US Lawyers Target Swedish Pirate, and His Unicorn

Chaonici writes "When a Swedish citizen identified as Ryan heard about US movie studio Liberty Media's plan to get copyright infringers to confess and voluntarily pay up, he couldn't stop himself from sending them a satirical email promising that he will pay 'from the pot of gold I got at the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow', regardless of scathing criticism of the studio from his unicorn. However, despite his location, the jesting nature of the email, and his insistence that he has never downloaded anything for which the studio is suing, Liberty Media's lawyers have taken the 'confession' seriously, and have issued a subpoena to Google for personal information related to Ryan's Gmail account. In a phone call, the legal team affirmed their determination to 'hunt him down, all the way to Sweden if need be.'"

Comments

Re:First, kill all the laywers

[SudoGhost]

Actually this is their train of thought: If someone messes with us or tries to interfere with us, then let's make it as expensive, time consuming, and difficult for them as possible, and make knowledge of our actions public as possible, to set an example.

Re:Wise-ass

[lordholm]

No one stole anything through pirate bay, they may have committed copyright infringement, but that is an entirely different thing.

As a side note, the postal office enables people to send drugs and bombs to each other, they are still not held accountable, despite they knowingly do this. The "enabling" part is a faulty argument. However, they did definitely knowingly host links to the files, and did not act when made aware of such files; that is a proper argument that you can build on and probably argue in a court.

Re:Wise-ass

[Archangel Michael]

My first question, if I were this guy's lawyer, would be, "Do you believe this man shared files based solely upon his email?"

If the answer is "Yes", then I would say, "That would indicate that you also believe he owns unicorns, talks to leprechauns with pots of gold at the end of rainbows based upon your same assumptions."

If the answer was "No", then I would ask, "Then what are we doing here?"

Make them look as stupid as possible.