Copyright trolls
Copyright troll Keith Lipscomb “acknowledges” his mistake… by continuing to twist arms of an undeniably wrongly accused
Attorney M. Keith Lipscomb tries to jump out of his skin attempting to distance himself from the media’s favorite scapegoat John Steele. Lipscomb has even managed to convince Judge Baylson to declare our troll “not a copyright troll,” the fact that raised many brows, even among legal scholars. One thing is to obtain a “he-is-not-a-duck” affidavit form a judge, another is to pass the duck test. No matter what was the botched Bellwether lawsuit’s judgment, a trail of douchbaggery that Lipscomb leaves behind him stinks so badly that even causal spectators have started to realize: Keith Lipscomb’s conduct is no better than Prenda’s.
I wrote about the Pelizzo case back in October: even at that time it was obvious that there were way too many pointers to the defendant’s innocence. I recommend reading this post, or, alternatively having a look at the “Background” section of the motion embedded above.
To recap, Lipscomb picked a very odd target to pursue: a religious 61-year old man who was not in the country during almost the entire period, when the alleged infringement was allegedly taking place. In addition, it quickly became clear that the evidence (provided by his ISP Hotwire) that links Mr. Pelizzo to file-sharing happened to be shaky (to put it mildly).
Long story short, Lipscomb finally essentially acknowledged Mr. Pelizzo’s innocence and dismissed the case with prejudice on 4/26/2013 (approved by Judge Seitz on 6/4/2013). So, everyone is happy less some nerves. Right? Some may assume that Lipscomb extended his sincere apologies and even offered some compensation for Mr. Pelizzo’s troubles (his jaded “clients” Brigham Field and Colette Pelissier undoubtedly could afford a face-saving gesture). Right?
Wrong: we are talking about the scum incapable of any empathy or dignity, despite his purported Christianity.
In fact, Lipscomb realized that he had been targeting a wrong man shortly after the shakedown lawsuit was commenced (see the previous post — how Lipscomb initially filed a response full of excuses). As time was passing by, more and more gaping holes in the evidence became visible:
On October 23, 2012, Plaintiff’s counsel sent the undersigned an email noting that “[o]ddly, the infringements are continuing on the same IP Address which was previously assigned to your client.” This acknowledged Defendant’s evidence that the infringing IP Address was not, at least as of September 10, 2012, assigned to Mr. Pelizzo’s unit. Plaintiff’s counsel did not — despite this “oddity” — offer to dismiss the action. He did, however, relay his intent to depose Hotwire to determine how Mr. Pelizzo had come to be associated with the infringing IP Address.
Hotwire’s corporate designee, Laurie M. Murphy, Esq. was finally deposed on March 12, 2013 (transcript). By this date, nearly five months had elapsed since Plaintiff’s concession that the infringing activities were continuing vis-à-vis an IP Address no longer associated with Mr. Pelizzo’s unit. Nevertheless, Plaintiff does not appear to have used this time to determine the identity of the actual infringer or otherwise substantively inquire about the information upon which his allegations relied.
[Hotwire’s] Ms. Murphy, for example, testified:
- that “Hotwire cannot definitively identify a subscriber”;
- that the IP addresses allocated to Mr. Pelizzo’s 700+ unit condominium building are assigned to the “entire building” — not individual units — and kept “in a constant sort of mixing pod”;
- that IP addresses not used for 24 hours — such as if “someone goes on vacation” — “just go back into the mix”;
- that Hotwire’s search had been limited to identifying the subscriber associated with the infringing IP Address on February 6th, 20127 (and, therefore, twenty-nine (29) days after Mr. Pelizzo had already been out of the country and not using his internet connection);
- that the aforementioned search was conducted without supervision by a “technician” that is no longer employed by Hotwire;
- that Hotwire has no records or logs of this search and, therefore, cannot verify that the technician inputted the correct IP Address or hit dates;
- that Hotwire’s subscriber information is provided by the condominium building but that the accuracy of this information is not verified as “individual details are not that important”; and
- that, while internet ports assigned to individual units can be mislabeled, that Hotwire never made an effort to verify that Mr. Pelizzo’s internet port had been correctly labeled.
