16 ms·

New York disbars infamous copyright troll

441 points by Turing_Machine 3y ago

charcircuit 3y ago
He can still send such letters if even though he is disbarred, right? It's not like it's a trial.
- freejazz 3y ago
  Not ones claiming that he is an attorney that represents the photographer.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    An authorized representative does not have to be an attorney
    - freejazz 3y ago
      No, but who cares what non-attorneys have to say about legal matters? Anyone that settles a claim asserted by a non-attorney is nuts.
      - creshal 3y ago
        > Anyone that settles a claim asserted by a non-attorney is nuts. Going by how many people fall for the most stupid of spam mails, that's gotta be a billion-dollar industry too, then.
        freejazz 3y ago
        Spam emails assert legal claims like copyright infringement? News to me.
- Macha 3y ago
  > ORDERED that pursuant to Judiciary Law § 90, effective immediately, the respondent, Richard P. Liebowitz, shall continue to desist and refrain from (1) practicing law in any form, either as principal or as agent, clerk, or employee of another, (2) appearing as an attorney or counselor-at-law before any court, Judge, Justice, board, commission, or other public authority, (3) giving to another an opinion as to the law or its application or any advice in relation thereto, and (4) holding himself out in any way as an attorney and counselor-at-law; and it is further, Is "I am an authorised representative for XYZ, and you are infringing on their copyright. Please pay us $xxxx or we will prosecute" "giving another an opinion as to the law"? I could see it being so.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    No, such a request is not legal advice.
    - cwillu 3y ago
      “You are infringing his copyright” is very much a legal opinion.
freejazz 3y ago
"Liebowitz wasn’t alone in the copyright trolling practice. A number of entities scour the internet looking for photographs that they can claim are “unlicensed” and demanding thousands of dollars to settle the matter knowing that between statutory damages for copyright infringement and the cost of litigation, most companies will just pay it. Many times, the photo in question actually is legally licensed through an agency like Getty Images, but the plaintiff photographer has, for whatever reason, pulled the image since the license was granted." This article is so poorly written and uninformed, it conflates asserting copyright infringement against an entity that licensed the photo, with the court demanding past licenses as a means of calculating actual or statutory damages. Liebowitz problem is that he has lied to courts several times previously, about things as trivial as scheduling issues, or the basic facts of his case as the article points out. His disbarrment has nothing to do with him asserting copyright cases, it has to do with him lying. Unfortunately the term troll is used against pretty much any photographer asserting their legal rights over the work that they own.
- paulgb 3y ago
  I think the term “troll” is generally accepted where someone’s MO is to spray-and-pray settlement demands that the troll doesn’t actually want to take to court. Given that his behavior was all related to trying to avoid demands of judges and court time, it sounds like it actually was related to his trolling indirectly.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    Yeah, but look at any thread where patents are an issue, any plaintiff that isn't a big tech company gets called a troll. Also, Liebowitz had no fear of going to court, he'd sue before he'd send letters. Liebowitz was disbarred because he repeatedly lied. The issue with him not producing licenses is because they didn't support the damages award he wanted, not because he just didn't want to deal with judges or being in court. Like I said, the article is very poorly written.
- Eiim 3y ago
  Part of Liebowitz's problem was that he did ~0 research before filing a lawsuit. Often the only thing he did was send the photographer a list of URLs and ask for "GO" or "NO GO" for each one. In at least some cases there was a license that he or probably should have known about, but he didn't even bother to check. He probably would've been fine with that though if he hadn't lied to the judge(s) so, so much.
aragonite 3y ago
Memorable quote a while back by an SDNY judge about Liebowitz: > In his relatively short career litigating in this District, Richard Liebowitz has earned the dubious distinction of being a regular target of sanctions-related motions and orders. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there is a growing body of law in this District devoted to the question of whether and when to impose sanctions on Mr. Liebowitz alone. See, e.g., ... This Opinion is the latest contribution to that body of law. For the reasons stated below, the Court concludes that sanctions should indeed be imposed on Mr. Liebowitz for his repeated failure to comply with this Court’s orders, failures that imposed considerable and unwarranted costs on the Court, its staff, and Defendant NBCUniversal Media, LLC. https://www.abajournal.com/images/main_images/Lebowitz.pdf https://www.abajournal.com/images/main_images/Lebowitz.pdf
