18 ms·

Copyright Troll May Have Set an Expensive Precedent for Copyright Trolls

434 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

fastball 7y ago
This is great for things with clear value, such as a photograph you are already licensing for a specific fee. However, I can't imagine this is very effective for anything less clear-cut, as it seems hard to guess what the settlement will be.
- taneq 7y ago
  If you don't have any idea how much something's worth, how can you sue for damages for someone copying it?
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Aren't there some situations where you can ask the court to determine damages? Pretty sure I've seen this before, though I'm not sure in what context (it may not have been copyright).
    - rusk 7y ago
      I’ve heard of cases where the Jury is asked to decide ... without any parameters!
      - lolc 7y ago
        What do you mean without any parameters? They had the whole legal argument in which both sides will have tried to convince them of what the right amount is.
        rusk 7y ago
        It's quite a number of years ago now, but a friend of mine did jury duty on a civil case and they were just told to come up with a figure, so they all just picked a number a random and split the difference between the highest and the lowest. The rationale being that this would be a starting point and there would be further litigation to determine what was "fair". I think that was Ireland in the 80s or 90s though, I'd "imagine" things are approached with a bit more rigor these days ...
    - connicpu 7y ago
      It's basically legal malpractice to not ask for whatever extra awards the judge finds appropriate in the case after asking for the damages you're mainly after
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Plaintiffs don't really have any trouble coming up with valuations when they initiate the lawsuit. Their challenge is to make it to the end of the litigation process without having too many digits lopped off their initial number. This case is about the defendant benefiting from unambiguous public information about the market value of the works, since the law provides them with some protection when they make a reasonable settlement offer but are forced to continue litigating instead.
    - swish_bob 7y ago
      It's not really about the offer being made on the basis of public information though, is it. If the eventual settlement is less than the original offer, then the plaintiff is liable for costs that occurred after the point the offer was made. As far as copyright law goes, it seems almost sensible ...
      - JoshuaDavid 7y ago
        Does this mean that in the case that you're sued by a copyright troll you can offer to settle for $1 and then if they take it to court and get nothing at all (because they don't actually have a solid case) they're now responsible for all your legal fees as well? Because if so that seems like a good way to deal with copyright trolls, since it makes the risks a bit more symmetric.
        fastball 7y ago
        I think this only applies if the plaintiff is awarded damages.
      - wtallis 7y ago
        > It's not really about the offer being made on the basis of public information though, is it. The fact that it's based on public information puts the valuation's reasonableness on a very strong foundation, and allows the defendant to be far more confident that their offer will actually exceed a fully-litigated award.
      - 7y ago
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Properly registered copyrighted works invoke statutory damages which are designated by legislation. Several hundred thousand dollars per infringement. Legally speaking this is no different than you selling copied DVDs on the street corner and Sony catching wind and coming after you for damages. They're not going to ask for $75 (five times a $15 disc), they're going to ask for statutory damages for each infringement you've made (potentially per song for a CD, etc). This guy has just made a business out of monetizing that for clients who can't be bothered to do it for themselves. A true entrepreneur in the spirit of HN, find a niche that your clients don't want to do for themselves or are not capable of doing for themselves, and monetize it. This is much less cut-and-dry than patent trolling, where the real problem is that the patents should never have been issued in the first place. He's representing real clients whose works have really been infringed, and by statute they are entitled to large damages. If you want to fix that, go after the concept of statutory copyright damages. I love Democracy Now but if they want to use this guy's photos they should approach him for licensing, not just use them and cry about the damages when he or his lawyer comes after them. We do not need to set up a two-track system where Disney gets $300k per infringement and a small photographer gets $500 per infringement.
- netcan 7y ago
  I assume that the risk math will differ by case, but... The way "trolling" generally works is by negotiating settlements while brandishing a credible threat of legal expenses, not judgements awarded by courts. What this discourages is threatening a $100k lawsuit to win a $3,000 in damages. I guess once and offer (you could offer $10k, to be safe) the troll risks paying a lot of money if it goes to court and it turns out that he shot a legal mouse with a nuclear torpedo.
basicplus2 7y ago
For all his behaviour Richard Liebowitz should be struck off
- pferde 7y ago
  Yes, with a baseball bat.
- dannyw 7y ago
  How about disbarment?
  - piker 7y ago
    That's what "struck off" generally means in jurisdictions that have lawyers who are not barristers (i.e., members of the bar), such as the UK.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      This is super confusing because in the US lawyers are members of the bar, but are not refered to as barristers. As an American I've only ever heard the term "disbarment"; never "struck off".
cft 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz : "In April 2019 Leibowitz missed a court date in a copyright lawsuit. He told the court that he missed it due to the death of his grandfather. The court asked him to prove it, suspecting he was in fact missing hearings to run up legal costs for his opponent. As of November he has failed to do so, and is being fined $500 a day and threatened with incarceration.[6]"
