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Author Topic: Class action suit filed against “Getty Images Master Delegate” in Israel.  (Read 38727 times)

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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Every situation is unique, any advice or opinions I offer are given for your consideration only. You must decide what is best for you and your particular situation. I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice.

--Greg Troy

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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Very good artice and thanks again for posting the corrected link, I agree it misses the point but I love how it does points out that you are opening up the opportunity for similar suits against trolling companies worldwide.

Again, thank you so much Ian!  Keep us updated on the progress of the case!

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law has written a short piece on our lawsuit.

www.cardozo.yu.edu/(S(3clvkj55pdnihx55tjbmxc3x))/MemberContentDisplay.aspx?ccmd=ContentDisplay&ucmd=UserDisplay&userid=10556&contentid=24754&folderid=524

It misses the important point that Marot Images owned no rights to sue at all , but it's still pertinent to the behavior of copyright trolls in the USA.

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Professors Alex Stein and Gideon Parchomovsky (Penn Law School) wrote an article “The Relational Contingency of Rights” that will soon appear in the Virginia Law Review.  This article demonstrates that legal rights afford no meaningful protection against challengers who can litigate more cheaply than the rightholder and who can use this advantage to force the rightholder to give up her entitlement.

These challengers include large companies that acquired portfolios of copyrighted photos available on the Internet. Those companies retain attorneys at a sharply discounted fee, who aggressively sue unsuspecting fair users of those photos.  These un-meritorious suits virtually never go to trial because of the high cost of defense.  The companies offer lawful users of their photos an opportunity to avoid this cost by paying the company a lesser amount in a settlement.  To put an end to this extortionary practice, Parchomovsky and Stein have proposed a number of measures that include punitive damages.

This proposal has now been taken to court in Israel.  An individual who refused to surrender to a pressing settlement demand filed a class action for over $10M against an Israeli company associated with a multinational copyright giant, Getty Images.  If successful, this action might prompt similar suits against copyright trolls across the world.

The link to the article - “The Relational Contingency of Rights” is above.
Every situation is unique, any advice or opinions I offer are given for your consideration only. You must decide what is best for you and your particular situation. I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice.

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scraggy

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Porn copyright troll targets strike back in new class action

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/ViewNews.aspx?id=51585&terms=%40ReutersTopicCodes+CONTAINS+%27ANV%27

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it's cheaper and easier to pay the settlement than to hire a lawyer and defend the litigation.

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"By extorting settlements of $1,000-$5,000 the pornography purveyors have developed a model whereby they can unlawfully gain more money than they can by selling access to their pornographic videos."

Sounds familiar?

Moe Hacken

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Right on, scraggy! I think you may have identified the rationale for a class action against image copyright trolls! This is a great line of thinking you're following there.
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scraggy

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http://boingboing.net/2012/07/09/porno-copyright-trolls-named-i.html

Porno-copyright trolls named in RICO class action suit

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This event was bound to happen. Two things never come together: greed and the art of quitting when it is not too late. All it takes to damage an extortionist’s "business" severely is to mess with a wrong person, and with every day, the likelihood of such an event increases. Fortunately, all the "wrong persons" to date have responded civilly, within the law. Nonetheless, the risk to mess with a wrong type of a "wrong person" is still there.


Moe Hacken

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Thanks for the posts, scraggy. These lawsuits are making some very interesting point about the "strategic litigation"/"extortion letter" racket.

In the Baker case, the argument is that the trolls have no intention of filing a lawsuit, so the extortion letter constitutes fraud and the letter itself is an instance of wire fraud because they used the postal service to deliver an extortionate claim.

The reason the porn trolls generally back off when someone threatens to fight back in court is precisely what Oscar mentioned before about some of the image trolls — they have to consider the risk of going to court and losing cases, thus creating legal precedents that are bad for the trolling industry.

The legal paper from law professors Gideon Parchomovsky and Alex Stein also address why the trolls fear actual litigation:

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Enforcement organizations are repeat players in the copyright arena. As such, they can produce “cease and desist” letters and court briefs at a much lower cost than their adversaries, and then leverage this advantage into a favorable settlement. These settlements economize on litigation costs, but they also stunt the development of fair-use, misuse and other copyright defenses, as courts are increasingly denied the opportunity to consider these defenses. A corollary cost of this dynamic is that it sweeps problems under the rug and thereby prevents policymakers from adopting corrective measures. After all, disputes that have been settled privately between the parties rarely make policymakers to do list.

Source: The Relational Contingency of Rights ( http://tinyurl.com/6vw7u4j )

The emphasis is mine. This statement is basically what Matthew has been saying: Rolling over and being a coward to save money and/or because of ignorance and fear is wrong. Why? As the professors say, because it basically empowers the trolls to go after other innocent victims and prevent the abuse from any oversight by the courts or any possibility of the policymakers taking corrective action to prevent future instances of the abuse.

Invoking RICO to go after the basterds may be a stretch because they are basically taking advantage of a legal loophole that favors copyright owners in a disproportionate way, but if it works it would be the best way to start the drive to make real and permanent change to copyright law in order to level the playing field.

Whether or not they can nail the porn trolls with the RICO charges, these cases substantiate the need for changes in policy. Perhaps some of us in the ELI community can start lobbying the appropriate authorities and bring this serious problem to their attention. Perhaps it could be included in the proposed Orphan Works Amendment, as some kind of "anti-abuse" measure to take out the loopholes.

