Give me a break. One single misguided DMCA notice does not make one a copyright troll.
DMCAs shouldn't be filed lightly (unless you have the legal resources of the RIAA/MIAA/etc to dissuade your targets from retaliation).
Not a lawyer, and haven't talked to a lawyer? Don't file a DMCA no matter how butthurt you are about being 'copied'. Just because it is relatively easy to do doesn't mean you should do so in the spur of the moment. It is a Real Legal Thing with Real Ramifications, and this is good because it limits the amount to which bad actors can abuse it, but it also means you should be really sure you're the victim of copyright violations prior to using it yourself.
Or, alternatively, they might realize what a mistake taking this approach was and never do it again. That's what I think is "highly likely" here.
If you murdered someone in 1995, would you be a murderer?
As I replied to electic, how would you feel if I described myself as a singer upon meeting someone, having only sang for 3 minutes out of the decades of my life? "Oh, hi, I'm lowboy, and I'm a singer".
The persistent/active component is in having the personal constitution necessary to engaged in the action in question. The type of person, for instance, who files a false DMCA take-down request -- censoring another person's speech -- without understanding or appreciating the ethical and legal implications of what they are doing.
"Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown" -- https://github.com/designmodo/Flat-UI
But having the constitution to do an act doesn't mean one is a repeated doer of that act. Has LV actively trolled, or tried to censor people's speech in the past? If not, they shouldn't be described as patent trolls, merely that they are currently engaged in an act of patent trolling.
This whole thread (and my objections to the use of language here) was based on onemorepassword's comment[0] that ended with a definitive "LayerVault are copyright trolls and bullies", which I read as speaking to their core and not just what they're doing at the moment.
Maybe omp has knowledge of LV having a past history of copyright trolling, but I don't think it's a fair statement to make based on one bad-faith filing, as abhorrent as that move was.
Dictators are a really poor example here, often it is not quite as clear-cut and there is no point in time you can say then he became a dictator. Not even in hindsight, it is usually a rise to power over years until their power becomes absolute.
"one or more"
So, no.
Please answer my question about me describing myself as a singer. Would you feel I was being dishonest as describing myself as such?
It doesn't matter if you sang for 10 minutes or for 100 hours. There is no magic threshold number. If you identify yourself as a singer, you can claim to be one legitimately.
You would only be dishonest if you claimed to be a professional singer or a regular singer.
And at THIS point in time, they DO file the DMCA thing.
It doesn't seem like he's learned anything, considering he's making jokes about it on twitter:
https://twitter.com/Allan/status/309415721941753857
People who drag others into expensive, unwarranted legal situations are a blight on the entrepreneurial community.
No, responding to and dealing with a DMCA notice takes 5 minutes and a couple keystrokes. You send a counternotice, a simple e-mail you can copy and paste from any number of examples. There are no attorneys fees until there's an actual lawsuit, and there's never going to be one here.
Showing that they were incorrect does not show they are a troll.
The term refers to entities who are in the business of enforcing patents they aren't generally even using in the marketplace. This is distinct from someone who actually thinks their work is being affected, as is the case here (even though in this case it seems to be overblown).
That makes you the worst kind of troll out there, a knowingly lying one.