Isn’t the above information sufficient to apologize and resolve the conflict amicably? Sorry for insulting your intelligence, guys, by such a question.
Given the obviousness of the wrong accusation, Francisco Ferreiro emailed Lipscomb on March 21, 2013 — nine days after the deposition — with a request that Plaintiff (1) dismiss this action with prejudice; (2) file a statement publicly acknowledging that Mr. Pelizzo was incorrectly identified as an infringer of pornography; and (3) reimburse Mr. Pelizzo for the legal fees incurred as of that date.
Now finally comes the part that explains all my anger and disgust expressed above. Here is Lipscomb’s reply:
Francisco,
Your offer is rejected.
I will see you at trial.Best regards,
Keith
…and later the same day (emphasis is mine):
Francisco,
I would like to depose Mr. Pelizzo during the first two weeks of April. Please provide me with deposition dates. If you do not, I will unilaterally set it. Also, I am going to make a physical inspection of the port at the applicable building. If you have blackout dates in the second two weeks of April, please advise. Finally, I am going to depose the IT manager at Hotwire. The 30(b)(6) deposition pointed to only one possible error in the identification process. Once I close that loop, our case will be rock solid extremely strong. As you may know, BitTorrent continues to distribute until a user tells affirmatively tells a BitTorrent Client to stop distributing the torrent file so your client being in-and-out of town during the applicable period of time does not undermine the assertion that he is the infringer. The list of infringements against your client is enormous. Respectfully, you should counsel him that when he loses, he will lose everything he owns and owe my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mark these words, your client’s decision to reject a walk away will be the worst decision he will ever make.
Crystal,
Please send Francisco our offensive discovery by COB Monday.
Thanks,
Keith
On March 22, 2013, Plaintiff’s counsel made good on his threat to continue prosecuting this action against an innocent party by serving the defendant with frivolous Interrogatories and Requests for Production.
Conclusion
Followup
This case was closed on 3/28/2014. The followup post has details:
…yet it is not done yet. Appeal!
…the appeal was lost, so Pelizzo goes to the Supreme Court:
Fight © Trolls 
Great post. Frankly I had assumed, like you, that Lipscomb had settled this snafu out of court by reimbursing Mr. Pelizzo’s legal fees. The fact that he did not do so speaks volumes about his character, professionalism and judgement IMO.
Wow, even by by copyright troll standards this is hard to believe.
Didn’t Butterball’s religious studies teach him greed and pride are two of the seven deadly sins?
That line about “… lose everything he owns …” should be sanctionable conduct on its face and subject Lipscomb to a bar investigation. Absolutely unnaceptable behavior from an officer of any court that belongs in any civilized nation. Will there ever be enforced standards of conduct for attorneys?
Waiting for Collette to appear.
You’ll notice Colette by the less-than-5 rating above the post 🙂
(and I’ll notice her by her IP address – LOL)
Lipscomb has finally noticed this post: his entire office has been reading it over the last hour.
I wonder if she will be willing to talk about this case. Listening to her on the last topic you would think she would never allow for innocents to be targeted and both her and her lawyer are good people.
Well, Colette, here’s more proof that you employ a scumbag for a lawyer and try to extort money out of innocent people. Are you proud enough to say it or will we have more legal threats instead?
P.S Heard about Germany. Maybe someone could set up a nice filehost there just for X-Art material. The Internet does things like that when you upset it.
Also this matter is before my favorite FLSD judge. 🙂
I’m continually amused by Lipscum’s multiple personalities.
In the Bellwether audio, and most of the filings which he intends for the court to see, like 39-2, he’s obsequious and apologetic to the point you almost feel sorry for him. He’s the class nerd and seems terrified of his own voice. He’s a good and active Christian, and nevermind that he works in pimping out eastern European sex slaves.
In a position where he believes he’s in control, like threatening an old immigrant out of sight of the judge, he turns into Beria with a legal pad.
It takes a special kind of sociopath to sleep at night after making a living this way. Steele’s textbook megalomania wasn’t a very original one. Butterball’s rack full of different hats is a symptom of the same narcissism but it comes off in a more interesting way.
