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Copyright Troll USCG Violates Copyright
omarlittle writes "The US Copyright Group — a company owned by intellectual property lawyers, which has been in the news for threatening downloaders of the movie Hurt Locker — has apparently stolen their site from a competitor. At one point, even the competitor's phone number and copyright statement were copied word for word on USCG's 'settlement' website. The competitor is reportedly going to send a Cease & Desist."
It seems to me that the most appropriate solution to this would be to disbar the lawyers that run this firm. What they've done is clearly unethical, and it's also obvious that they were aware of (or should have been aware of) the infringement (they are intellectual property lawyers, right?).
This will discourage others from behaving this way, and will make it impossible for some obviously bad actors to earn a living by behaving badly. Perhaps they could consider a new career in fast food? In any case, I have no sympathy for these people.
Facts have a liberal bias.
copyright violation != theft
Legal and fiscal bullying is one of the more common applications of copyright law, apparently.
At first I wondered why the Coast Guard was stealing from another site than I was thinking that the copyright group stole it from the Coast Guard. But atlas the article has nothing to do with the United States Coast Guard. It is a shame that /. uses the Coast Guard's acronym to get readers to view this story.
Ironic it is. However, the real story is "copyright lawyers screwed by lazy web site developer." They paid somebody to create their website, and instead of just developing a web site, the lazy developer simply ripped off a site which served a similar business.
It's not as if the firm's lawyers sat around saying "I don't know how to design our site... why don't we just use that one and put our information on it?"