- scandinavian 7y ago
  From reading the source court document, he is to appear in court tomorrow, otherwise: > Failure to appear as directed will subject Mr. Liebowitz to arrest by the United States Marshals Service without further notice.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    The judge has lost all respect for him, it's incredible. The order for him to appear has a footnote "if you're already required to appear somewhere else, you better attach the proof".
- bskari 7y ago
  This Twitter thread goes into some detail about how much he dodged the court. It looks pretty bad. https://twitter.com/obarcala/status/1192193882844532736 https://twitter.com/obarcala/status/1192193882844532736
  - mcv 7y ago
    That's got to be the most blatant case of contempt I've ever seen. Impressive how he continues to try to bluff himself out of this despite the judge constantly calling his bluff.
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      People are really impressed with the judge but I am not so Pmuch. He should be in jail already. Our justice system quickly finds excuses to incarcerate or worse, for much less, for "lower classes" of people.
vkizl 7y ago
Liebowitz you say... why would someone with that last name lie to hurt people?
raverbashing 7y ago
I'm sure the photographer will love his name being associated to a lawyer showing such degree of professionalism. Would make a lot of places think twice about touching any of your works. Not saying Democracy now is in the right, but for 5x the original licensing fee? Take the money and case closed.
- laurent123456 7y ago
  It seems the photographer is as responsible as the lawyer in this case. I'd expect he needs to give his approvement to reject the initial offer. Also "Mango sought bankruptcy in 2004, and records from his bankruptcy filing show that his liabilities greatly exceeded his listed assets", so sounds like he's trying to make some easy extra cash, that turns out not be so easy.
  - owenmarshall 7y ago
    This lawyer is about to go in to court today to explain why he lied to a federal judge no less than four times, and was also accused by another of his clients of forging their signature and submitting it to the court. Who knows what he’s told or has not told this client.
    - MertsA 7y ago
      I think you're underselling it a bit. He's going before a federal judge, not even for the lie itself but for failure to provide documentation to prove that lie. He's facing increasingly severe monetary sanctions and possibly imprisonment tomorrow even if he actually could provide a death certificate that substantiated his earlier claims. We haven't seen the full extent of the blowback from that lie yet even if he comes clean today there's still more to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU Failure to appear will immediately subject him to arrest by the US Marshals Service regardless of any other delay shenanigans by Liebowitz.
      - owenmarshall 7y ago
JimWestergren 7y ago
Related from July 10 2019: $100,000 sanction against Richard Liebowitz and his firm https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad-4c72-93a2-0b425bdcf17e https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad...
netcan 7y ago
This is probably meta in the uninteresting sense but, thoughts: 1) many trolls who focus purely on shakedown settlement letters, Liebowitz runs straight to court to leverage the power of an expensive court case to push for insane settlements. - - Worrying. Why isn't there a bugfix coming? If the court system is so obviously exploitable... I guess shutting down a troll business model is better than nothing, but.. This just basically shooos the problem away from courts and back into the expensive exchange of threatening letters... which is also and abuse of the legal system. 2) IP laws are important, and growing in importance as "intangibles" becomes a major class of assets, by way of corporate books. Just IP related lawyering (contracts, advice, courts, judges...) is a massive industry, nevermind the stuff it lawyers about. Precedent is not really supposed to be the tool for this job, is it? Laws need to be written to be enforceable logically. At the least, they need to avoid creating obvious messes like patent trolling. I'd argue the sheer level of lawyering (measured in €) a type of asset attracts can be a sign it's been poorly defined.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  Precedent is a way of writing laws. Basically legislation is usually not so detailed, nor even necessarily capable of being so detailed, to handle every singe case. Precedent makes judges decisions predictable, since judges are bound to continue doing what they've already done until the legislators (or a superior court) changes that. The alternative is the French system, where each case is taken separately and you can't really be certain how the decisions are going to be made (except that they informally apply a precedent like system). I don't really know if the terminology is right here - basically, the judge has said "there's already a fix in the system for this woe, maybe we should use it..." I'm not really sure what the alternative dispute resolution process your talking about is. Are you suggesting a mandatory licensing fee system like radio stations use?
  - derekp7 7y ago
    If the court determines that someone is improperly using them for a shakedown, that person goes to jail. Best fix I can think of.
inglor 7y ago
Can someone please explain to me (as a non-american) why the losing party does not have to pay legal fees? In Israel if someone sues you and they lose they have to pay (up to a reasonable amount) for your lawyer and legal representation. The fact you can "shake down" someone through suing them in the US is appalling and I am sure there is a good reason for it but I have not been able to understand it.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Well, one drawback to the losing party paying legal fees is that it disincentivizes "small" parties from suing larger ones, since they are more likely to lose and less likely to be able to pay.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    Germany has fixed attorney fees to solve this problem. There are other measures to reduce this problem. I don't understand them fully, so I won't be more specific. But it kind of works out in the end. You can't just hire an oversized army of lawyers and dump the bill entirely on the losing party.
