Legal IM Questions -Round 4

veneficus said:
Hey Aaron,


My questions are,
1. What do you do when they subpeona your private domain registration?
2. If they do get your information what do you do next.
3. If you default, can they make you pay?
4. What do they really want? Do they want to scare people into not using there name? They want a cease and exist? or they want money?
5. is registering a name like fqxnews even playing "gray" or is this just a bad idea?

Look forward to your response.
V3NE
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Aaron is busy watching Real Housewives of New Jersey or shaving his back,, so here goes:
1: DomainsByProxy and similar private reg services will roll over on you faster than you can say "private", I've been able to get them to just give me the underlying register's details with just a phone call in a lot of cases, but all will give it up at some point. Private Registration can ALWAYS be broken by an experienced attorney. Typically, these services will notify you when they've given out that info, or contact you telling you that you have X# of days to contact them directly or they will give it out. The person who served the subpoena is under no obligation to notify you directly.
2. Depending on their goal, most will arrange for legal service of process on you if they have filed a legal complaint in their home jurisdiction
3. In a lot of cases, yes. See Aaron's above discussion of FF&C clause, but states are required to recognize judgments from another state. They still have to find your assets though, liening real property is rare in cases like this. a judgment by itself, with no info about where assets like real property are, is fairly useless.
4. Varies by company, most just want to protect their brand name and possibly send a message to people that are a headache. Rarely is their goal to "make money" off the deal, mostly they want the Offender to go away and quit what they are doing. Most ask for the domain to be transferred to them (Amazon.com always asks for this, then gives you an Amazon gift certificate as "payment" for the domain they got from you by legal action, lulz)
5. That domain wouldn't be as bad as something that directly used part a real name (e.g. Fox5News.com would be worse), but its still gray. Safer to use something completely made-up (SunshineNews7.net or such) that, even though might be mistaken for a news station, won't be mistaken for being the same as an existing, known, brand-name news station.

Good Q's.
 


So private registration is out. Could someone use an alias? I know ICANN has grounds to terminate the domain but does this move out from being shady and into the level of something illegal/fraudulent?
 
Avalanche said:
So private registration is out. Could someone use an alias? I know ICANN has grounds to terminate the domain but does this move out from being shady and into the level of something illegal/fraudulent?
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Nope, its just a violation of a (private party) terms & condition agreement. They can certainly terminate your domain ownership (and often do if someone complains and you are unreachable due to the false reg info) but that is the extent of it, you've broken no "law" by not using your true info and have no real liability for doing so.

Good Q
 
Avalanche said:
So private registration is out. Could someone use an alias? I know ICANN has grounds to terminate the domain but does this move out from being shady and into the level of something illegal/fraudulent?
Click to expand...

I'm actually dealing with something like this right now. This is a hot button topic. All you have to do is report the person to ICANN and then they ask the registrar to require the registrant to provide proof of identity. Via passport, drivers license, etc. If they don't, the site will more likely than not get taken down.
 
Regarding DMCA. In reading your Righthaven posts it appears that the initial issue is they sue you in court prior to any other notification because they say they did not know who to inform. Should we then put a DMCA notice on all of our sites just in case? Similar to Justin.tv?

As a follow up, what if I have images on my site that I believe to be sourced from places that were not copyright protected. Should I put a DMCA (Justin.tv style) on all my sites just in case one of these images are actually copyright protected? For images am I as likely to be sued as opposed to content? In such a case, say for a simple MFA site, can the owner of the images actually prove damages? or does the law allow for compensation other than "damages"?

Thank you again for your time.
 
Great thread, I read through the trademark thread and couldn't find an answer to this.

Let's say someone did register a trademarked domain in bad faith (to redirect the traffic to make money), what should they do immediately to prevent themselves from getting in trouble?

What if someone owns a website that reviews trademarked products/services and this person writes negative reviews on certain products with the hopes to redirect that traffic to his own products (to make money), does the trademark owner have a case for monetary claims in court?

