A report crunching more than six years of copyright lawsuits filed in the U.S. has revealed that porn troll Malibu Media is the country’s most litigious plaintiff. The company, which demands thousands of dollars from individual file-sharers, filed 4,332 lawsuits since January 2009, fifteen times more than its nearest rival. Overall, it’s estimated that 90% of file-sharing cases are settled out of court.
Source: Adult Movie Outfit is Most Litigious Copyright Plaintiff in U.S. – TorrentFreak
An Ohio Judge Timothy Black clearly understands the shakedown nature of the Malibu Media/XArt pornotrolling cases, and he is irritated. Judge Black admonished the troll on more than one occasionin the past, and I find it astonishing that Malibu’s local, telephonophob Yousef Faroniya, and hispuppeteers in Miami continue playing games with this judge.
Today Judge Black issued orders to show cause in two Malibu Media v. Doe cases assigned to him (OHSD 14-cv-00707 and 14-cv-00718). This is the third OSC in each case. The first one was about Malibu not serving the defendants timely. The second OSC dealt with Malibu’s delay to apply for entry of default. And the third one was issued today — to show cause why these two cases shouldn’t be dismissed for failure to timely move for default judgement — despite explicit orders to file such motions within 21 days.
Judge’s patience is surprising, borderline frustrating, but as we read past the first three pages, it becomes clear that his patience is so thin that the next violation, no matter how small, will be disastrous for Faroniya and Lipscomb. What started as a narrow, case-related stuff, developed into a holistic, damning description of the troll’s modus operandi:
The Court does not view Malibu Media’s conduct in this action in isolation. Rather, the Court views it as part of an unmistakable pattern that has emerged in other actions before this Court and in context of observations made by multiple other federal judges in cases involving Malibu Media.
This Court has observed the conduct of Malibu Media and its counsel of record in over 60 cases filed in this District in the past twelve months. This is not the first case in which Malibu Media has filed a summons return well after the date of service. Counsel appears to have made a misrepresentation in seeking an extension of time to complete service in two cases. The Court also issued an order to show cause after counsel publicly filed a defendant’s name in direct violation of two orders unambiguously ordering counsel to file that information under seal.
today Judge Sheri Chappell awarded a $6,000 default judgement (plus $1,657.00 in fees and costs) for 47 “works” in Malibu Media v. Danford (FLMD 14-cv-00511). She reasonably ignored the overblown claim of multiple infringements, thus patching a loophole Keith Lipscomb has been abusing for years. In addition, the judge questioned the “lost revenue” hype copyright trolls are so accustomed to pulling out of thin air
Mary K Schulz, an Illinois local stooge for Keith Lipscomb’s shakedown empire, not only thinks that certain judges are assholes, but seemingly assumes that all of them are idiots, who deserve to be lied to. Since 10/10/2014 Schulz filed at least 135 copyright and patent trolling cases (Malibu Media — 120, Millionaire Media — 11, Hawk Technologies — 4). Every filing was signed as
The latest notice of appearance also indicates “Schulz Law” as Ms. Schulz’s law firm.
There is one small problem with it. According to the Illinois Secretary of State portal, “Schulz Law, P.C.” was involuntarily dissolved on 10/10/2014:
(Screenshot was taken on 4/19/2014)I would understand a case when a law firm was dissolved for not paying proper fees on time (which was the most likely reason here), but diligent steps were promptly taken to correct the problem. Unlike a voluntary dissolution, this kind of situation is mendable. I waited for the correction to happen for six months, but it seems that Ms. Schulz simply doesn’t care.
Note that in every case she filed at least five documents, all signed as “Schulz Law, P.C.,” so essentially she deceived the court more than 600 times.
These people are not only evil in their assault on the productive population, but also sloppy and disrespectful to the tribunal.
Malibu Media v. Tashiro (INSD 13-cv-00205) is an eventful case (228 documents so far), one of the few “cases to watch” — mostly copyright shakedown lawsuits in which defendants didn’t succumb to extortionists’ threats and decided to hire competent attorneys to fight back. Some of these cases (and this case in particular) have all the prospects to end up in front of a jury in the first trial of this kind.
I wrote about this case in the past: a sad story in which morally dead attorneys “on behalf” of jaded pornographers tried to extort money from an Indiana resident by threatening to destroy her life. Ironically, the defendant Kelly Tashiro is a nurse — a profession dedicated to saving lives.
