Guardaley | X-Art
Copyright troll Malibu Media targets a business, but fails to timely serve it
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By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. | |
| Immanuel Kant |
In a recent report requested by an ILDN Judge Milton Shadur, copyright troll M. Keith Lipscomb (via a local marionette Mary K. Schulz) claimed (emphasis is mine):
Malibu has adopted high standards prior to serving a Defendant and in some cases has determined to not pursue a case based on insufficient evidence. Examples of scenarios in which Malibu may dismiss based on insufficient evidence include: multiple roommates within one residence with similar profiles and interests share a single Internet connection; the defendant has left the country and cannot be located; the results of additional surveillance do not specifically match profile interests or occupation of Defendant or other authorized users of the Internet connection; the subscriber is a small business with public Wi-Fi access, etc.
Apparently, Lipscomb’s definition of “high standards” does not include such a basic virtue as truthfulness. Today I learned¹ from a defendant’s motion to dismiss one of the 2,365+ Malibu Media’s cases that the claims plaintiff makes are exaggerated (to put it mildly). The motion was filed by an Illinois attorney Jonathan Phillips in Malibu Media v. John Doe (NDIL 13-cv-08484):
Malibu has been made aware that the Defendant is a business, and incapable of doing anything, let alone infringing a work. Despite this, Malibu has failed to amend its Complaint.
The motion seeks dismissal not because of this fact though. Lipscomb/Nicoletti/Schultz apparently abandoned this case and failed to serve the defendant within 120 days of filing of the complaint, as the Rule 4(m) mandates:
The time period, over one hundred days beyond deadline, is indicative of Malibu’s want of prosecution. Counsel for Doe has repeatedly sought information on why service was not had. For example, recent emails on June 9, June 20, and June 23 all raised the issue. Not a single email received a response. No summons has been issued, no service has been had, and no request for a waiver of service has been received by counsel for Doe.
Lipscomb lost his credibility long time ago, and this is yet another confirmation: his pathetic statements are as genuine as the moans in the porn flicks he is shaking down people over.
Update
6/26/2014
Today, right after Phillips’s motion was filed and Malibu’s malicious sloppiness made the news, Nicoletti rushed to dismiss this case without prejudice, or, in other words, attempted to cut and run in a hope that no attorney fees will be awarded against him and Schultz for their chronic lack of candor.
“Not so fast!” — said Magistrate Michael T. Mason:
¹I want to take an occasion to give a shout-out to Calvin Li, who wrote a program that scans Pacer for new Malibu Media filings and tweets the results in real time. That’s why we learn about new significant events right away.
Fight © Trolls 
Didn’t Lipscomb file a declaration several time that at the slightest indication their troll suit became questionable they would drop it? I guess not.
He told the New Yorker that they can “prove every case” and that they drop a suit if there is any hint of a mistake.
I think Keith sold his soul so long ago that the actually believes his own lies. It all works if you just redefine the word ‘mistake.’ In Keith Lipscomb’s world a mistake would be suing a guilty person who’s broke and can’t afford to pay his ransom.
Suing an innocent person who pays the ransom because it’s preferable in many ways to dealing with these cockroaches for months on end? That’s not a mistake. That’s a high five.
I recall someone named John Steele making a similar statement like that. I wonder what ever happened to him…I did hear something about “shattered law practices”…
An important article might be on what is happening in default judgments. In EDPA case 2:13-cv-05917-MSG $37,677 was awarded and 2:13-cv-05894-JS $55,677 was awarded. There are about a half dozen more cases from last fall in which defendants defaulted and the judges have not ruled yet.
Two of the defaults are by grandpas one guy is 74 and the other 84. I doubt these old goats are downloading teen porn!. More likely they croaked on being served.
It looks like the award is $2250 per infringement plus attorney costs and fees.
There is no way this can be right? Lipscomb’s swears by how accurate their methods are.
As a matter of fact in the story SJD posted about the 19 Virginia cases filed by Lipscomb / Malibu Media and the court docs accompanying the story filed by Malibuwith the court, in notation #5 it states:
“Plaintiff used proven IP address geolocation technology which has consistently worked in similar cases to ensure that the Defendants acts of Copyright infringements used an Internet Protocol Address ( IP Address ) traced to a physical address located within this district and therefore this court has personal jurisdiction over the Defendant because: Defendant committed tortious conduct alleged in this state and Defendant resides in this state and/or Defendant has engaged in substantial and not isolated business in this state”
Well considering this plaintiff’s business is in this state, that’s a good guess but what about the geolocation tool that Keith likes to pipe up about?
Well in notation #6 it states:
” Based upon experience of filing over a 1,000 cases the geolcation technology used by Plaintiff has proven to be accurate to the District level in over 99% of the cases ”
Well Keith , it doesn’t appear to be so in this case ( must be the 1% fudge factor right ) Was Google maps broken the day you guys looked this address up? Maybe this is why Malibu hasn’t filed anything further on this one.
Gee I would have thought with such infallible infringing detection software and highly trained technicians at the helm whose accuracy in making sure that verification was done to make sure each hash value corresponded to Plaintiffs copyrighted work and then had the results confirmed through ” Independant Calculations” that matched what is listed on the Exhibit..
How could something go so wrong with all these check and balances in place Keith? Feel free to let us know. I am sure right now while sitting on her Chin Chilla rug in the great drinking from her $400.00 bottle of wine that Colette is just heartbroken about how some poor soul who owns a business could be a copyright infringer.
I am sure her and Brigham are in serious talks with IPP to make sure a mistake like this will never happen again and we all know they have high standards to only sue those for copyright Infringement who like high quality smut.
The likely reason they don’t sue businesses is because it would end in unintentional copyright infringement of $200 per work. And a business probably has the money to litigate. A business is ultimately responsible for what its worker do while working for business..
The claim that they don’t go after small business is pretty meaningless unless you have a corrupt judge who doesn’t mind businesses shaking down money from the poor American working stiff.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/running-wordpress-got-webshot-enabled-turn-it-off-or-youre-toast/
Dear SJD:
Check your site config!!! And keep up the good work!
Thanks for the heads up, yet FCT is hosted by wordpress.com, so this is not applicable. I’ haven’t decided yet if I wanted to switch to my own hosting: there are cons and pros. Flexibility (wordpress.com doesn’t allow javascript, period) v. less headache — both legal and technical.
SJD:
FCT is an awesome site…and it has more than adequate whiz-bang web technology to it. If it minimises your headaches, that’s probably the most important thing!
If you want me to pick nits, then there are just a few trivial ones: links from twitter on the left hand column only sometimes work, and sometime after the background loads on my old iPad I have to make the page quit loading or Chrome will crash.
In each state with so many lawsuits filed you’d think they’d have more screw ups trying to keep the stuff straight as each filing is in a different status and then they file 15 new ones the next day. I wonder if most of these shill, scumbag lawyers who work for Malibu do other work outside of this as it would seem they are too busy filing/doing settlements each day to work on real cases and just sit in their office all day dealing with other lawyers making settlements. Most of the don’t even do settlement agreements anymore once they get the money, which is all they wanted in the first place.