Let's say the person doing these things lives in Canada and the trademark owner is in the United States, should such a person still be worried about the legal ramifications?

Thanks
 
REIMktg said:
Regarding DMCA. In reading your Righthaven posts it appears that the initial issue is they sue you in court prior to any other notification because they say they did not know who to inform. Should we then put a DMCA notice on all of our sites just in case? Similar to Justin.tv?

As a follow up, what if I have images on my site that I believe to be sourced from places that were not copyright protected. Should I put a DMCA (Justin.tv style) on all my sites just in case one of these images are actually copyright protected? For images am I as likely to be sued as opposed to content? In such a case, say for a simple MFA site, can the owner of the images actually prove damages? or does the law allow for compensation other than "damages"?

Thank you again for your time.
Click to expand...

No, Righthaven doesn't care who owns the site because the DMCA isn't going to protect you if you're the site owner and you are the one posting the infringing content. It just gives you, the "service provider" a limited "safe harbor" if people post infringing content on your site (ala youtube, wickedfire, etc.). If you were allowed to just have a DMCA notice on all your sites you could just throw as much infringing content on it as you wanted and wait until someone caught you, which is contrary to the principals behind the DMCA.

What Righthaven is doing is trying to strongarm people into transferring their domains over, and using the copyright act as a vehicle to do so. The US Copyright Act, however, does not provide for that type of remedy so Righthaven has had a hard time prevailing on that.

You're just as likely to be sued for photos as you are content....I'd argue that its even worse for photos. Photographers are notorious for being fickle and going after people with a stick. Getty images for example will fire off letters like its going out of style. They are not afraid to sue.

So while a DMCA notice won't necessarily give you any safe harbor if you get sued, it may provide you with a false sense of security....if you're into that sort of thing.
 
Djshorty89 said:
Great thread, I read through the trademark thread and couldn't find an answer to this.

Let's say someone did register a trademarked domain in bad faith (to redirect the traffic to make money), what should they do immediately to prevent themselves from getting in trouble?

What if someone owns a website that reviews trademarked products/services and this person writes negative reviews on certain products with the hopes to redirect that traffic to his own products (to make money), does the trademark owner have a case for monetary claims in court?

Let's say the person doing these things lives in Canada and the trademark owner is in the United States, should such a person still be worried about the legal ramifications?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Answers

1) lawyer up
2) Probably (commercial nature of the use)
3) lawyer up
 
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mont7071 said:
Aaron is busy watching Real Housewives of New Jersey or shaving his back,, so here goes:
1: DomainsByProxy and similar private reg services will roll over on you faster than you can say "private", I've been able to get them to just give me the underlying register's details with just a phone call in a lot of cases, but all will give it up at some point. Private Registration can ALWAYS be broken by an experienced attorney. Typically, these services will notify you when they've given out that info, or contact you telling you that you have X# of days to contact them directly or they will give it out. The person who served the subpoena is under no obligation to notify you directly.
2. Depending on their goal, most will arrange for legal service of process on you if they have filed a legal complaint in their home jurisdiction
3. In a lot of cases, yes. See Aaron's above discussion of FF&C clause, but states are required to recognize judgments from another state. They still have to find your assets though, liening real property is rare in cases like this. a judgment by itself, with no info about where assets like real property are, is fairly useless.
4. Varies by company, most just want to protect their brand name and possibly send a message to people that are a headache. Rarely is their goal to "make money" off the deal, mostly they want the Offender to go away and quit what they are doing. Most ask for the domain to be transferred to them (Amazon.com always asks for this, then gives you an Amazon gift certificate as "payment" for the domain they got from you by legal action, lulz)
5. That domain wouldn't be as bad as something that directly used part a real name (e.g. Fox5News.com would be worse), but its still gray. Safer to use something completely made-up (SunshineNews7.net or such) that, even though might be mistaken for a news station, won't be mistaken for being the same as an existing, known, brand-name news station.

Good Q's.
Click to expand...