- dmix 3y ago
  He sued NBC? What a dummy
- pictureofabear 3y ago
  Haha--that one caught my attention as well. His litigation is so audacious as to begin setting precedent. This is how our system should work though; through contention it strengthens itself.
- KyleBerezin 3y ago
  "Yea, I work in the office of Liebowitz sanctioning, third floor."
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    "He's out to lunch right now"
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  What this demonstrates: Years of unethical, overtly extortionary and often illegal copyright trolling isn't enough to trigger disbarment. (Not even criminal charges but a loss of license. In one state.) It's years of copyright trolling so incompetent that judges began pushing back. Plus another period of angering those judges with non-compliance. What this hints at: When copyright is on the table, unethical, extortionary and illegal trolling usually flies just fine.
shmerl 3y ago
Disbarring is not enough. Prison time for racketeering is proper.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  Prison is not enough. Patent trolls should be thrown into the deepest flaming pit of hell.
  - asah 3y ago
    Sorry, flaming pits are patented. Can I offer you lava?
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Lava is patented as well, can I offer you magma?
      - brookst 3y ago
        My client has patented all forms of magma production that involve heat or pressure. Can I offer you lukewarm water?
        stove 3y ago
        My client Luke is suing for defamation
        diego_sandoval 3y ago
        Luke Skywalker is a copyrighted character. My client, The Walt Disney Company, is suing your client, Luke, for copyright infringement.
        rprwhite 3y ago
        My client, the sky, is suing your client for copyright infringement. Additionally my client is suing GGP’s client for the offer of water, in which my client believes they have a valid interest but were not given due consideration in the making of this offer.
ugh123 3y ago
>The respondent’s statement in his January 13, 2018 letter that the defendant “had yet to respond to the complaint” was false and misleading, and the respondent knew that it was false and misleading when he made it. The January 13, 2018 letter failed to advise the court of the months-long history of communication between the parties, beginning in July 2017, as mentioned above. How is that not outright fraud?
- dllthomas 3y ago
  I'm also curious about that, but we should recognize that whether it's fraud and whether it should be prosecuted as fraud are different questions. For a conviction you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, where disbarment seems (from a cursory search) to merely require preponderance of the evidence. If that's right, some people will rightly be disbarred for crimes they cannot be convicted of.
  - starspangled 3y ago
    Lawyers rule the entire justice system. Not even the "good" ones want to normalize the prosecution of lawyers for committing crimes while practicing law.
    - dllthomas 3y ago
      That may also be the case, and not knowing a lot about this case it does seem like prosecution is probably merited here, and we should push back on tendencies like that across industries. My comment still stands, though; we should be quicker to disbar over a thing than to prosecute, evidentiarily speaking.
      - omeid2 3y ago
        On the contrary, I believe the existence of and ease of disbarring works as a substitute for prosecution, albeit under different terms of "law" and "justice-- if you can call it that. At the same time, the very existence of disbarring without the due process required for convictions, also means, the "good ones" wouldn't risk it by speaking up and demanding "prosecution" of their peers.
neom 3y ago
Leonard French has almost obsessively covered this dude at length https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdgWccrJAy6scjRxG7bf9NjNWnVtgz5c https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdgWccrJAy6scjRxG7bf... 56 videos, heh. :p
- phone8675309 3y ago
  As a copyright attorney, Leonard French will likely be popping a bottle of champagne over this.
throwaway74432 3y ago
It's heartening to see people punished for operating in bad faith. Real scumbag behavior seems to thrive when what they do is "technically legal" but super corrosive to the social fabric. I know it's a fine line, which is why judges and other decision makers need to be wise.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  It doesn’t seem like he was punished for litigating in bad faith but rather for lying about his grandfather dying. Lying to a judge is about the worst thing a practicing attorney can do.
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    Dishonesty and bad faith are cousins. Its more or less the chickens coming home to roost.
