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Federal Court Pulls Plug On Porn Copyright Shakedown
netbuzz writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling it a 'crushing blow for copyright trolls.' A federal appeals court today has for the first time ruled against what critics call a shakedown scheme aimed at pornography downloaders and practiced by the likes of AF Holdings, an arm of notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit called the lawsuit 'a quintessential example of Prenda Law's modus operandi' in reversing a lower court ruling that would have forced a half-dozen ISPs to identify account holders associated with 1,058 IP addresses."
The problem becomes: Pay how much? A set standard rate regardless of what the loser actually paid their attorney? If I bring a lawsuit against a large corporation with an internal team of lawyers, how do I know much it really cost them to litigate? And even if I 'win' against a guy with no money, so what? And when is someone considered a 'loser', since there are so many levels of appeal?
I think the bigger problem with our legal system is that it even requires a lawyer to handle the most basic of procedures. That shows that the legal system has just become too complex to be useful. But since the legal system is ruled by lawyers (on all sides of the equation), there is little incentive for them to make the system more simplified and easy to access for the average person.
Creating a system where the poor can't afford to sue because they may have to pay for the other guy's legal costs means that only the rich would be able to afford to defend themselves.
That's already true, so lets make life better for most instead of none (legally speaking).
Well ,unless you really love lawyers who benefit most from the "sue everyone and see what sticks" approach.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not make the losing plaintiffs the lesser of the 2 legal bills? Big corp sues small guy. Small guy wins. Big corp pays his costs.
Small guy sues big corp. Small guy loses. Small guy pays the equivalent of his legal bills to the big corp.
That way, overspending isn't covered.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The current system sucks, but "loser pays" is even worse because it assumes that the person who is "wrong" is the person who always loses, and that simply is not the case.
Wow, you Republicans are getting more brazen. Creating a system where the poor can't afford to sue because they may have to pay for the other guy's legal costs means that only the rich would be able to afford to defend themselves. The legal system would become instead of 80% biased for the Republicans like we have now to 100% against the normal people. That is a horrible idea.
Wow, Talk about knee-jerk smears.
How the hell is holding lawyers accountable for this kind of crap REPUBLICAN???
You want your little guy to have the ability to sue? Exempt class-action suits from loser-pays, or, better yet, make the plaintiff's LAW FIRM pay in class-action suits, or maybe even in suits with contingency-based fees.
Capcha: slither. Quite appropriate when responding to someone defending lawyer's ability to win huge fees no matter what the outcome of the case is.
If you actually read anything about this case or ones brought by the MPAA: plaintiffs cannot file lawsuits against multiple people at once that are not joined or related. If the copyright holders wish to sue any individual they have to bring individual lawsuits.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Have both parties pay into a pool managed by the court, legal bills need to be addressed to the court and each party can only spend half of the pool. Frivolous cases can still be reimbursed as with the current system, but you need to think more carefully about any money you spend since that money also helps your opponent.
The current system (in U.S. District courts) *is* loser pays (see U.S. F.R.Civ.P. rule 54(d)).
Where the federal courts differ from most "loser pays" systems is that evidence of offers to settle ahead of a trial is generally excluded as a matter of policy.
Pretty much no loser-pays system (and that includes federal courts and several private law systems in the various states) actually requires that the loser *always* pays the full costs of the other side *in all circumstances*; wide latitudes are given to the courts to assess costs in a way it feels is just, or appropriate to the behaviour of the parties, etc. U.S. district courts have narrower latitude than both, owing in part to statute.
Generally speaking, if no offers to settle out of court are made (and thus also not rejected), then the loser generally is assessed costs unless it would be unjust to do so, thus "loser pays". However, offers to settle out of court are normal and even in district courts are encouraged to avoid unnecessary court costs and time dealing with controversies which can be worked out by the litigating parties outside of court.
In most loser-pays systems costs are assessed against parties who should have ended litigation sooner. For example under most systems that use a regulated offer along the lines of the Calderbank rules (this is definitely untrue of many state systems and U.S. district courts, but is true in some states, such as Florida), a winning party that was made an offer to settle out of court that it rejected and subsequently did not beat in court is usually assessed at least some proportion of the offeror's costs after that point, even if the offeror is ultimately the losing party. That is, even though the party won, it could have achieved the same result with fewer costs to the parties and the courts, and should therefore bear some of those avoidable costs. There are often codified forms of offer which make it even more clear that refusing a well-pitched offer could be expensive (as in Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules (England and Wales)) for a party that does not subsequently better it.
Additionally, most systems allow the parties to agree on how to split costs in order to avoid further litigation on who should pay which costs; the motions under F.R.Civ.P rule 54(d)(1)&(2) are frequently consent motions agreed between the parties after judgement.
http://www.nlrg.com/public-law...
It's an interesting idea, but if you raise the evidentiary bar you raise the cost of litigating civil cases. The higher cost would probably also increase damage awards, necessary for individual plaintiffs to pursue cases with more rigorous evidence requirements. You could actually end up making it more lucrative for trial lawyers by increasing the total amount they receive or cause them to increase the percentage of settlement monies they claim, which also impacts plaintiffs who would obtain less relief through smaller net judgements after legal fees.
There's also the chilling effect it could have on individual civil plaintiffs -- if the evidentiary standard is higher, many people may be discouraged from seeking relief in the courts because they would be even more unable to compete against deep-pocketed adversaries.