    - mr__y 7y ago
      It seems that Poland has a similar solution* - there are fixed rates and a losing party covers the fees up to that fixed rates. That is anyone is free to hire a lawyer at any rate but the loosing party will have to cover the costs but not more that those fixed rates, so effectively those rates are an upper treshold for repaying legal costs. Additionally a judge may decide that a loosing party does not have to cover those costs - depending on their financial situation (this is a bit more complicated, but since I am not a lawyer I don't know the details here) *I'm quite sure that this solution in Polish legal system was modelled after the German law.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    As was said, the countries where the losing party pays usually have tables where you can find the legal fees and the maximum amounts that the losing party has to potentially pay.
Roark66 7y ago
A very nice project, but the sooner they add monetisation feature the better. I think ability to sell ads should be closely tied with federation. One of the main reasons why there is so much content on Youtube is the ability for content creators to make money off their videos. Peertube has a chance to be a serious become Youtube competitor only if there is way to add ads to videos. Also a way to have donations a-la patreon would be great.
- zshift 7y ago
  This is not the comment page you’re looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310
fortran77 7y ago
Democracy Now! _did_ use someone's photo without paying for it. What this man does which is nasty is instead of simply pointing it out and asking for their fee for licensing, he goes directly to court and asks for much more.
- cool_dude85 7y ago
  I think that's what's being missed in this. DN ripped this guy off and published his photo without paying him for it. When he does the work of tracking them down and figuring it out, AND after he went to a lawyer to go after DN, they offered him their standard fee plus a couple hundred bucks for his trouble. And when he's not satisfied with that, he's the bad guy. This apparently happens enough for there to be a cottage industry of lawyers going after big publishers who are ripping off small-time photographers. It seems like this whole thing needs serious reform, but probably not by going after people trying to get paid from a big org using their work.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    I don't think you have the story straight. DN did infringe, and when called on it, they immediately pulled the photo and offered 5 times the photographer's highest recorded fee charged per photo. The photographer felt $1100 was insufficient, and took DN to court. (Apparently, based on the discovery requests, with an intent to rack up significant legal fees for DN.) So yeah, I'd say the photographer is the bad guy. Or has bad lawyers. Maybe $1000 for a $200 photo isn't enough, but it's probably the sort of thing that could be negotiated reasonably rather than heading straight to court.
    - joemi 7y ago
      I don't think anyone's debating that the lawyer is a bad person. But why not take a big company to task? This is a serious ongoing problem for photographers these days. I highly doubt this is the first time this has happened to this photographer. And I doubt it's the first time DN has used someone's photo without permission.
mdturnerphys 7y ago
Mr. Liewbowitz is currently under a contempt order and being fined $500/day until he provides proof that his grandfather died back on April 12th, which was his excuse for missing a court appearance that day [0]. [0] https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-suspicious-dead-grandfather/ https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-suspicious-d...
- tarr11 7y ago
  Wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow ... “Further, Mr. Liebowitz is hereby ORDERED to appear before this Court in person on November 13, 2019 at 10 a.m., and there and then SHOW CAUSE why he should not be incarcerated until such time as he complies with the above-described orders (and, if applicable, the instant order).”
  - mark-r 7y ago
    There's nothing like a little jail time to motivate a person.
  - ksherlock 7y ago
    http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/cathy-seibel/richard-liebowitz-folo-128543 http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/cathy-seibel/richard-liebowi... ``In an attempt to counter Seibel’s devastating dissection, Richard Greenberg, one of Liebowitz’s lawyers, said his client was “not playing with a full deck,” adding that he shared the judge’s “mystification” as to Liebowitz’s behavior.''
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Good on her (judge). Let this lawyer be on the record as having lied before the court, or be fined until he learns his lesson.
- daniel-thompson 7y ago
  I assume that since the lawyer has history in front of this judge, and the judge knows he's a lying dirtbag, this is the judge's chance to get his willful, continuing deceit on record and possibly get him on the road to disbarment.
briandear 7y ago
I used to be a news photographer and had this happen to me before. My “deal” with the publication: pay me my normal rate for the photo and hire me for a future assignment. Turned out I had a pretty good relationship when them after that. A win-win for everyone. But just going for the jugular is counter productive: you lose out on a future customer by attempting to destroy them in court over a $220 photo.
hinkley 7y ago
I'm sure you've heard the term 'hanging judge' in movies. The last time frivolous lawsuits were getting a lot of journalistic attention I would joke to my friends that if I ever became a judge I'd cite people for contempt of court for bringing in bullshit cases. I'd easily set a record for number of citations.
- jayess 7y ago
  Define "bullshit cases."
  - hinkley 7y ago
    If only there were some context I could provide that could illustrate my point. Like previous sentences, threads, or links at tops of pages... What to do. What to do.

