last year, involving a website run by Carreon and his wife. In the end, the owner of charles-carreon.com felt sufficiently threatened by Carreon's claims that s/he has decided to file for declaratory judgment to stop Carreon from suing. Part of the reason for seeking declaratory judgment was Carreon's direct threat to go after the blogger at a later date in various jurisdictions. He also threatened to use the DMCA takedown process to try to censor the site, because it uses a photo he claims copyright over. There's significant irony in the fact that Carreon is now threatening to abuse the DMCA process to stifle speech -- when what kicked this whole thing off was his DMCA-based defense of Funnyjunk and its failure to remove copyright-covered images.

Carreon's threat-letter response to Levy is something to behold, and can be viewed towards the bottom of the filing (pdf and embedded below). Here's a key part:

As far as when and where I will sue your client, be certain that it will occur if your client does not cede the domain, and advise her of ten things:

1. There there is essentially no statute of limitations on this claim, and the prima facie laches defense would not kick in for at least three years.
2. That venue in this action can be validly laid in at least three places, maybe four, if she doesn't live in Arizona, Florida, or California.
3. That I am capable of employing counsel to handle my claim against her, who will incur attorneys fees and seek recovery of the same. I filed pro se against Inman simply for sake of convenience and the need for speed, and not from a lack of resources.
4. That the law in this area cannot be predicted with certainty, will evolve substantially over the next three years, during which I will be using digital forensics to establish actual trademark damages in addition to seeking the maximum cybersquatting penalty of $100,000.
5. That a judgment that recites that the domain was obtained by fraud upon the registrar, in the form of a misrepresentation that she did not know of my trademark on the name, might well be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
6. That a judgment can be renewed indefinitely until collected, and that California judgments accrue 10% interest, which can compound once ever ten years by capitalizing the accumulated interest.
7. That you cannot guarantee that Public Citizen will provide her with free legal services on June 1, 2015, when I may very well send the process server 'round to her door.
8. That I have the known capacity to litigate appeals for years (check my Westlaw profile, and of course, the drawn out history of Penguin v. American Buddha, now in its third year, having passed through the Second Circuit and the NYCA, and still hung up in personal jurisdiction in the SDNY).
9. That the litigation, being of first impression in virtually every Circuit, grounded in a federal question, involving a registered trademark, and dispositive of many open issues in the field of Internet commerce and speech, might very well continue for a decade.
10. That Public Citizen might well be unable and/or unwilling to provide her with representation until the resolution of such an extended course of litigation.

He goes on to chide Levy and Public Citizen for "leaping to the defense of someone who is in league with a person who has harnessed the lowest impulses of puerile, vituperative Internet youth to generate a Charitable Fund that has been used to bribe two major charities into tacitly endorsing a campaign that is utterly devoid of charitable purpose, and is a mere cover for a hate campaign."

Uh, yeah. At best, this demonstrates that Carreon still has no clue about what's happening. He still thinks that there's some big campaign against him, and he's still lashing out without realizing that every time he does so he just draws more negative attention to himself. Most people tend to learn that when doing something makes the situation worse, they shouldn't keep doing it. Carreon seems unable to make that basic connection. The rather blatant threats against the blog owner -- to go after her in multiples jurisdictions and at a later date when Public Citizen might not be able to take her case -- are examples of the exact wrong way to handle something like this. It's an old-fashioned lawyer attitude: take an extreme position that you can back down from later. But in this case, it just seems to display -- quite vividly for the judge -- Carreon's true intentions: to be such a nuisance that people stop mocking him. One of these days, he may discover that each time he does that, he's only encouraging more and more ridicule.

Oh, and in the meantime, as for his attempt at getting a temporary restraining order to stop the money raised from being distributed, the judge has asked for proof that the charities have received the money -- as has been stated by IndieGoGo and Matthew Inman. If that is shown to be true, it seems likely that the judge will find no reason to consider the TRO request any more, since it's meaningless.

