Randazza
Liberty Media v. John Does 1-441 lawsuit is dismissed
The header says it: this case is over for now. Although this dismissal is without prejudice, which means that the Does can be pursued in the future, the time is on their side — because they have more time to educate themselves and become less shakedown-prone, and because copyright trolling disease cannot last forever: the crisis is over, the recovery has started (IMO).
The dismissal happened immediately after a defendant’s attorney Charles Thomas removed this case to the federal court (PAED). I believe that there is more than one reason for this rather unexpected dismissal:
- This particular federal court is ripe for getting rid or trolls for good.
- Comcast was serious about not giving away its customers’ identities easily.
- As I tweeted and wrote in comments, I had a gut feeling that Liberty Media’s counsel Jordan Rushie is not a greedy scum like the majority of the bittorent trolls, but rather a guy who was deceived by Marc Randazza, and who actually believed that he was doing the right thing. I hope that he realized that it is better to keep away from mass-suing individuals, especially given the flawed infringement detection methods that result in many innocents dragged into this misery.
- I hope that the publicity we helped to create was also a factor. I doubt that Pennsylvania’s pre-complaint discovery loophole will be abused again in order to generate shakedown lists.
Coverage
- Read about this dismissal on Charles Thomas’ site (Wayback Machine cached)
Update
9/5/2015
An elephant-sized bullet point is missing. As we didn’t possess all the information, it was not possible to tell the whole story at the time of the writing of this post: Randazza’s scandalous departure from Liberty was one of the main reasons of the dismissal. This mega-frivolous fishing expedition would crumble anyway, but the haste of the dismissal was surely related to the linked event.
Fight © Trolls 
Congrats to the Does!!!!! Keep up the fight!
Down with all Trolls
I just had to go post on Charles Thomas’s site…
Sometimes I have to much fun laughing at Randazza…
As one of the John Does in this case, I hereby would like to express a big “F YOU” to LMH LLC!
As one of the “Does”, it feels good that the little guys can fight back and have a victory!!!!! Congrats to all of you who filed your motion to Quash, it was stressful , not easy to file when you live out of state no one wanted to help , but thanks to one man who decided to sit down and listen to me and about our fight , he work at the the Philadelphia court of commons, his name was Pete. There was a confusion on how and where to file not only with “Does” but also within the courthouse . A lot of our Motions were rejected in the beginning due to the confusion , but after Pete listened and actually heard me and my frustration he decided to go to the motion dept ( he worked the discovery dept ) and had a meeting to come to an agreement with that dept on how to file a Motion to Quash and what department would handle it , so we could be heard. So thank you Pete! You are truly a hero in my eyes, you stepped up and did something that helped a lot of victims to be able to fight back !!!!
Ok , I went on the online filing to check the status of this case , I see that on 9-10-2012 there is a “motion/petition , withdrawn moot, then it says ” notice of removal to U.S (Eastern) District court, 2:12-CV-04703, What does this mean ?
“The dismissal happened immediately after a defendant’s attorney Charles Thomas removed this case to the federal court (PAED)”
Basically Mr. Thomas filed a motion moving this case to Federal Court where it belonged, and LMH via their lawyer then folded the case to avoid that.
The motion was moot most likely because the case had been moved to Federal Court taking it out of the hands of the State Court judge.
The doc embedded above is them dropping the case from the Federal Court, without prejudice (means they have the right to try again in the future), to avoid having to file an actual complaint and reveal what they were up to by trying to “game” the system by filing what for all intents and purposes was a copyright case (Federal Law) in a state court with some crazy notions to get names to extort.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this …..
Explaining these things educates people, and educated people stop fearing trolls, and that means trolls are unhappy, and that means I laugh. 🙂
I don’t get to do as much as I would like these days, reality is way to annoying sometimes so I’m glad to be able to do a little bit here and there.