434 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

This is great for things with clear value, such as a photograph you are already licensing for a specific fee. However, I can't imagine this is very effective for anything less clear-cut, as it seems hard to guess what the settlement will be.

taneq 7y ago
If you don't have any idea how much something's worth, how can you sue for damages for someone copying it?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Aren't there some situations where you can ask the court to determine damages? Pretty sure I've seen this before, though I'm not sure in what context (it may not have been copyright).
  - rusk 7y ago
    I’ve heard of cases where the Jury is asked to decide ... without any parameters!
    - lolc 7y ago
      What do you mean without any parameters? They had the whole legal argument in which both sides will have tried to convince them of what the right amount is.
      - rusk 7y ago
        It's quite a number of years ago now, but a friend of mine did jury duty on a civil case and they were just told to come up with a figure, so they all just picked a number a random and split the difference between the highest and the lowest. The rationale being that this would be a starting point and there would be further litigation to determine what was "fair". I think that was Ireland in the 80s or 90s though, I'd "imagine" things are approached with a bit more rigor these days ...
  - connicpu 7y ago
    It's basically legal malpractice to not ask for whatever extra awards the judge finds appropriate in the case after asking for the damages you're mainly after
- wtallis 7y ago
  Plaintiffs don't really have any trouble coming up with valuations when they initiate the lawsuit. Their challenge is to make it to the end of the litigation process without having too many digits lopped off their initial number. This case is about the defendant benefiting from unambiguous public information about the market value of the works, since the law provides them with some protection when they make a reasonable settlement offer but are forced to continue litigating instead.
  - swish_bob 7y ago
    It's not really about the offer being made on the basis of public information though, is it. If the eventual settlement is less than the original offer, then the plaintiff is liable for costs that occurred after the point the offer was made. As far as copyright law goes, it seems almost sensible ...
    - JoshuaDavid 7y ago
      Does this mean that in the case that you're sued by a copyright troll you can offer to settle for $1 and then if they take it to court and get nothing at all (because they don't actually have a solid case) they're now responsible for all your legal fees as well? Because if so that seems like a good way to deal with copyright trolls, since it makes the risks a bit more symmetric.
      - fastball 7y ago
        I think this only applies if the plaintiff is awarded damages.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      > It's not really about the offer being made on the basis of public information though, is it. The fact that it's based on public information puts the valuation's reasonableness on a very strong foundation, and allows the defendant to be far more confident that their offer will actually exceed a fully-litigated award.
    - 7y ago
- paulmd 7y ago
  Properly registered copyrighted works invoke statutory damages which are designated by legislation. Several hundred thousand dollars per infringement. Legally speaking this is no different than you selling copied DVDs on the street corner and Sony catching wind and coming after you for damages. They're not going to ask for $75 (five times a $15 disc), they're going to ask for statutory damages for each infringement you've made (potentially per song for a CD, etc). This guy has just made a business out of monetizing that for clients who can't be bothered to do it for themselves. A true entrepreneur in the spirit of HN, find a niche that your clients don't want to do for themselves or are not capable of doing for themselves, and monetize it. This is much less cut-and-dry than patent trolling, where the real problem is that the patents should never have been issued in the first place. He's representing real clients whose works have really been infringed, and by statute they are entitled to large damages. If you want to fix that, go after the concept of statutory copyright damages. I love Democracy Now but if they want to use this guy's photos they should approach him for licensing, not just use them and cry about the damages when he or his lawyer comes after them. We do not need to set up a two-track system where Disney gets $300k per infringement and a small photographer gets $500 per infringement.
netcan 7y ago
I assume that the risk math will differ by case, but... The way "trolling" generally works is by negotiating settlements while brandishing a credible threat of legal expenses, not judgements awarded by courts. What this discourages is threatening a $100k lawsuit to win a $3,000 in damages. I guess once and offer (you could offer $10k, to be safe) the troll risks paying a lot of money if it goes to court and it turns out that he shot a legal mouse with a nuclear torpedo.

