Anti-Piracy Lawyer Failed to Silence Critics

[TRACKERFANCLUB]

One of the lawyers who previously claimed that piracy settlement demands were nothing else but “extortionâ€, suddenly switched sides in 2011 and started suing file-sharers. He was trying to clear the past by sending DMCA notices to the domain registrars of the anti-troll websites, but failed to achieve any results.

 

A few years ago, when starting lawsuits against BitTorrent users was a popular practice, lawyers on both sides of the copyright fence understood that there was good money to be made by getting involved.

 

On the one hand, the lawyers were working for piracy monitoring companies to track and then sue BitTorrent users in the attempt of extorting some quick and easy settlement. On the other hand, there were the “good guys†– lawyers who helped people defend against the copyright trolls.

 

Mike Meier belonged to those good guys – a DC attorney who previously placed on the EFF’s list of defense lawyers for BitTorrent users. At the time, he claimed that settlement outfits were bill collectors for the entertainment industry, who were basically extorting money.

 

However, in November 2011, a redesign of his website revealed that the lawyer had switched sides. Now the website was acting as an information portal for people the lawyer himself had sued. In the meantime, the FightCopyrightTrolls article on the topic has remained intact for about 3 years, until last week Meier tried to have it removed. The lawyer was trying to do this bypassing the FCT website operators and their webhost, and going straight for their domain registrar. Meier claimed that various pages on FCT were not just defamatory and libelous, but also infringed upon his copyrights.

 

Although the lawyer’s other allegations are focused there, his copyright complaint seems to be directed at screenshots of his website posted by FightCopyrightTrolls that provide commentary and criticism of his switching sides. Filing the complaint to Internet.bs, the lawyer goes on to warn the registrar that it has, under the law, to “remove or disable access to the infringing content upon receiving this noticeâ€, threatening it with the risk of losing the immunity from having a lawsuit brought against itself.

 

Although Internet.bs does not “host a website†as Mike Meier claimed, the registrar did not stop the lawyer from doubling up on his takedown efforts. In the meantime, the domain registrar of another website, ExtortionLetter.info, also got a DMCA notice from Mike after it quoted the article that was originally published by FCT three years ago and commented on the same.

 

Thus far, the actions of the lawyer had almost no effect. Neither of the registrars has taken down in whole or in part what he wanted – on the contrary, the articles have now become renewed topics of discussion. If you also consider the method of complaint – which is actually a pair of flawed DMCA notices sent by an apparent copyright expert – the information will now be more visible instead of being removed.

 

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article