Regardless of how badly he wants to shake off the term “copyright troll”, Lipscomb’s not helping himself, wielding the bravado and “pound of flesh” vindictiveness that the RIAA had. And guess things turned out for them after it was revealed they were calling up Tanya Andersen’s daughter, posing as her grandmother and demanding that her mother confess.
It’s looking like he’s trying to use his “success” in the Bellwether as a licence to believe everyone he sues is guilty. One can only hope this all ends badly for Lipscomb and he ends up the likes of Evan Stone.
Too bad, Colette. Looks like there’ll be nothing to stop filthy Germans from stealing your art.
I cannot even conceive of what it is like to have no apparent moral conscience whatsoever, and the correspondence here in particular really indicates that something really horrible happened to Keith Lipscomb before his supposed Campus Crusade for Christ days and today.
The obvious enjoyment he takes in threatening to ruin someone completely…I don’t even know what to say about someone so morally vacant. I want to express disgust or anger or something but what I feel is a kind of horror that people are out there like this and practicing law.
The Michael Keith Lipscomb/X-Art/Malibu Media/Brigham Field/Colette Pelissier porn purveyor crew has made millions through unjustly and/or disproportionally threatening citizens with legal action. It would have been a trivial expense to quietly dismiss this case and make a small cash settlement (perhaps with a non-disclosure agreement).
Instead, the written Lipscomb response is to double down on intimidation and outrageous projections. It portrays conduct of reactivity rather than conscience or sensibility. This appears in keeping with other behavior.
Another statement is revealing. Lipscomb writes “…I am going to make a physical inspection of the port at the applicable building.”
In several years of alleged infringement legal shenanigans, there is no indication that Mr. Lipscomb has any hardware or forensic I.T. expertise. If he did, wouldn’t he have tried to establish the legitimacy of the so-called forensic claims much earlier?
Was the prospect of Lipscomb visiting the site to look at hardware supposed to be a bluff? Does it represent Mr. Lipscomb’s sense of self importance? Was it meant to suggest the gravitas of his personal visit should scare a legal adversary?
The extortionists got another default judgement, this time in FL. Can someone lookup the details in pacer. http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/florida-southern-district-court/435069/malibu-media-llc-v-john-doe/summary/
Here it is but the math does not add up on first glance. http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.flsd.415599/gov.uscourts.flsd.415599.17.0.pdf
Yes, I couldn’t figure out if the “for a total of” was cost that got added to the attorneys fees amounts and that amount got added to the statutory damages, or if someones math was really bad.
In reference to the link to the Interrogatories. This is the second time that I have read one of Lipscomb’s Interrogatories, and my non-legal mind wonders how many of his questions can be replied to with the Legal version of “None of your damned business”? He might have the right to ask what computers I have in my house. The fact that I like to read about any come-upance that might befall him on this site is really none of his business.
There seems to be no limit to what Colette, Brigham, X-Art/Malibu Media, and Lipscomb will do to get money, typical porn industry preying on everyone for a buck.
The reason they keep a keepin on is because it has not gone public enough. there have been a few main stream media stories on the trolling ops but not enough to make a vast majority of “customers” retreat from their media. I have said all along that the answer is to get this out totally in the open and in the publics full line of site. In an instant their businesses would crumble and they would have to find another scam operation.
DId anyone see the bit re the MAC address bit in the deposition? pp 73-74
MR. LIPSCOMB: Francisco, I’m looking at the subpoena. It’s not on the original Bill of Discovery Subpoena. Just by way of background, we had asked every ISP in that subpoena to over 430 across the country, and we routinely and constantly ask for MAC addresses and never got back one from any ISP ever. And I think at some point, after all of those failures, we stopped including the request for a MAC address. And I’m learning, for the very first time in this deposition, that somebody actually could have possibly given me a MAC address. So that’s the back story on the MAC address.
How could Plaintiff ever establish an infringer without a physical device ID?
Maybe I am off here but isn’t this a good thing? Here we have lipscomb on the record PERSONALLY making threats and attempting to intimidate a defendant he knows to be innocent. This will certainly set back any sort of legitimacy the supposed bellwether had given him.
Colette is busy at work writing BS (IMO) – http://wp.me/a1OhOw-1nJ
DTD 🙂
Thanks, DTD, it is so outrageous that I couldn’t help making a short post.