basicplus2 7y ago

For all his behaviour Richard Liebowitz should be struck off

pferde 7y ago
Yes, with a baseball bat.
dannyw 7y ago
How about disbarment?
- piker 7y ago
  That's what "struck off" generally means in jurisdictions that have lawyers who are not barristers (i.e., members of the bar), such as the UK.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    This is super confusing because in the US lawyers are members of the bar, but are not refered to as barristers. As an American I've only ever heard the term "disbarment"; never "struck off".

cft 7y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Liebowitz : "In April 2019 Leibowitz missed a court date in a copyright lawsuit. He told the court that he missed it due to the death of his grandfather. The court asked him to prove it, suspecting he was in fact missing hearings to run up legal costs for his opponent. As of November he has failed to do so, and is being fined $500 a day and threatened with incarceration.[6]"

scandinavian 7y ago
From reading the source court document, he is to appear in court tomorrow, otherwise: > Failure to appear as directed will subject Mr. Liebowitz to arrest by the United States Marshals Service without further notice.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  The judge has lost all respect for him, it's incredible. The order for him to appear has a footnote "if you're already required to appear somewhere else, you better attach the proof".
bskari 7y ago
This Twitter thread goes into some detail about how much he dodged the court. It looks pretty bad. https://twitter.com/obarcala/status/1192193882844532736 https://twitter.com/obarcala/status/1192193882844532736
- mcv 7y ago
  That's got to be the most blatant case of contempt I've ever seen. Impressive how he continues to try to bluff himself out of this despite the judge constantly calling his bluff.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    People are really impressed with the judge but I am not so Pmuch. He should be in jail already. Our justice system quickly finds excuses to incarcerate or worse, for much less, for "lower classes" of people.

vkizl 7y ago

Liebowitz you say... why would someone with that last name lie to hurt people?

raverbashing 7y ago

I'm sure the photographer will love his name being associated to a lawyer showing such degree of professionalism. Would make a lot of places think twice about touching any of your works. Not saying Democracy now is in the right, but for 5x the original licensing fee? Take the money and case closed.