Tashiro retained Jonathan Phillips and always maintained her innocence.
After the trolls realized that their case against Kelley is weak, they pointed their finger at her husband Charles, adding him as a defendant on 5/15/2014. Phillips began representing Charles too, and the newly added defendant also maintained his innocence since then. No evidence of XArt’s smut was ever found on the household hard drives by the Malibu’s expert.
As in virtually every case, when it turned out that the trolls had neither facts nor law to pound, they universally played the spoliation/perjury card, dangerously moving into the criminal law domain. Apparently, alleging criminal actions has more leverage in wrestling defendants into submission than does weaponizing the stigma attached to “barely legal” hardcore pornography.
On 1/29/2015 a big milestone — an evidence hearing — was set to happen. Not trusting his stooge Paul Nicoletti to handle the matters, Keith Lipscomb himself (with an associate) flew to Indianapolis.
On the eve of this hearing, seemingly sensing the gravity of the accusations of potentially criminal conduct, Charles Tashiro rather unexpectedly invoked the Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying about certain matters. As a result, the hearing was essentially cancelled.
The trolls went postal. A motion to sanction both Charles Tashiro and Jonathan Phillips was filed shortly thereafter. Lipscomb and Co accused Phillips of orchestrating the “sabotage” of the hearing and wanted more than $15,000 from the defendant and his former counsel.
After the botched hearing, citing the conflict of interest, Phillips withdrew as Charles Tashiro’s attorney. Erin Russell appeared on behalf of Charles shortly after.
On 3/16/2015 Phillips responded, calmly explaining the rationale behind the events that pissed off the trolls so much.
On 4/1/2015 Erin Russell also filed a short and stern response complementing Phillips’s one (this motion was even noticed by a legal media outlet).
Russell’s straightforward response resulted in a pure hysteria: it is hard to read 4/13/2015 Malibu’s reply in support without experiencing pain from rolling eyes exceedingly hard. As Raul put it in 140 characters or less,
Seen this drink before, a Malibu Media Crybaby: equal parts vitriol, hysterical accusations and clearly inadmissible evidence. 226 of 205.
I didn’t elaborate the details of the original Malibu’s Motion for Sanctions. In short, the trolls threw everything they could at the wall in a hope that something would stick. They demanded sanctions based on FRCP 37, 28 U.S.C. § 1927, the court’s inherent authority, FRCP 16, you name it…
We anticipated that the motion would be denied as meritless, but in today’s Report and Recommendations, Magistrate Dinsmore exceeded our hopes: he denied each and every claim, sometimes harshly (“This argument borders on the absurd”), and his thorough arguments didn’t leave a lint of hope for success of possible trolls’ objections to this R&R and/or Bar complaints against Phillips.
What would arrogant megalomaniac like Keith Lipscomb do when he is royally fucked up? He’d blame the opposing counsel! It happened so many times that it’s not funny anymore. Jonathan Phillips and Morgan Pietz were accused of being members of a “fanatical Internet hate group,” Gabriel Quearry tweeted the fact that XArt owners are filthy rich to “pirates,” and Jason Sweet was declared a “well known anti-copyright lawyer.” It seems that daring to interfere with a well-oiled extortion machine while being ethically and professionally superior to crooks from 2 South Biscayne penthouse will most definitely result in a couple of disparaging labels.
Now Cynthia Conlin joined the club.
On 3/25 Lipscomb filed a motion for sanctions against the defense counsel. You have to read it to believe. Meriam-Webster must consider another example to illustrate the entry for the word Chutzpah. Essentially, the troll claims that it was Conlin’s fault that her innocent client was humiliated by the accusations of torrenting “barely legal” pornography. It was her fault because… she withheld some of the exculpatory evidence proving her client’s innocence — in a conspiracy to ramp up attorney fees
Malibu Media v. John Doe (OHSD 14-cv-00493) is one of the cases I list on the “Cases to watch” page. A mere fact that the defendant is represented by Jason Sweet means that it is worth attentively watching how this case progresses.
I wrote about this lawsuit half a year ago. That post was mainly about the defendant’s argument that the plaintiff didn’t need to know the Doe’s identity because his/her attorney would happily accept the service. The motion exchange revealed that Malibu’s local Yousef Faroniya is merely a stooge who files shakedown lawsuits and forwards email to/from the troll center in Miami. Not surprisingly, he avoids talking to the opposite party’s attorneys at all costs; hence I named the post “Copyright troll Yousef Faroniya and his telephonophobia.”
