New York disbars infamous copyright troll
abovethelaw.com
abovethelaw.com
> In his relatively short career litigating in this District, Richard Liebowitz has earned the dubious distinction of being a regular target of sanctions-related motions and orders. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there is a growing body of law in this District devoted to the question of whether and when to impose sanctions on Mr. Liebowitz alone. See, e.g., ... This Opinion is the latest contribution to that body of law. For the reasons stated below, the Court concludes that sanctions should indeed be imposed on Mr. Liebowitz for his repeated failure to comply with this Court’s orders, failures that imposed considerable and unwarranted costs on the Court, its staff, and Defendant NBCUniversal Media, LLC.
It's years of copyright trolling so incompetent that judges began pushing back. Plus another period of angering those judges with non-compliance.
What this hints at: When copyright is on the table, unethical, extortionary and illegal trolling usually flies just fine.
Take an example from another licensed practice: operating a vehicle on public roads. Knowledge, skill, and being of age are enough to elicit an initial trust from your local authorities. But if you violate that trust by, say, willfully disregarding a red light, your license may be revoked, not because you forgot what red lights mean, or because you stopped being skilled at using your brakes, but because your holding of this license is now demonstrated to be a threat to public safety.
The objective of a licensing system is to protect others from harm before it happens. The threat of losing a license is a good deterrent, and better, often, than the threat of criminal punishment, precisely because it's easier to invoke. (You called it "for arbitrary reasons", which is false, by the way.)
Uhh... Did we read the same article?
How is that not outright fraud?
At the same time, the very existence of disbarring without the due process required for convictions, also means, the "good ones" wouldn't risk it by speaking up and demanding "prosecution" of their peers.
Sure, but the revoking of license can be codified into the law, essentially, the same "disqualification" but under the same framework of law as for any other crime and punishment, most of it anyways.
Eh. Prosecuting someone for borderline calls and novel arguments is a slippery slope, but unambiguous and intentional fraud isn't that.
Damn.
"The respondent also admitted that his grandfather died on April 9, 2019, and was buried that same day."
His grandfather did pass away a few days prior.
Depending upon what was happening with the related family, there can be a whole bunch of things that need urgently taking care of in relation to it.
We miss things all the time: Flights, meetings, tests, etc.
We have normalized missing to then try to explain after the fact. Thats not how it works for the courts. You must show up unless you are physically unable to do so. Yhis is why the burial date mattered.
Clearly a death on the same day would make it impossible to attend. But a few days prior would mean its not impossible. You simply need to notify and a new date is granted. Its just poor planning on the plaintiff side.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdgWccrJAy6scjRxG7bf...
56 videos, heh. :p
Is that because of an accusation of using a reference, or copying a reference too closely, or something like being sued for using their own work?
Imagine the power imbalance when one of these multi-billion dollar monopolists go after some random individual for downloading a song or something.
My client, The Walt Disney Company, is suing your client, Luke, for copyright infringement.
Additionally my client is suing GGP’s client for the offer of water, in which my client believes they have a valid interest but were not given due consideration in the making of this offer.
He clearly knew what he was doing was wrong.
Why shouldn’t there be some criminal statute to punish him? Nothing here fixes any of the harm he’s caused. It just (hopefully) prevents him from doing it in the future.
Though based on how he got here I’m guessing he’ll find a new way.
Virtually every crime costs other people time and money. We generally draw a line between that and more severe varieties of crime, such as those involving physical violence.
Seeing as how he is not required to make his victims whole, even prison time is getting off lightly.
Other criminals don't usually get to keep the proceeds of their crimes, even with prison time.
If the court ordered prison this time, he still gets to enjoy the proceeds when he gets out.
Why is it shady when done properly? Copyright violations are a valid concern for photographers.
The issue is that it isn't.
The economics of it don't militate in favor of diligence and precision. An individual claim is rarely going to be for a lot of money so to turn it into a profitable business it requires scale. At which point they typically rely on automated systems with a significant false positive rate that don't take into account possible fair use etc. Meanwhile the coercion to settle applies just as much to an innocent party, because the premise is "pay a little to avoid an expensive court battle" which is still coercive even if you could win in court.
Practices that involve shaking down innocent people are shady.
I've seen cases of e.g. big newspapers publishing photos without permission and when asked politely to purchase a license reply that "you should be proud of your work being published in such a respectable establishment as ours". For a photographer in question an "expensive court battle" is an obstacle just the same and I have nothing against a lawyer who makes a living out of cases like this.
That this is an obstacle for the photographer is exactly the issue. The scale is required in order for it to become a "practice area" (as opposed to e.g. a pro bono case taken on the side), and the shady practices come with the scale.
Isn't it? I thought the MAFIAA had made it so that copyright violations incurred $150,000 in damages per work infinged?
I've seen some photographers wanting to sue clients because they cropped or modified their wedding pictures when posting them online. "It doesn't reflect my style" is the argument I've seen excusing this behaviour. I understand that there's a creative aspect to photography, but in my opinion it's mostly linked to subject choice and overall aesthetic. In wedding pictures, the subject is pretty obvious and non-novel, the artistic choices around background / decoration are not made by the photographer, and (this is IMO the crucial point) the photographer is paid for their time while they create the pictures. This makes it pretty clearly a "work made for hire" in terms of copyright, which should be pretty familiar to everyone here.
Now, a photographer that goes out on their own, sees something that nobody else saw, captures it in an interesting way, makes a beautiful edit of said capture, and finally sells that picture on their website; that absolutely is creative work and wholly deserves copyright protection.
Including New York, though he has to wait seven years before he can apply for reinstatement.
~~~
See ”Should Permanent Disbarment be Permanent?”
https://web.archive.org/web/20081112072221/http://findarticl...
It's not like it's a trial.
Going by how many people fall for the most stupid of spam mails, that's gotta be a billion-dollar industry too, then.
Is "I am an authorised representative for XYZ, and you are infringing on their copyright. Please pay us $xxxx or we will prosecute" "giving another an opinion as to the law"? I could see it being so.
This article is so poorly written and uninformed, it conflates asserting copyright infringement against an entity that licensed the photo, with the court demanding past licenses as a means of calculating actual or statutory damages.
Liebowitz problem is that he has lied to courts several times previously, about things as trivial as scheduling issues, or the basic facts of his case as the article points out. His disbarrment has nothing to do with him asserting copyright cases, it has to do with him lying. Unfortunately the term troll is used against pretty much any photographer asserting their legal rights over the work that they own.
I assume this was meant to be some pop culture joke I didn't get.