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US Marshals Ordered To Seize Righthaven Property
An anonymous reader writes "Troubled times ahead for Righthaven, as Ars Technica reports that the U.S. Marshals have been instructed 'to use "reasonable force" to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets from the Las Vegas copyright troll after Righthaven failed to pay a court judgment from August 15.'"
and sell them at sheriff's auction.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm assuming that any real money(if Righthaven wasn't itself the assetless shell company being used by the real money) will already have been snuck of the premises by various means, with nothing but a bunch of leased office furniture and a few cheap suits on site; but some days watching those who would crush others with the force of law having their stuff dumped into the street and sold off is just satisfying...
The cyclically-evicted members of the poor are all too familiar with the treatment; but we don't give it to the arrogant nearly as often as would be socially useful...
Take their domain, computers and women!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Copyright laywer troll companies beware!
I could pay them a visit. What would you /. ers do? Egg 'em?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
This victory is relatively insignificant compared to the massive corporate extortion schemes from the likes of MPAA/RIAA, tech companies, and other industry giants, that go unabated.
but some days watching those who would crush others with the force of law having their stuff dumped into the street and sold off is just satisfying
Retribution does satisfy the primal urges, but it doesn't help me all that much (as a member of this society).
I want to be able to search a database of scumbags - their name, dob, and known mailing addresses, so I can avoid ever getting into a business transaction with them. The US Marshalls stealing their copy machine doesn't actually help society in any meaningful way.
Retributive justice is deeply ingrained in human society, but we have the tools to progress beyond that now.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The extortionists examined in this episodeof This American Life.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
I used to know a guy that had become a millionaire using the "calculated risk" model.
He created bunch of B2B "information" and "benefits" products that were really just marketing copy in large volumes. He'd pay online contract workers $pennies to create both the marketing and the essentially nonexistent/useless product that amounted to a website with a login and a search box (that didn't show results for much of anything) and a lot of graphics of people playing golf and enjoying themselves and sitting and desks being productive and other $1 microstock-style photos.
He'd then sell annual contracts to corporations for $hundreds of thousands or even $millions. Eventually in the case of each "business" than he started there would be legal action from one or two clients, but he always settled and many more clients just wrote it off and didn't "renew" the subscription to the "service" the following year.
Of course, the following year there would be another service on the market, different name, different website, different graphics, different "product," same quality level.
What made it work for him was the way he presented in person—professional, gregarious, confident, with a great suit and a great golf game.
The man was a millionaire many times over and I'm glad I don't know him anymore.
How date they enlist the police to seize all this property over a civil matter. Oh wait this is someone we hate unlike the piratebarry guys? Oh, never mind. Woot for justice!
...this is taking place on American soil. The Pirate Bay stuff happened in Sweden, where they were heavily influenced by the American government. Incidentally, being a politician and succumbing to foreign influence is a pretty big crime in Sweden.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Dude, the real problem with the piratebay related seizures was that they seized a lot of servers hosted by the hosting company but owned by other unrelated companies and organizations, not just the PBs, to scare away customers. PB couldn't care less, they had their shit up and running within 48 hours while others had to wait for months to get their hardware back and the incident cost them large amounts of money. So it's the fugly illegal intimidation tactics that most reacted to. Anyway, thanks for playing.
The people behind Righthaven must have known this would have a high probability of happening, and prepared to cast off the company when they had gotten what mileage they could out of it. So we have the pleasure of seeing the name disappear and some rented furniture thrown out into the street, but they'll just try again elsewhere. This is but a small battle in a large war. On the other hand, we *did* win this one, and some celebration is probably in order.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I want to see the lawyer lose his ticket.
We've crushed our enemies, now we need to see them driven before us and hear the lamentations of their women
Its interesting, there are some details about them on the http://righthavenlawsuits.com/ website.
"Righthaven LLC is owned 50/50 by two limited liability companies. The first is Net Sortie Systems, LLC, which is owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson – the Nevada attorney who is behind all of the lawsuits filed by Righthaven. The second is SI Content Monitor LLC, which is owned by family members of investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens whose investments include Stephens Media, LLC which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal."
These are the people I wish they would go after for this.
Time to dance in the streets. I love it when abusive tactics come full circle to bite 'em in the ass!
Let me preface this with I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV. It is possible to go after the corp partners. The LLC does not protect you in case of fraud. Since Righthaven did not own the copyrights and filed suit anyway. This caused the defendant to have to defend himself to fraudulent accusations. If it can be shown that Righthaven knew or should have known that they had no standing to bring suit then the hurdle to pierce the corp veil is low. I think that that since the judge has ruled against Righthaven at every turn that a ruling to pierce the LLC and allow the partners to be held liable would not be a hard case to make.
We already have a precedent for this: sex offender database.
There's only one fitting comment:
Bwuahahahahaha!!!
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The pattern is no how criminal these people are.
The pattern (in my personal opinion) is that these folks caused great embarrassment to the bar.
It seems to me that being a great big known criminal is okay, just don't make the news.
--
Even then, after it all blows over, you can get back in.
No brain, no pain.
They didn't get US Marshals to seize property based on the court judgement - as yes, that is a civil matter. However, a civil judgement has the weight of law behind it to enforce it, which Righthaven ignored, or failed to obey in regards to the court judgement - which was cause for the judge to issue an order to secure the property to force compliance, as well as issuing a contempt charge (most likely). The goods weren't 'seized' as such, only secured so that a trustee could be appointed to sell them to satisfy the judgement.
It's the same principle in that law enforcement secures property in a bankruptcy proceeding during a Sheriff sale (if I remember right), they are not seizing it for direct payment - they are securing it for storage until such time a trustee can sell it to convert the assets into cash money.
Lets hope this sets a precedent so that someone can sue apple for predatory practices in their bogus IP suits so that goolge can continue to dominate the market and apple can wither and die as they deserve.
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