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Author Topic: Steven Turner - Washington State Copyright Extortion Lawyer Targets Australian  (Read 5941 times)

Rocketboy

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At the invitation of Matthew Chan I am posting details on what appears to be a newcomer to the copyright extortion game from Washington State, USA

Steven Turner is a one man practise who is representing Miroslav Moravec the owner of a dinosaur and sundry paleo promotions company based in Nevada.

It appears that Turner and Moravec have teamed up to target news websites and other media companies who have used images of paleo artworks created by his brother Josef Moravec.

In 2002, Josef Moravec signed over copyright to his brother Miroslav Moravec for all his artworks. Miroslav Moravec then began registering many of these artworks with the US Copyright office in 2002 - with registration granted in 2005.

Copies of these artworks are now found all over the internet.

In 2008, a 200x160 pixel 72DPI image of a cave bear image was used to illustrate a news report about a science paper on Cave Bear extinctions and was consequently published on the science news website Terradaily.com - that is produced in Australia by an Australian citizen.

There are no records of where the image was sourced from. The image was used only once by TerraDaily.com in a news report, and was accessed between 10 to 100 times in the period since 2008 for an advertising revenue benefit of between 2 and 20 AUD cents.

On Dec 31, 2013 Turner sent a PDF email package to the publisher of TerraDaily.com that contained a standard cease and desist notice combined with a copyright settlement demand for 15000 USD with the accompanying threat to sue in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York if the demand for 15000 USD was not met within 14 days.

Despite having having reasonable grounds to claim fair use for news reporting purposes under Australian copyright law, the publisher of TerraDaily.com immediately complied with the cease and desist request to remove the image.

The image and associated news article were deleted from the host server and the internet cache copy of both the article and image at Google were deleted.

Like so many other small scale publications in this situation, the publisher of TerraDaily.com made the mistake of replying to the original email and engaging in several email exchanges since then.

For the record as of February 14, 2014 no surface mail has being received by the publisher of TerraDaily.com from Steven Turner, with all demands for money and threats to sue have been via email.

After discussing the matter with Matthew Chan via telephone, the publisher of TerraDaily.com has decided to make use of Oscar Michelen’s Defense Letter Program as a first step to stop the ongoing harassment and demand for money by the US attorney Steven Turner, of an Australian citizen domiciled in Australia with no business presence in the United States.

Due to the ongoing snow storms in the US, no defense letter has yet been dispatched by surface mail to Steven Turner, who appears increasingly anxious to have his demand of 15000 USD met, with the latest email from Turner sent on Friday afternoon - with the threat to file suit if his demands are not met by February 19, 2014.

As is so often the situation with these cases, no substantive attempt has been made by Miroslav Moravec and his company to clean up google cache copies of the image in question, with multiple copies available on common photo sharing sites and the like to ensure image proliferation continues.

Moreover, when combined with the very long delay between 2005 - when registration of the image was granted - and the belated efforts by Moravec in late 2013 to target websites with copies of the image, the situation is highly suspicious and points to the nefarious intent of Moravec and Turner, who together join a growing roll call of copyright owners and their lawyers seeking to engage in copyright extortion.


stinger

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A well written post Rocketboy.

Welcome to the fight.  As Matthew probably already told you, you should refrain from email or phone communication over this.  And keep us posted on how it proceeds.

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

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Welcome to the forums RocketBoy.  A very interesting article, I will be interested to see how this develops.

@ Robert
Maybe you should add this to your ongoing list of trolls.

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

Matthew Chan

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I most certainly did.  Doing the email or phone thing gets him nothing positive. I was informed that Turner has not even bothered to send one snail-mail letter.  Sending a letter to Australia is more than a 50-cent first-class postage stamp.  Turner, a U.S. attorney, wants an Australian citizen to pay up simply based on whatever allegations he cooked up via email.

Turner claims he will allegedly file a lawsuit Feb. 19.  An Australian lawsuit?  Or an American lawsuit?  If it is an American lawsuit, a process server will have their work cut out getting crossing the Pacific to get him served.  Or is Turner going to hire some Aussie solicitor and attempt to split a piece of the $15K?

$15,0000?  Turner must think he works for Vincent K. Tylor or something.

As Matthew probably already told you, you should refrain from email or phone communication over this.  And keep us posted on how it proceeds.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2014, 12:04:46 AM by Matthew Chan »
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.

Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)

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Can someone confirm, this is the Steven Turner practising out of Vancouver, WA.? He's getting added to the list, but i want to make absolutely certain I'm throwing the correct ass-hat under the bus.
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..

Matthew Chan

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I have a copy of the letter and the emails.  I can corroborate that it is the guy in Vancouver, WA.
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.

 

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