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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

I see emails from cranks all the time and similarly have a do-not-respond policy to any of them, but at the same time, something like this is very slightly worrisome because it seems to be presenting the non-zero chance that some random person will sue you in your local court system.

Which even if it is completely nonsensical and has no basis in law, could cost thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response to a statement of claim.

If you have ever seen the experiences of people who have been sued by sovereign citizens/freeman-on-the-land/"this is an admiralty flag" people, it would help to better understand the context I'm viewing it in.

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> very slightly worrisome

Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome.

Again, I think you, too, are being suckered into spam. Plenty of people fall for spam scams. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Think of all the people who fall for the fake IRS phone calls.

But learn from it: keep your guard up when you get emails, phone calls, or text messages from strangers.

Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

yes it will, but a really determined person with an axe to grind will very often make known their intentions well in advance of that.

and no, it won't always come by snail mail, DMCA notices and similar with actual legal threats will arrive regularly via SMTP.

This is, of course, not true. Please stop.

My job involves DMCA pass through compliance and I have several hundred of such threats from a myriad of sources sitting in an inbox right now which say otherwise.

Perhaps you've never had thousands of people torrenting movies using you as a service provider before.

I would hope someone in that position would understand the difference between a strongly worded email and a "actual legal threat".

Serious lawyers don't use email.

Note that the threats are not directed at me, but at my customers.

And I consider DMCA notices to fall within the category of a certain specific type of legal threat. There are also some in the queue right now that don't read like typical DMCA notices such as you might receive for downloading the mandalorian, but look more like straight out attempts at extortion (pay us right now so that we won't sue you for torrenting backdoor sluts volume XII, etc).

As to what the ultimate end user recipients consider them to be, that's up to them and their counsel.

Lawyers use email more than any other method of communication. I don’t think I’ve sent a “threat” by mail since Covid.

You are wrong, and I fear the only way you and others like you will learn is if you personally receive an email from an attorney, tell them you’re going to ignore it because you didn’t get the notice via the post, and suffer adverse consequences.

I don’t know where you “learned” this false information, but I would recommend going to whatever authority figures are spouting this nonsense and correcting them.

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

That statement is false. Please don’t provide incorrect legal information in this forum.

> Anything legally binding in the US will come to you via snail mail.

It doesn't need to be legally binding to be worrisome. Imagine I told you "I'm going to sue you. You don't need to do anything until you get the formal notice" and you found the statement credible. Would you go on with your life as normal, or would you be stressed and hire counsel if affordable?

> Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome.

I call a lawyer any time I have a legal question for which I am not confident about the answer. If it’s not a real problem, a lawyer will be able to answer it a fraction of an hour’s worth of billable time.

...which I hope you recognize is a very privileged position to be in.

Almost any reputable lawyer in the US will give you a few minutes of wisdom for free.

Just knowing (or believing) that, and having ready access to "any reputable lawyer in the US", is already a privileged position to be in.

What is your point? It doesn't take many resources to pick up the phone and call people. Initiative is something both privileged and unprivileged people alike can (and do) have.

And to those unaware that this is a possibility, disseminating this knowledge is our collective responsibility. Be part of the solution.

> a lawyer will be able to answer it a fraction of an hour

Except that they will probably won't know the answer immediately an need more time than that: https://twitter.com/DanielleVEsq/status/1472105731474137094

Both halves of my sentence you partially quoted are important. If your lawyer thinks it could be a real problem, obviously that entails more work.

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