For some time we have said that companies that file bad lawsuits or that continue to make obviously incorrect claims in the market should have consequences. Apple is probably one of the worst with their continuous stream of allegations against Google, Samsung,  HTC, LG, and pretty much everyone else that they “slavishly copy” Apple and do not invent their own technology. This has been repeated so often that it is boring and even cursory glance at the any two products (go ahead and pick two) will show significant differences. There is almost no chance of the wide spread consumer confusion that Apple is trying to claim on a daily basis.

We have been following the MegaUpload case very closely since it was revealed that the FBI probably overstepped their bounds in both the requesting of search warrants for the Dotcom mansion and in taking evidence back to the US without judicial review to make sure the evidence was relevant to the case. Now there is the possibility that the MPAA and others met with Vice President Joe Biden to request he push for the MegaUpload take down. This is something that many already believe, but now it seems there might be some evidence to make this claim more credible.

Conflict of Interest; it is an interesting term. As an absolute definition it means; “when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.” As a legal term (as you might imagine) there are multiple meanings with enough ambiguity to keep things interesting. However, to one group of people most notably the MPAA and RIAA it is a way to support and defend their position in the world when they push their lawsuits around the globe. In part two of our look at the MegaUpload case we will dig into how the Content Industry and the DoJ have tried to deny even the right to a defense to MegaUpload.

Remember the original trial for the “criminal” copyright infringement case against The Pirate Bay (TPB) and some of the shady things that went on behind the scenes? Well now we find that the copyright industry is doing it again, this time with the legal proceedings that just arranged for all links, proxies and any other references to The Pirate Bay banned in the Netherlands. This is actually popping up right after we talked about the methods the industry will go to just to maintain control.

It is certainly a sign of the apocalypse; common sense and actual intelligent thought is beginning to enter into the court system. A judge in Texas by the name of David Godbey has fined a lawyer for abusing this power. You see what happened was a lawyer by the name of Evan Stone had brought a suit against multiple suspected file sharers for allegedly sharing a German pornographic film. As it fairly typical in these cases the Stone thought he had an easy target. He asked Judge Godbey if he could have early discovery. Early Discovery is designed to allow for the suspect’s ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to be subpoenaed to get address information. Once the Lawyers have this they send out demand letters (they call them settlement letters) which claim the suspects must pay these fines or be brought to court.

Now this tactic is really is not much better than using the court system as a collection agency. In fact in another case a Judge actually made that comparison when he asked for a listing of all of the money a leading attorney had recently made in file sharing suits. However, while the lawyer in that case only committed basic contempt of court Evan Stone did a little more. Despite Judge Godbey’s refusal to allow him early discovery Stone went ahead and did it anyway.  What happened was that Judge Godbey had asked the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen to represent the accused as he was concerned that they had none and did not even know that a case had been brought against them. The problem is that when the EFF looked into it they found things were not as they should have been.

They found out that Verizon had already given out the information to Stone and Stone in turn had had sent out “settlement” letters to an unknown number of people in this case. Judge Godbey then fined Stone $10,000 claiming that he had “grossly abused his subpoena power”. Personally I think that Evan Stone should be disbarred for his behavior. Perhaps if these lawyers had to face the consequences of their abuse of the law they would think twice about it. I also have a feeling that if we look closely enough we will find out that Stone sent out his Subpoenas to the suspect’s ISPs well before he ever asked for permission.  

Source Fudzilla
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