laurent123456 7y ago
It seems the photographer is as responsible as the lawyer in this case. I'd expect he needs to give his approvement to reject the initial offer. Also "Mango sought bankruptcy in 2004, and records from his bankruptcy filing show that his liabilities greatly exceeded his listed assets", so sounds like he's trying to make some easy extra cash, that turns out not be so easy.
- owenmarshall 7y ago
  This lawyer is about to go in to court today to explain why he lied to a federal judge no less than four times, and was also accused by another of his clients of forging their signature and submitting it to the court. Who knows what he’s told or has not told this client.
  - MertsA 7y ago
    I think you're underselling it a bit. He's going before a federal judge, not even for the lie itself but for failure to provide documentation to prove that lie. He's facing increasingly severe monetary sanctions and possibly imprisonment tomorrow even if he actually could provide a death certificate that substantiated his earlier claims. We haven't seen the full extent of the blowback from that lie yet even if he comes clean today there's still more to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfSe7QSMOU Failure to appear will immediately subject him to arrest by the US Marshals Service regardless of any other delay shenanigans by Liebowitz.
    - owenmarshall 7y ago

JimWestergren 7y ago

Related from July 10 2019: $100,000 sanction against Richard Liebowitz and his firm https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad-4c72-93a2-0b425bdcf17e https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0b491402-8dad...

netcan 7y ago

This is probably meta in the uninteresting sense but, thoughts: 1) many trolls who focus purely on shakedown settlement letters, Liebowitz runs straight to court to leverage the power of an expensive court case to push for insane settlements. - - Worrying. Why isn't there a bugfix coming? If the court system is so obviously exploitable... I guess shutting down a troll business model is better than nothing, but.. This just basically shooos the problem away from courts and back into the expensive exchange of threatening letters... which is also and abuse of the legal system. 2) IP laws are important, and growing in importance as "intangibles" becomes a major class of assets, by way of corporate books. Just IP related lawyering (contracts, advice, courts, judges...) is a massive industry, nevermind the stuff it lawyers about. Precedent is not really supposed to be the tool for this job, is it? Laws need to be written to be enforceable logically. At the least, they need to avoid creating obvious messes like patent trolling. I'd argue the sheer level of lawyering (measured in €) a type of asset attracts can be a sign it's been poorly defined.

squiggleblaz 7y ago
Precedent is a way of writing laws. Basically legislation is usually not so detailed, nor even necessarily capable of being so detailed, to handle every singe case. Precedent makes judges decisions predictable, since judges are bound to continue doing what they've already done until the legislators (or a superior court) changes that. The alternative is the French system, where each case is taken separately and you can't really be certain how the decisions are going to be made (except that they informally apply a precedent like system). I don't really know if the terminology is right here - basically, the judge has said "there's already a fix in the system for this woe, maybe we should use it..." I'm not really sure what the alternative dispute resolution process your talking about is. Are you suggesting a mandatory licensing fee system like radio stations use?
- derekp7 7y ago
  If the court determines that someone is improperly using them for a shakedown, that person goes to jail. Best fix I can think of.

inglor 7y ago

Can someone please explain to me (as a non-american) why the losing party does not have to pay legal fees? In Israel if someone sues you and they lose they have to pay (up to a reasonable amount) for your lawyer and legal representation. The fact you can "shake down" someone through suing them in the US is appalling and I am sure there is a good reason for it but I have not been able to understand it.

saagarjha 7y ago
Well, one drawback to the losing party paying legal fees is that it disincentivizes "small" parties from suing larger ones, since they are more likely to lose and less likely to be able to pay.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  Germany has fixed attorney fees to solve this problem. There are other measures to reduce this problem. I don't understand them fully, so I won't be more specific. But it kind of works out in the end. You can't just hire an oversized army of lawyers and dump the bill entirely on the losing party.
  - mr__y 7y ago
    It seems that Poland has a similar solution* - there are fixed rates and a losing party covers the fees up to that fixed rates. That is anyone is free to hire a lawyer at any rate but the loosing party will have to cover the costs but not more that those fixed rates, so effectively those rates are an upper treshold for repaying legal costs. Additionally a judge may decide that a loosing party does not have to cover those costs - depending on their financial situation (this is a bit more complicated, but since I am not a lawyer I don't know the details here) *I'm quite sure that this solution in Polish legal system was modelled after the German law.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  As was said, the countries where the losing party pays usually have tables where you can find the legal fees and the maximum amounts that the losing party has to potentially pay.

