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Author Topic: What Supreme Court is PhotoAttorney quoting?  (Read 4819 times)

Engel Nyst

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What Supreme Court is PhotoAttorney quoting?
« on: August 15, 2016, 04:18:11 PM »
In her Excuses, excuses article, Carolyn Wright says:
Quote
The courts have held that “When a party has (1) the right and ability to supervise or control the infringing activity; and (2) a direct financial benefit from that activity, the party is vicariously liable for the infringement.”  See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 418, 104 S.Ct. 774, 777 (1984).

I went to Sony v. Universal City Studios decision, and looked up the quoted phrases. To my surprise, I don't find them.

Please check out: "vicarious" appears only in several places, and none is the language "quoted" in the article.

I googled for the whole phrase: https://goo.gl/XO27Qp and all results seem to be from PhotoAttorney herself.

I googled for the last part of the phrase, to make sure: https://goo.gl/iklBN8 and all results are again from PhotoAttorney. If I insisted to look at all, two extra results were from completely different materials (something with agency law, not copyright, and surely not the Supreme Court).

Am I missing something here? It would be shocking if an attorney is publicly "quoting" the Supreme Court, with words they never said.

The Sony decision is well known, and I thought it's a curious idea to "quote" it to talk about vicarious infringement because it actually stands for the proposition that Sony *was not* liable for what users were doing with its device:
"If vicarious liability is to be imposed on Sony in this case, it must rest on the fact that it has sold equipment with constructive knowledge of the fact that its customers may use that equipment to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted material. There is no precedent in the law of copyright for the imposition of vicarious liability on such a theory."
(this *IS* a real quote from Sony v. Universal, link above.)
« Last Edit: August 15, 2016, 04:19:59 PM by Engel Nyst »

stinger

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Re: What Supreme Court is PhotoAttorney quoting?
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2016, 07:21:52 PM »
What?

Are you insinuating that an attorney might mislead people into paying lots of money up front for an alleged violation that those people may or may not have committed, by lying about something?

I am certain that if you asked Carolyn Wright about the quote in question, she might say that you misinterpreted her use of quotation marks.

I only say that because in my dealings with attorneys in a similar business, they had a name for what Ms. Wright is doing.  They called it "fiercely advocating for their client."

I guess this is just a case of potato, potato.  I wish the world would better educate the common man to this behavior.

Matthew Chan

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Re: What Supreme Court is PhotoAttorney quoting?
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2016, 11:00:27 PM »
Stinger is correct.  Yes, I've caught Photo Attorney not telling the whole story on a case.  There was a case with Corbis she mentioned that I never heard of. I can't remember the point she was trying to make but it seemed fishy to me.  I looked it up and read the details. It turns out that the case was not all she represented it to be. Yes, Corbis won the case but, in the fine print, they got beat up on other fronts. In fact, I remember that it was financially losing case that was touted a win. The judge downsized so much of the legal and attorney cost requests.

Also, Photo Attorney listed a Atlanta realtor client that they unintentionally outed by bragging about her. Turned out that she was prosecuted by the U.S. Dept of Justice for housing discrimination and had steep penalties placed upon on her. The victim was so grateful to me and stunned that I found this out.  They walked away from that case entirely.

It wasn't worth her filing a lawsuit over a few photos vs. someone dredging up her U.S. DOJ Housing discrimination case which made Atlanta news. I never asked for any reward but the victim one day Paypal'd me which I was pleasantly surprised.

So, yes, Stinger is right, there are quite a bit of misleading we have discovered over the years and that includes Photo Attorney. It is definitely possible.
I'm a non-lawyer but not legally ignorant either. Under the 1st Amendment, I have the right to post facts & opinions using rhetorical hyperbole, colloquialisms, metaphors, parody, snark, or epithets. Under Section 230 of CDA, I'm only responsible for posts I write, not what others write.

Engel Nyst

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Re: What Supreme Court is PhotoAttorney quoting?
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2016, 03:09:06 PM »
I see your points, folks, but I don't think that's all there is to it. OK, Photoattorney makes a decision to the contrary look like a decision favorable to her intended points, I can understand that, but it's not the only thing happening here. A legal citation is deterministic, that citation should mean what it says:
Quote
464 U.S. 417, 418, 104 S.Ct. 774, 777 (1984)
means: a decision of the Supreme Court ("S.Ct."), always. A citation from "S.Ct." is from the Supreme Court. It also says year, it was published in 1984, and, it says the decision is to be found at 464 U.S. 417. That's this one:
https://scholar.google.se/scholar_case?case=5876335373788447272

Notice that on top it says 464 U.S. 417 (1984), our numbers. Now the rest of the numbers should mean other stuffs like pages or paragraphs, I forget. I actually did learn this darned system of legal citation, but I don't use it, so I forget details I don't use, like exact paragraphs - and all I know is to look up enough for my wish to read one thing or another. I *always* found the exact quotes by doing that, by the first numbers. I didn't care about paragraphs numbering (which is why I forget what's up with those). But in this case, I don't find the quote at all. Which is why I'm puzzled.

I don't know, it *might* be that Westlaw or stuff contains more text AFTER the text of the decision, which is not included in Google scholar and is included in legal databases, but even if that is so, then the citation shouldn't be from the Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court's words should be those published by Google scholar... Dunno, I'm still puzzled.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2016, 08:11:34 PM by Engel Nyst »

 

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