I recently found out that DBP will NOT easily roll over and give you information. They would *possibly* do it under certain circumstances (ala spam, illegal content, etc.) but won't do it if the site in question is defaming or infringing on a trademark/copyright. Their office is about a mile from mine and I thought about going over there and seeing if I could talk to someone but I'm guessing it would be a waste.
 
Here is a question:

Say a design of mine is inspired by another competitors design but nothing is used (no code, images, etc) from their website.

Some of the colors and layouts are similar but again it's not a direct copy.

Can legal action be taken against me?
 
Here's my case, sorry for the extensive description, I wasn't sure what's relevant and what's not.

1.) Original article + original illustrations related to the article published in an online Spanish magazine (hosted in Spain, member of EU)

2.) I had the article rewritten (roughly 50% translation of the original text + 50% our own text) and published it on my own website in English including the original illustrations (website hosted in the US; I live in Scandinavia, the country is a EU member)

3.) People from the Spanish magazine contact me a few days later and thank me for the adaptation of their article.

4.) My article goes viral like crazy (tens of thousands FB likes, some major websites linking in etc.). It didn't go viral just like that, I did a lot of work, contacted many websites etc.

5.) I come up with an idea to make some merchandise based on the article and the illustrations. I offer to arrange everything and offer them some commission from the sales. The Spanish magazine agrees to proceed (via email).

6.) Long story short, when it comes to signing the actual contract they pull off saying they already made a deal with some other party. In addition to that they request to move the link to their magazine from the last paragraph to the first. They also want me to link to their online store where they are selling the merchandise.

7.) At this point I'm very pissed since I invested a lot of time into arranging the merchandise and making the whole thing go viral. I have my guy to create our own version of the illustrations. They resemble the original a lot but if you look at the two you can tell that they are actually 2 different illustrations. I plan to replace their illustrations with my own.

8.) I tell the Spanish magazine that I will be taking their illustrations down and replace them with my own. I also tell them that I will remove the link to their original article.

9.) They go mad, send insulting emails and request to take all their content down immediately.

So that's my story, now to the questions. I think we are dealing with 2 things here. One is the text, another one is the illustrations.

1.) Can I keep my version of the text or do I have to remove it?

2.) Can I replace their illustrations with my own? (I can send the illustrations via PM upon request if anybody who can contribute to this case wants to see them)

3.) Which law does actually apply here if my website is hosted in the US? US, international or Spanish? Is the actual hosting even relevant in this case?

4.) They threaten to pursue legal actions if I don't comply immediately or if I publish my own illustrations which are quite similar to theirs. Can they do that right away or does it have to go through their lawyer first? (sending the official request via snail mail or something like that).
 
Any idea on the best jurisdictions for hosting user submitted content that displays other peoples personal information and links to copyrighted work and STILL being resistant from the rest of the world attempts at legal takedowns?
 
Mont,

I understand if I went and tried to sell a poster of 50 Cent I could probably run into legal trouble. However, what about selling posters (its not posters I'm selling, but along the same lines..) of dead celebrities, such as Michael Jackson or Bob Marley? Would I run into much trouble?

Cheers
 
Not sure if this has been covered, but I've been meaning to ask a few questions:

1.) What are some disclaimers and the legal aspects that I should be concerned about if I'm launching a health/beauty product? Say I purchase PLR rights to an acne or diet product, change up/beef up a few things, and then launch this product...what should I be concerned with? Are there certain guidelines to follow when launching a product of this caliber?

2.) Is it illegal to offer incentives for obtaining a testimonial? Or rather, what if I just ask for 'reviews' of a product and offer an incentive (whether it be money, a raffle, contest, etc)?
 
CitizenSmif said:
Mont,

I understand if I went and tried to sell a poster of 50 Cent I could probably run into legal trouble. However, what about selling posters (its not posters I'm selling, but along the same lines..) of dead celebrities, such as Michael Jackson or Bob Marley? Would I run into much trouble?

Cheers
Click to expand...
you can use gurgle schoolar to search posthumous right of publicity
 
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