Roark66 7y ago

A very nice project, but the sooner they add monetisation feature the better. I think ability to sell ads should be closely tied with federation. One of the main reasons why there is so much content on Youtube is the ability for content creators to make money off their videos. Peertube has a chance to be a serious become Youtube competitor only if there is way to add ads to videos. Also a way to have donations a-la patreon would be great.

zshift 7y ago
This is not the comment page you’re looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513310

fortran77 7y ago

Democracy Now! _did_ use someone's photo without paying for it. What this man does which is nasty is instead of simply pointing it out and asking for their fee for licensing, he goes directly to court and asks for much more.

cool_dude85 7y ago
I think that's what's being missed in this. DN ripped this guy off and published his photo without paying him for it. When he does the work of tracking them down and figuring it out, AND after he went to a lawyer to go after DN, they offered him their standard fee plus a couple hundred bucks for his trouble. And when he's not satisfied with that, he's the bad guy. This apparently happens enough for there to be a cottage industry of lawyers going after big publishers who are ripping off small-time photographers. It seems like this whole thing needs serious reform, but probably not by going after people trying to get paid from a big org using their work.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  I don't think you have the story straight. DN did infringe, and when called on it, they immediately pulled the photo and offered 5 times the photographer's highest recorded fee charged per photo. The photographer felt $1100 was insufficient, and took DN to court. (Apparently, based on the discovery requests, with an intent to rack up significant legal fees for DN.) So yeah, I'd say the photographer is the bad guy. Or has bad lawyers. Maybe $1000 for a $200 photo isn't enough, but it's probably the sort of thing that could be negotiated reasonably rather than heading straight to court.
  - joemi 7y ago
    I don't think anyone's debating that the lawyer is a bad person. But why not take a big company to task? This is a serious ongoing problem for photographers these days. I highly doubt this is the first time this has happened to this photographer. And I doubt it's the first time DN has used someone's photo without permission.

mdturnerphys 7y ago

Mr. Liewbowitz is currently under a contempt order and being fined $500/day until he provides proof that his grandfather died back on April 12th, which was his excuse for missing a court appearance that day [0]. [0] https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-suspicious-dead-grandfather/ https://reason.com/2019/11/07/the-judge-and-the-suspicious-d...

tarr11 7y ago
Wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow ... “Further, Mr. Liebowitz is hereby ORDERED to appear before this Court in person on November 13, 2019 at 10 a.m., and there and then SHOW CAUSE why he should not be incarcerated until such time as he complies with the above-described orders (and, if applicable, the instant order).”
- mark-r 7y ago
  There's nothing like a little jail time to motivate a person.
- ksherlock 7y ago
  http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/cathy-seibel/richard-liebowitz-folo-128543 http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/cathy-seibel/richard-liebowi... ``In an attempt to counter Seibel’s devastating dissection, Richard Greenberg, one of Liebowitz’s lawyers, said his client was “not playing with a full deck,” adding that he shared the judge’s “mystification” as to Liebowitz’s behavior.''
supernova87a 7y ago
Good on her (judge). Let this lawyer be on the record as having lied before the court, or be fined until he learns his lesson.
daniel-thompson 7y ago
I assume that since the lawyer has history in front of this judge, and the judge knows he's a lying dirtbag, this is the judge's chance to get his willful, continuing deceit on record and possibly get him on the road to disbarment.

briandear 7y ago

I used to be a news photographer and had this happen to me before. My “deal” with the publication: pay me my normal rate for the photo and hire me for a future assignment. Turned out I had a pretty good relationship when them after that. A win-win for everyone. But just going for the jugular is counter productive: you lose out on a future customer by attempting to destroy them in court over a $220 photo.

hinkley 7y ago

I'm sure you've heard the term 'hanging judge' in movies. The last time frivolous lawsuits were getting a lot of journalistic attention I would joke to my friends that if I ever became a judge I'd cite people for contempt of court for bringing in bullshit cases. I'd easily set a record for number of citations.

jayess 7y ago
Define "bullshit cases."
- hinkley 7y ago
  If only there were some context I could provide that could illustrate my point. Like previous sentences, threads, or links at tops of pages... What to do. What to do.