Filed Under: charles carreon, dmca, matthew inman, paul alan levy, public citizen, streisand effect
Companies: funnyjunk, indiegogo

Public Citizen Sues Dozier Over Failure To Serve Ronald J. Riley

from the this-just-gets-better-and-better dept

We've written a couple times about lawyer John Dozier's highly questionable case against Ronald J. Riley. As I've pointed out, even though I disagree with Riley on almost everything, and find that he regularly insults me and my family, Dozier's lawsuit seems highly suspect. Most of the "lawsuit" is just a personal attack on Riley. And while it's slightly ironic to see an attack on him that's so similar to the attacks Riley does on others, it's difficult to see what that has to do with the actual lawsuit, which simply accuses Riley of violating Dozier's trademarks by hosting some websites that make fun of Dozier (in an over-the-top manner). Dozier seems to be accusing Riley of trademark infringement because he did some search engine optimization (SEO) tricks to drive his own, anti-Dozier sites, up in Google. But SEO isn't illegal. Nor are most of the things Dozier mentions Riley has done in the lawsuit.

In fact, others have pointed out that Dozier seems to be using the lawsuit not as an actual lawsuit but as a way to defame Riley without recourse. That would explain why Dozier has been promoting the lawsuit everywhere, highlighting all of the negative statements about Riley, while failing to respond to everyone pointing out that the actual lawsuit is focused on trademark issues and seems baseless. The entire focus of the lawsuit seems to be to trash Riley over many things that have nothing to do with the questionable trademark claim. To add more fuel to the fire, it now appears that while Dozier is promoting the attack on Riley everywhere... he's failed to actual serve Riley.

Paul Alan Levy from the group Public Citizen finds this highly distasteful and abusive, to the point that Public Citizen has now filed suit against Dozier for his tactics in this case, telling us:

Although we certainly understand why Ronald Riley arouses some pretty strong feelings around the community, we see no basis for Dozier's trademark claims. It is particularly interesting that Dozier filed a lawsuit, and has extensively publicized the lawsuit, and has used it as the basis for takedown letters to Riley's ISP's, but he has never served the lawsuit on Riley. It is as if he wants there to be a lawsuit out there but does not want to get it decided. So, we have filed suit on Riley's behalf against Dozier, asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement.

Filed Under: john dozier, lawsuits, public citizen, ronald j. riley, trademark

RNC Backs Down On Threats Over T-Shirts With Its Logo

from the an-elephant-never-forgets,-but-sometimes-it-misuses-trademark-law dept

Paul Alan Levy writes in to let us know that following widespread press coverage of his challenge to the Republican National Committee to back down from suing CafePress over t-shirts that use the term "GOP" or show the RNC's elephant logo, that the RNC has in fact agreed to back down. It won't be suing CafePress or users, and will only ask that those who just show the logo or the term apply for a free license (though, it's unclear what happens if that license request is turned down). However, in following this story, Levy discovered that the RNC had also been threatening some individual sellers, especially on t-shirts that are critical of the RNC. Levy and Public Citizen have called on the RNC to withdraw the threatening letters, and warns the RNC that it may sue for declaratory relief (basically get a judge to say the t-shirts are perfectly legal) if the RNC does not withdraw the letters.

Filed Under: lawsuits, public citizen, republican national committee, trademark
Companies: cafepress

Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction

from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept

Last week, the decision by a California court to have a registrar attempt to force Wikileaks offline got plenty of attention -- not the least of which was because the injunction had no impact on the site's IP address: 88.80.13.160. Yet, much more troubling were the implications concerning why a judge in California would try to take down an entire site because of complaints from a Swiss bank about just a few documents on the site concerning a lawsuit in Switzerland. Now it appears that plenty of organizations who fight for various civil rights have shown up to file briefs against this questionable ruling.

Paul Alan Levy, of the group, Public Citizen, writes in to let us know: "We at Public Citizen are concerned with the First Amendment and the issue of prior restraint, but in attacking the orders we decided to focus on some more technical issues that neither the lawyers in the case nor, apparently, the judge had noticed. Thus, earlier today, along with the California First Amendment Coalition, we filed a brief pointing out that the case did not even qualify for federal court jurisdiction because there are subjects of foreign states on both sides of the case -- the Swiss bank on one side, and Wikileaks, many of whose members are abroad, on the other side. In addition, we point out that the main cause of action on which the bank relied, section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, applies only to unfair or unlawful "business practices" and hence does not apply to completely non-commercial web sites like Wikileaks. Our brief is discussed on the Citizen Vox blog, and in this press release.

A brief attacking the injunction on First Amendment grounds was also filed today by a coalition of media organizations. Finally, the ACLU of Northern California and EFF have also filed a brief arguing against the decision on First Amendment grounds."

Filed Under: aclu, eff, first amendment, free speech, public citizen, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, eff, public citizen