The changes I would like to see:

1) A warrant or court order being a legal requirement for collecting evidence from someone's server, thus taking out PicScout and any other crawler's gill-netting approach and the profit motive for people to hire them, and;

2) The requirement of a proper cease-and-desist letter being issued FIRST for any alleged infringement, giving copyright users the opportunity to back off in the case of innocent infringements. This wouldn't apply if the infringement was clearly malicious or if evident damage had already been done to the copyright owner. If the copyright user resists, then the settlement claim and threats of litigation can proceed.

The Orphan Works Amendment is still in the works, so to speak. The US Copyright Office would be a good place to start the lobbying.

I'd like to add that Dr. Michael from Aloha Plastic Surgery is my hero for taking Glen Carner and Vincent Khoury Tylor to task for their business practices thinly-veiled extortion bullshit at much expense to himself in money and effort. I eagerly await to see him prevail with a decisive victory and have Carner and Tylor pay HIM for statutory damages, attorneys fees, and perhaps punitive damages.

In doing so, another precedent would be set that hurts all the other trolls for their evil ways and the way would be paved for corrective legislative measures.

I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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Ian, I was wondering if there was anything new with this case or if you have an update for us?
Every situation is unique, any advice or opinions I offer are given for your consideration only. You must decide what is best for you and your particular situation. I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice.

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scraggy

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Hi Greg,

We have our first court session on Feb 4!

Marot Images has requested an immediate dismissal of the case, to which we replied, and they responded, but unfortunately, the judge has not ruled on their request.

Regarding the court verdict against Marot ( Gili Mazor ) , in which the judge determined that Marot did not have the right to sue, Marot did not appeal.

The bottom line is that the letters have stopped ( for now ) . The class action suit,  their court loss, a Marot victims Facebook page and several online articles written by copyright lawyers, have created a new reality. People are not paying up! The whole system has collapsed! Seven law firms are with significantly less work! Such a shame!

Here is a link to our Facebook page. Join us! I think it increases the Google ranking!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%92%D7%A2%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%92/343388542351419?ref=ts&fref=ts

There are still half a dozen or so ongoing court cases. With the score at 1-0, they have nothing to lose! From their point of view, losing 3-0 is no different than losing 1-0. They may as well go for it. Unfortunately, several defendants are without representation.

I will keep you posted!

Ian

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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Thank you for the update Ian, I have liked your FB page, I will have to run it through Google translate tonight when I get home.  Keep us posted
Every situation is unique, any advice or opinions I offer are given for your consideration only. You must decide what is best for you and your particular situation. I am not a lawyer and do not offer legal advice.

--Greg Troy

Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)

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Thank you for the update Ian, I have liked your FB page, I will have to run it through Google translate tonight when I get home.  Keep us posted

yeah I looked at it, it was all Greek to me..let me know how that google translate works out for you..
Most questions have already been addressed in the forums, get yourself educated before making decisions.

Any advice is strictly that, and anything I may state is based on my opinions, and observations.
Robert Krausankas

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scraggy

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An unexpected update, and a bonus!

I have been helping a young guy called Yohai who was sued by Marot Image ( Case # 31499-07-11 ) . The pre-trial hearing was set for yesterday morning (Jan 27, 09.00) in the Jerusalem Court.

Last Thursday, Marot’s new lawyers called the defendant, and after some correspondence, agreed to drop their case without paying him costs. They did not ask him to sign anything (he would have, had they asked), and they did not bother to send him a copy of the request they planned to send to the court. Had they sent him a copy; we would have likely not gone to court.

Yohai  (I accompanied him because he had no lawyer) had no choice but to go to court yesterday morning. At 08.45, the judge had still not ruled on their request (because it arrived late on Thursday and courts are closed Fridays and Saturdays here), so we decided to enter the courtroom, and see if we could claim costs.

Marot’s lawyer at first threatened to continue the lawsuit if Yohai insisted on requesting costs, but the judge soon put an end to that threat! She was very clear as to how she would rule if the case continued, and all sides then agreed that the judge could award costs.

Without commenting at all on the merits of the lawsuit, she said, among other things, in an approximate translation:

Suing for 100,000 shekels was totally unacceptable and bore no reasonable proportion to the circumstances of the lawsuit.

She criticized Marot’s behavior, and she was adamant that Yohai deserved to receive costs.

She then awarded costs of close to $1000 to Yohai, and closed the case.

The court documents are in PDF format ( in Hebrew! ), and are posted on the Marot Images Victims Facebook pages!


One week to go till the first court meeting in the class action suit! Too bad yesterday's judge isn't presiding!

Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)

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Glad he got some shekels, hopefully Marot Images will get some schmekels!
Most questions have already been addressed in the forums, get yourself educated before making decisions.

Any advice is strictly that, and anything I may state is based on my opinions, and observations.
Robert Krausankas

I have a few friends around here..

Oscar Michelen

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Great Result! Mazel Tov!

scraggy

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Where is the "LIKE" button? Sometimes, I feel such a strong emotional need to "LIKE", and there's no button there!

SoylentGreen

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Thanks for the update and good news Scraggy!!
There seems to be a trend in the courts wherein these huge legal demands for minor infringements are being called out as excessive.

Scraggy seems to be quite a good Mensch!!

S.G.


 

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