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Topics - Nemen Night

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1
Oscar is a great man. I am asking him for help (in a brutal way:). I apologize in advance for what is about to come below.

Oscar is in possession of hundreds if not near a thousand of extortion letters that he has collected for the past several years and keeps collecting every day. These letters can serve as evidence of extortion for profit, barratry(see SoylentGreen post) and other crimes. He is/has represented hundreds of cases when the infringement was clearly innocent, but Masterfile and others continued to extorting 1000's for one image. He can take all of the clearly innocent infringement cases, compile them to EXHIBIT A, B, C, D.....Z and show to the US courts that the laws in the United States should be amended to first require cease and desist notice and if the infringer refuses, apply penalties and other punitive measures. Otherwise many innocent single moms with blogs or mom and pop small businesses are unfairly tormented by this. In the UK and most of the civilized World, laws protect the innocent, but not in the USA. A change in the law, depending on how it is done might allow for a class lawsuit by those that paid 1000's and were innocent. All future victims would be protected as well.

SoylentGreen presented an excellent cause for class action lawsuit against Masterfile. - Barratry!
"Several jurisdictions in the US have declared barratry (in the sense of a frivolous or harassing litigant) to be a crime as part of their tort reform efforts" - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry

Must read SoylentGreen's post:
http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2196.0.html

Other Examples:

This is in the UK:

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)
“97.—(1) Where in an action for infringement of copyright it is shown that at the time of the infringement the defendant did not know, and had no reason to believe, that copyright subsisted in the work to which the action relates, the plaintiff is not entitled to damages against him, but without prejudice to any other remedy.”

“It is an offence under Section 40 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 to harass of debtors with a view to obtaining payment including the issue of letters which convey a threat or false information with intent to cause distress or anxiety.”

UK Copyright Troll lawyers sanctioned:

"..We had noted that Davenport Lyons lawyers were being investigated by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for their actions, which has now concluded with the two lawyers being fined ÂŁ20,000 each and barred from practicing law for three months. Part of the issue was that the tribunal determined that the lawyers knew they were targeting innocent people with the scheme."

Full article:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110803/02192515373/uk-copyright-trolling-pioneers-sanctioned-actions.shtml

Because of this website and his involvement, Oscar is sitting on a big pile of evidence against the Copyright Trolls. Given a proper strategy, he can file a class action lawsuit for multiple causes including: extortion, barratry, blackmail, harassment, emotional distress, mail fraud, wire fraud etc..

But because it is easier to just collect $195 per letter and can be quite profitable if you have 1000 cases and more every month, he won't do it and will be telling everyone that what they do is legal and that he and nobody else can't do anything about that and that "the Copyright Trolls are here to stay". Not to mention that once in a while Oscar can make 1000's if bigger case goes to court. Oscar a defense lawyer on the side of infringers is profiting from the Copyright Troll abuse. It is well deserved but at some point Oscar should fire back and contribute to changing the laws in the USA instead of just sitting on this evidence and not doing anything but profiting from the abuse together with the Copyright Trolls and their lawyers.

Most if not all of the victims that are willing to share their correspondence and information do it through this website and many hire Oscar because of his advertising here and cheaper fee for a bulk response letter. They don't go anywhere else because of this website. The evidence collected should not just go wasted and should be used collectively to change the copyright laws in the USA to make them similar to UK and the rest of the civilized world. Oscar has the evidence. He needs to concentrate, make a good plan and strategy and fire back.

Oscar could easily write a letter to the Attorney General in New York telling them that he has all the evidence of extortion, barratry, blackmail, harassment etc.. available upon request, explain what is happening and recommend changes to the laws. Attorney General of New York would listen. Oscar could ask the AG to investigate Masterfile how they conduct their business. They would investigate them. Masterfile is the worst and will be the first one to go. Oscar, why don't you want to do that? Please help the people. Yes, you can! Yes, it is possible! Yes, it can be done! and Yes, the AG would most likely sanction Masterfile to limit their abuse. This would set the precedent to change the laws and protect innocent infringers in the USA.

In fact, this is what all the innocent infringers should do. Write to the AG all over the USA and ask to investigate Masterfile. Tell them all that you know and point to this website as reference. Instead of writing letters to the scumbags to negotiate, write to the Attorney General. Your time will be better used.

The last question is: Why is the name of this website "Extortion Letter"? Why Masterfile or Getty does not file a lawsuit against this website for libel, defamation and damage to their business? Why? This website hurts their profits, because people refuse to pay after getting educated. The Trolls are obviously afraid, because they know that they will not win. At least they don't want to take that risk. They know that it will be proven to them that with knowledge they are harassing and criminally extorting money from innocent victims. Extortion is a criminal offence. There is not such a thing as legalized extortion. There either is extortion or there isn't. If innocent people are suffering because of what they do, this practice must be outlawed in the USA as promptly as possible just as it is done in the UK and other countries.