Normally I would edit the post to append a new information, but because at least three major events happened since my last update, a new article is appropriate. These events are:
the judge’s order denying the defendant’s motion to quash, and striking parts of the plaintiff’s complaint;
the defense’s motion to dismiss for failure to timely serve;
the plaintiff’s violation of the court’s order and the resulting motion to show cause.Unfortunately, Judge Timothy Black was not persuaded by Sweet’s argument and on 1/21/2015ruled that the plaintiff is entitled to know the defendant’s identity. Nonetheless, while the judge didn’t explicitly order not to identify the defendant publicly at that time, the tone of the order suggested the assumption that the defendant would proceed pseudonymously.
Denying the motion to quash didn’t mean that Judge Black was happy with the plaintiff’s conduct. The following paragraphs from the complaint piqued his attention:
25. IPP’s software also logged Defendant’s IP address being used to distribute third party files through BitTorrent. This evidence indicates that Defendant engaged in BitTorrent transactions associated with 2732 files between 06/23/2013 and 05/13/2014. Collectively, this evidence is referred as the “Additional Evidence”.
26. Plaintiff has the Additional Evidence on a document and can produce it.
27. The Additional Evidence demonstrates that Defendant is a persistent BitTorrent user.
28. Many of the titles to the third party works may also be relevant to proving Defendant is the infringer because they correlate to the Defendant’s hobbies, profession, or other interests.
Those who follow these cases remember that Malibu Media and its attorney Mary K. Schulz wassanctioned twice in Wisconsin for filing an infamous irrelevant and scandalous “exhibit C” — the list of filenames, many of which are embarrassing, purportedly shared from the defendant’s IP address. The judge thought that the above paragraphs from the complaint are nothing but a concealed “Exhibit C,” so he sua sponte ordered to strike this travesty.
Thanks to the development of advanced file-sharing systems and fast Internet connections, lawsuits aimed at alleged Internet pirates have become commonplace over the past decade and are showing no signs of disappearing anytime soon.
The statistics behind the threats have been documented periodically but now a detailed study of IP litigation as a whole has painted a clearer picture of trends during the past 10 years.
Published by Matthew Sag, Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, IP Litigation in United States District Courts: 1994 to 2014 provides a review of all IP litigation in U.S. district courts over the past two decades to include copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits over 190,000 case filings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the paper’s key findings is that Internet file-sharing has transformed copyright litigation in the United States, in one area in particular.
“To the extent that the rate of copyright litigation has increased over the last two decades, that increase appears to be entirely attributable to lawsuits against anonymous Internet file sharers,” the paper reads.
In broad terms the paper places lawsuits against alleged pirates into two categories – those with an aim of discouraging illegal file-sharing and those that exist to monetize online infringement.
Category one is dominated by lawsuits filed by the RIAA against users of software such as Kazaa and LimeWire who downloaded and shared tracks without permission. Announced in 2003, the wave seriously got underway during 2004 and persisted until 2008, straggling cases aside.
Category two is dominated by the so-called copyright trolls that have plagued file-sharing networks since 2010. These companies, largely from the adult movie sector, track down alleged file-sharers with the aim of extracting cash settlements.
Remember how copyright troll M. Keith Lipscomb, after finding out beyond any reasonable and unreasonable doubt that a defendant in a Malibu Media Bittorent infringement case is absolutely innocent, threatened to ruin his life nonetheless? Today we witness a painfully similar scenario: after the defendant in Malibu Media v. Roberto Roldan (FLMD 13-cv-03007) filed an alibi-grade proof that he couldn’t have been an infringer, Lipscomb & Co doubled down in a futile attempt to save face and avoid paying attorney fees.
This case was conceived on 11/27/2013. In the complaint, Malibu claimed the infringement of 40 XArt’s hardcore porn flicks. After Brighthouse sold its subscriber’ identity to the troll, Lipscomb decided to name not the subscriber, but his son. Why? Because he is a young male and because he liked some popular music and movies on Facebook — the titles that were allegedly shared using the IP address in question. In addition, the LexisNexis’s Accurint database [incorrectly] listed the defendant as a tenant in his parents’ house at the dates the alleged infringement was recorded.