autoexec 3y ago
Go after the guys working for Strike 3 Holdings next!
- prbuckley 3y ago
  Fun fact Strike 3 holding files the 2nd most lawsuits annually in our federal court system (~3000), the US government is #1
ryukoposting 3y ago
I found out recently that a local artist was forced to cease operations because of a copyright troll. I can't imagine they're the only example of a small business getting flattened by this kind of abuse of the law.
- codazoda 3y ago
  That sounds interesting, do you have a link? Is that because of an accusation of using a reference, or copying a reference too closely, or something like being sued for using their own work?
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Sony lost in court twice but destroyed at least two commercial playstation emulators in the process. They abused the legal system to disrupt the activities of other corporations by simply burning their money via legal fees until the projects they wanted to kill were no longer financially viable. Imagine the power imbalance when one of these multi-billion dollar monopolists go after some random individual for downloading a song or something.
alexey-salmin 3y ago
> For years, Richard Liebowitz ran a very successful operation mostly sending threatening letters to companies claiming that they had infringed upon copyrights held by his photographer clients. Under the best of circumstances it’s a niche practice area that’s… kinda shady. Why is it shady when done properly? Copyright violations are a valid concern for photographers.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Toll bridge sales do occur, but if you think that's not a shady practice area, I have a bridge to sell you. :-)
  - alexey-salmin 3y ago
    That's a good example. Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of "shady" but I don't see toll bridge sales as such. It's either a perfectly legitimate deal or an outright fraud. It's not some grey area when selling toll bridge is semi-legal with courts disagreeing over whether to punish you or not.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Why is it shady when done properly? The issue is that it isn't. The economics of it don't militate in favor of diligence and precision. An individual claim is rarely going to be for a lot of money so to turn it into a profitable business it requires scale. At which point they typically rely on automated systems with a significant false positive rate that don't take into account possible fair use etc. Meanwhile the coercion to settle applies just as much to an innocent party, because the premise is "pay a little to avoid an expensive court battle" which is still coercive even if you could win in court. Practices that involve shaking down innocent people are shady.
  - alexey-salmin 3y ago
    I agree that running an automated system with a significant false positive rate is shady, it's just I don't think that this counts as "under the best circumstances". I've seen cases of e.g. big newspapers publishing photos without permission and when asked politely to purchase a license reply that "you should be proud of your work being published in such a respectable establishment as ours". For a photographer in question an "expensive court battle" is an obstacle just the same and I have nothing against a lawyer who makes a living out of cases like this.
tanepiper 3y ago
A quick search and yea the guy looks as slimy as he sounds.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  Looks like he should be working for a VC.
classified 3y ago
The headline makes it seem that being a copyright troll is grounds for disbarment. If only!
lelag 3y ago
This discussion [1] from last week about a Cory Doctorow article sheds interesting lights on this type practices by copyright / copyleft trolls. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610509
willcipriano 3y ago
Actual footage of the lawyer being told by the bar association that he's going down for this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJHaHwzuRTk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJHaHwzuRTk
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  to spare others the disappointment I had when clicking: this is a video titled "The Dark Knight Rises - Bane l Tom Hardy #2" I assume this was meant to be some pop culture joke I didn't get.
sudden_dystopia 3y ago
I try not to be hateful but dealing with attorneys every day will make you truly despise their profession. This brightened my day. Now if we could only disbar a couple million more.
trogdor 3y ago
Fun fact: the majority of U.S. states have no procedure for permanently disbarring an attorney. Including New York, though he has to wait seven years before he can apply for reinstatement. ~~~ See ”Should Permanent Disbarment be Permanent?” https://web.archive.org/web/20081112072221/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3975/is_200707/ai_n19511820/pg_2 https://web.archive.org/web/20081112072221/http://findarticl...