I have a valid point. It is not a time to debate feelings. Oscar is a lawyer, not a weak girl whose feelings can be easily hurt. It is very important to concentrate on finding a solution to prevent these companies from praying on the innocent. Thousands of people would be grateful if Oscar himself sent few complaint letters to the Attorney General in NY asking them to investigate Masterfile (which is the easiest target due to their actions) and offered his evidence upon the government's request.

2
Masterfile lawyers incl. Steven Weinberg should be suspended just as UK lawyers.

"Some lawyers from UK law firm Davenport Lyons really pioneered the copyright trolling shakedown scheme. Davenport Lyons got out of the business after questions were raised about its activities, though it passed on the effort (and documents it used) directly to ACS:Law, the law firm that really took the practice to a new level. We had noted that Davenport Lyons lawyers were being investigated by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for their actions, which has now concluded with the two lawyers being fined ÂŁ20,000 each and barred from practicing law for three months. Part of the issue was that the tribunal determined that the lawyers knew they were targeting innocent people with the scheme."

Here is the direct link:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110803/02192515373/uk-copyright-trolling-pioneers-sanctioned-actions.shtml

Write a letter to the Attorney General and your representatives to disbar or suspend Steven Weinberg and others. He is targetting innocent people with full knowledge.

3
C'mon people it is really simple

You get a letter from Masterfile --> delete images; ignore all payment requests

you get any more letters form Masterfile --> ignore
you get a letter/email from collection agency --> ignore
you get a call from collection agency --> get an answering machine and ignore

Ignore, ignore, ignore. never pay.

There will be those that will respond and say: NO! You need to talk to them, negotiatie, give them an offer etc.. Then you go and pay them $600, $900, $1500, $3000 for some dumb image that you never needed and they would never sell otherwise. Im sure they will be happy, but dont expect any gratitude. Why are you wasting your time here if you are so fearful? To get educated? Ok, you got educated and what now? you will be paranoid? Just ignore it and forget it. Never pay a penny to those crooks. They will go hungry and die before you know it. Don't feed them!

4
Masterfile did not pay the correct fee to register each image separately. They evaded the US Copyright Office by using a loophole in the application to avoid payment of a proper fee for the copyright registration depriving US Copyright Office of their deserved revenues. They now utilize another loophole to abuse the US Copyright Law in order to generate most if not all of their revenue from the extortions.

Unless someone infringes all of the images at once from the CD compilation as registered and appropriately paid for, there should technically be no infringement if only few images from the compilation are infringed. Well...it makes no sense, therefore the entire registration should be invalidated. They should be forced to re-register all of their images and pay the appropriate fee for it instead of trying to cut corners by registering them all at once in a compilation

Evading payment of the correct registration fee should give a strong reason to invalidate their registrations.

5
Let me give you an analogy.

You go to a restaurant. You order an a nice meal and pay for it. As you are leaving a farmer comes up to you and says “You ate my tomatoes!” “You owe me $1000 for eating my tomato.”

As you are looking puzzled, the farmer explains that the tomato in your salad that you just ate and paid for is his and it was not paid for by the restaurant. You explain that you just sat down at the table, ordered, ate and paid the restaurant.

“No matter” says the farmer. “It was my tomato and you should pay penalties far beyond the cost of the tomato normally.” “It is your responsibility since you ate it.”

No one questions the right of photographers to make a living. The issue here is that people bought templates or hired professionals to create sites and images were used which the purchaser of the web site design assumed were properly used. there is so much free or very cheap imagery that there is not REASON to steal it.

So for Masterfile or Getty to pull this ruse is absurd. If they sent a note out and said, Hey, pay us the $49 each for those 3 images…people would pay, not problem. It is billing people $3K for 3 images which were mistakenly used that is the issue. It is similiar to forms of extortion.

6
Here is the letter Ken MacDonald of Masterfile sent:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/58637854/Image-License-Demand

$4000 for an unspectacular image! What a scam!

UNBELIVABLE!!!

7
Directory of Attorney General's offices by state:
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/stateattorneygenerallist.php
http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/workathomescams/a/State-Attorney-General.htm


Directory of Senators by state:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Directory of House Representatives by state:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/


Below are major TV networks that expose various scams:

CNBC American Greed:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41235608/

NBC Dateline:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/
dateline@nbcuni.com

ABC News 20/20:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123566&page=1

The Nightly News"

There are many more news agencies. Find them and email your letter to all of them. The journalists only wait to get their hands on a brand new topic.

If you know other great links, please post them. Also, if you have a great idea how and where to complain, or if you can write a good complaint letter that others can use and send it everywhere, please post it as well.

You can complain anonymously! But, make a brand new email contact just in case someone would want additional information.
Allways provide link to this website to back up your letter.

Also see:
http://www.consumersheldhostage.org/issues/legal/copyright-trolling

If you know a good link to a video or other media describing their practice, please post it here too.

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