This may be a little far down in the weeds for some of you. But this ruling is good. If this lawyer Pietz had won it would have totally gutted what’s left of the DMCA act. This would have made unworkable the only mechanism there is left to stop unrepentant pirates when the cable companies refuse to cooperate with rights holders. The Blaha suit always seemed to me that it was really about protecting the bad business practices of cable companies not defending John Blaha’s rights. Too bad John Blaha got stuck with the bill (well maybe not).
An interesting development in the world of copyright litigation, as rights holders secured a major victory in California on Friday. A court has ordered Morgan Pietz’s client in JohnBlaha v. Rightscorpto pay attorney’s fees due to a successful anti-SLAPP motion filed by the defendants. It raises ethical issues about using actual clients to try and further an anti-copyright law agenda, and drum up business.
A little bit of background…
Rightscorp is an anti-piracy corporation. It monitors BitTorrent usage, and then sends out notices to pirates who are stealing and distributing copyrighted content. From there, the company requests that pirates stop stealing the content, and pay the rights holder a reasonable fee of about $20. In this instance, Rightscorp was contacting people who stole and distributed films like The Shawshank Redemption and The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, two of my favorite movies. Notably, Lord of…
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The Trichordist 