He can still send such letters if even though he is disbarred, right? It's not like it's a trial.

freejazz 3y ago
Not ones claiming that he is an attorney that represents the photographer.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  An authorized representative does not have to be an attorney
  - freejazz 3y ago
    No, but who cares what non-attorneys have to say about legal matters? Anyone that settles a claim asserted by a non-attorney is nuts.
    - creshal 3y ago
      > Anyone that settles a claim asserted by a non-attorney is nuts. Going by how many people fall for the most stupid of spam mails, that's gotta be a billion-dollar industry too, then.
      - freejazz 3y ago
        Spam emails assert legal claims like copyright infringement? News to me.
Macha 3y ago
> ORDERED that pursuant to Judiciary Law § 90, effective immediately, the respondent, Richard P. Liebowitz, shall continue to desist and refrain from (1) practicing law in any form, either as principal or as agent, clerk, or employee of another, (2) appearing as an attorney or counselor-at-law before any court, Judge, Justice, board, commission, or other public authority, (3) giving to another an opinion as to the law or its application or any advice in relation thereto, and (4) holding himself out in any way as an attorney and counselor-at-law; and it is further, Is "I am an authorised representative for XYZ, and you are infringing on their copyright. Please pay us $xxxx or we will prosecute" "giving another an opinion as to the law"? I could see it being so.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  No, such a request is not legal advice.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    “You are infringing his copyright” is very much a legal opinion.

"Liebowitz wasn’t alone in the copyright trolling practice. A number of entities scour the internet looking for photographs that they can claim are “unlicensed” and demanding thousands of dollars to settle the matter knowing that between statutory damages for copyright infringement and the cost of litigation, most companies will just pay it. Many times, the photo in question actually is legally licensed through an agency like Getty Images, but the plaintiff photographer has, for whatever reason, pulled the image since the license was granted." This article is so poorly written and uninformed, it conflates asserting copyright infringement against an entity that licensed the photo, with the court demanding past licenses as a means of calculating actual or statutory damages. Liebowitz problem is that he has lied to courts several times previously, about things as trivial as scheduling issues, or the basic facts of his case as the article points out. His disbarrment has nothing to do with him asserting copyright cases, it has to do with him lying. Unfortunately the term troll is used against pretty much any photographer asserting their legal rights over the work that they own.

paulgb 3y ago
I think the term “troll” is generally accepted where someone’s MO is to spray-and-pray settlement demands that the troll doesn’t actually want to take to court. Given that his behavior was all related to trying to avoid demands of judges and court time, it sounds like it actually was related to his trolling indirectly.
- freejazz 3y ago
  Yeah, but look at any thread where patents are an issue, any plaintiff that isn't a big tech company gets called a troll. Also, Liebowitz had no fear of going to court, he'd sue before he'd send letters. Liebowitz was disbarred because he repeatedly lied. The issue with him not producing licenses is because they didn't support the damages award he wanted, not because he just didn't want to deal with judges or being in court. Like I said, the article is very poorly written.
Eiim 3y ago
Part of Liebowitz's problem was that he did ~0 research before filing a lawsuit. Often the only thing he did was send the photographer a list of URLs and ask for "GO" or "NO GO" for each one. In at least some cases there was a license that he or probably should have known about, but he didn't even bother to check. He probably would've been fine with that though if he hadn't lied to the judge(s) so, so much.

