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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
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.
Really?
1. Set up shell company.
2. Shake down people for easy money
3. Pay yourself lots of money immediately.
4. Let shell company go bankrupt.
5. Profit!!!
No question marks. This formula will be repeated over and over. Probably by the same people.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
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)
Really?
1. Set up shell company.
2. Shake down people for easy money
3. Pay yourself lots of money immediately.
4. Let shell company go bankrupt.
5. Profit!!!
No question marks. This formula will be repeated over and over. Probably by the same people.
You should probably read up on the case a little more. For one thing, in order to pursue the cases they ended up having to transfer actual ownership of patents/copyright to Righthaven. ALL the intellectual property is potentially up for seizure if they don't have enough other assets to cover. Those companies are shitting themselves right about now.
Setting up a shell company like that is fraud, textbook almost. It doesn't shelter anything, and could open the actors up for even more liability and possible criminal charges as well.
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.
I would be hopeful but for the fact that they are subject to US law and the mechanics thereof. I think it's time to go back to the good old days of going for a walk down by the river in concrete shoes.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
It's worth noting that without limited liability, this maneuver would not be possible.
A similar idea, one that I'm sure has been used many times:
1. Get a large business loan for an LLC. (This is the hard part)
2. As head of the company, give yourself a nice large bonus, which you stash in the Cayman Islands.
3. Bank tries to recover the money from the company, but can't go after you due to it being an LLC.
4. Retire to Fiji.
I am officially gone from
Can you cite where the copyrights were transferred to them?
As I recall that was the whole point of the issues to begin with, was that they were suing without ownership.
I will be very amused if a third party that's friendly to fair use ends up owning the IP of a trollish company that willingly licensed the IP to Righthaven...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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)
This would look on the face of it to be fraud on the part of the directors, in which case limited liability no longer applies and the bank can go after the directors directly.
That doesn't stop flight with cash in the pocket as a possibility. I remember years ago that the owner of my wife and I's first apartment managed to get a few million bucks in loans from some banks in what was basically a real estate scam. When it became clear that the whole con was coming down due to a real estate crunch, he and his wife fled the country with a briefcase full of money, ending up in Cuba, where, I suppose, he remains today, safe from extradition and probably living rather well for cheap.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
That's why most banks will require a personal guarantee from the owners of a small corp/LLC.
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.
In some cases after the judge noted the lack of ownership, RightHaven had some copyrights transferred (ie for specific stories). But that didn't appease the judge who said the transferred should have occurred before not after they sued. I could have remembered it wrong.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.