aragonite 3y ago

Memorable quote a while back by an SDNY judge about Liebowitz: > In his relatively short career litigating in this District, Richard Liebowitz has earned the dubious distinction of being a regular target of sanctions-related motions and orders. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there is a growing body of law in this District devoted to the question of whether and when to impose sanctions on Mr. Liebowitz alone. See, e.g., ... This Opinion is the latest contribution to that body of law. For the reasons stated below, the Court concludes that sanctions should indeed be imposed on Mr. Liebowitz for his repeated failure to comply with this Court’s orders, failures that imposed considerable and unwarranted costs on the Court, its staff, and Defendant NBCUniversal Media, LLC. https://www.abajournal.com/images/main_images/Lebowitz.pdf https://www.abajournal.com/images/main_images/Lebowitz.pdf

dmix 3y ago
He sued NBC? What a dummy
pictureofabear 3y ago
Haha--that one caught my attention as well. His litigation is so audacious as to begin setting precedent. This is how our system should work though; through contention it strengthens itself.
KyleBerezin 3y ago
"Yea, I work in the office of Liebowitz sanctioning, third floor."
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  "He's out to lunch right now"
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
What this demonstrates: Years of unethical, overtly extortionary and often illegal copyright trolling isn't enough to trigger disbarment. (Not even criminal charges but a loss of license. In one state.) It's years of copyright trolling so incompetent that judges began pushing back. Plus another period of angering those judges with non-compliance. What this hints at: When copyright is on the table, unethical, extortionary and illegal trolling usually flies just fine.

shmerl 3y ago

Disbarring is not enough. Prison time for racketeering is proper.

dudeinjapan 3y ago
Prison is not enough. Patent trolls should be thrown into the deepest flaming pit of hell.
- asah 3y ago
  Sorry, flaming pits are patented. Can I offer you lava?
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Lava is patented as well, can I offer you magma?
    - brookst 3y ago
      My client has patented all forms of magma production that involve heat or pressure. Can I offer you lukewarm water?
      - stove 3y ago
        My client Luke is suing for defamation
        diego_sandoval 3y ago
        Luke Skywalker is a copyrighted character. My client, The Walt Disney Company, is suing your client, Luke, for copyright infringement.
        rprwhite 3y ago
        My client, the sky, is suing your client for copyright infringement. Additionally my client is suing GGP’s client for the offer of water, in which my client believes they have a valid interest but were not given due consideration in the making of this offer.

ugh123 3y ago

>The respondent’s statement in his January 13, 2018 letter that the defendant “had yet to respond to the complaint” was false and misleading, and the respondent knew that it was false and misleading when he made it. The January 13, 2018 letter failed to advise the court of the months-long history of communication between the parties, beginning in July 2017, as mentioned above. How is that not outright fraud?

dllthomas 3y ago
I'm also curious about that, but we should recognize that whether it's fraud and whether it should be prosecuted as fraud are different questions. For a conviction you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, where disbarment seems (from a cursory search) to merely require preponderance of the evidence. If that's right, some people will rightly be disbarred for crimes they cannot be convicted of.
- starspangled 3y ago
  Lawyers rule the entire justice system. Not even the "good" ones want to normalize the prosecution of lawyers for committing crimes while practicing law.
  - dllthomas 3y ago
    That may also be the case, and not knowing a lot about this case it does seem like prosecution is probably merited here, and we should push back on tendencies like that across industries. My comment still stands, though; we should be quicker to disbar over a thing than to prosecute, evidentiarily speaking.
    - omeid2 3y ago
      On the contrary, I believe the existence of and ease of disbarring works as a substitute for prosecution, albeit under different terms of "law" and "justice-- if you can call it that. At the same time, the very existence of disbarring without the due process required for convictions, also means, the "good ones" wouldn't risk it by speaking up and demanding "prosecution" of their peers.

neom 3y ago

Leonard French has almost obsessively covered this dude at length https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdgWccrJAy6scjRxG7bf9NjNWnVtgz5c https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdgWccrJAy6scjRxG7bf... 56 videos, heh. :p

phone8675309 3y ago
As a copyright attorney, Leonard French will likely be popping a bottle of champagne over this.

throwaway74432 3y ago

It's heartening to see people punished for operating in bad faith. Real scumbag behavior seems to thrive when what they do is "technically legal" but super corrosive to the social fabric. I know it's a fine line, which is why judges and other decision makers need to be wise.

dclowd9901 3y ago
It doesn’t seem like he was punished for litigating in bad faith but rather for lying about his grandfather dying. Lying to a judge is about the worst thing a practicing attorney can do.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  Dishonesty and bad faith are cousins. Its more or less the chickens coming home to roost.

autoexec 3y ago

Go after the guys working for Strike 3 Holdings next!

prbuckley 3y ago
Fun fact Strike 3 holding files the 2nd most lawsuits annually in our federal court system (~3000), the US government is #1

ryukoposting 3y ago

I found out recently that a local artist was forced to cease operations because of a copyright troll. I can't imagine they're the only example of a small business getting flattened by this kind of abuse of the law.

codazoda 3y ago
That sounds interesting, do you have a link? Is that because of an accusation of using a reference, or copying a reference too closely, or something like being sued for using their own work?
matheusmoreira 3y ago
Sony lost in court twice but destroyed at least two commercial playstation emulators in the process. They abused the legal system to disrupt the activities of other corporations by simply burning their money via legal fees until the projects they wanted to kill were no longer financially viable. Imagine the power imbalance when one of these multi-billion dollar monopolists go after some random individual for downloading a song or something.

alexey-salmin 3y ago

> For years, Richard Liebowitz ran a very successful operation mostly sending threatening letters to companies claiming that they had infringed upon copyrights held by his photographer clients. Under the best of circumstances it’s a niche practice area that’s… kinda shady. Why is it shady when done properly? Copyright violations are a valid concern for photographers.

whatshisface 3y ago
Toll bridge sales do occur, but if you think that's not a shady practice area, I have a bridge to sell you. :-)
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  That's a good example. Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of "shady" but I don't see toll bridge sales as such. It's either a perfectly legitimate deal or an outright fraud. It's not some grey area when selling toll bridge is semi-legal with courts disagreeing over whether to punish you or not.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Why is it shady when done properly? The issue is that it isn't. The economics of it don't militate in favor of diligence and precision. An individual claim is rarely going to be for a lot of money so to turn it into a profitable business it requires scale. At which point they typically rely on automated systems with a significant false positive rate that don't take into account possible fair use etc. Meanwhile the coercion to settle applies just as much to an innocent party, because the premise is "pay a little to avoid an expensive court battle" which is still coercive even if you could win in court. Practices that involve shaking down innocent people are shady.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  I agree that running an automated system with a significant false positive rate is shady, it's just I don't think that this counts as "under the best circumstances". I've seen cases of e.g. big newspapers publishing photos without permission and when asked politely to purchase a license reply that "you should be proud of your work being published in such a respectable establishment as ours". For a photographer in question an "expensive court battle" is an obstacle just the same and I have nothing against a lawyer who makes a living out of cases like this.

tanepiper 3y ago

A quick search and yea the guy looks as slimy as he sounds.

bigbillheck 3y ago
Looks like he should be working for a VC.

classified 3y ago

The headline makes it seem that being a copyright troll is grounds for disbarment. If only!

lelag 3y ago

This discussion [1] from last week about a Cory Doctorow article sheds interesting lights on this type practices by copyright / copyleft trolls. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610509

willcipriano 3y ago

Actual footage of the lawyer being told by the bar association that he's going down for this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJHaHwzuRTk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJHaHwzuRTk

master-lincoln 3y ago
to spare others the disappointment I had when clicking: this is a video titled "The Dark Knight Rises - Bane l Tom Hardy #2" I assume this was meant to be some pop culture joke I didn't get.

sudden_dystopia 3y ago

I try not to be hateful but dealing with attorneys every day will make you truly despise their profession. This brightened my day. Now if we could only disbar a couple million more.

trogdor 3y ago

Fun fact: the majority of U.S. states have no procedure for permanently disbarring an attorney. Including New York, though he has to wait seven years before he can apply for reinstatement. ~~~ See ”Should Permanent Disbarment be Permanent?” https://web.archive.org/web/20081112072221/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3975/is_200707/ai_n19511820/pg_2 https://web.archive.org/web/20081112072221/http://findarticl...