Getting sued, want to share my thoughts!

[reallife]

Fucking companies do not understand that when they publish something on internet from that moment on it belongs to everyone.

FREE INFORMATION.FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS

speaking of not understanding............

 

[davids355]

Op what did you do about this in the end? Have you given the domain back yet?

 

[markerpower]

Happened to me. Just remove the copyright content and don't respond back to them. Sometimes they act like they know where you live and other things like that. For autoblogs, it's best to use offshore hosting and offshore domains, and not have the autoblog traced back to your real info.

 

[kirkonpolttaja]

Wikipedia should sue everyone cause people tend to print their articles and quote their text

i would personally fly to the lawyer who wrote and sent that letter and pee on his face and go for seconds on his chihuahua.

 

[ViperVin]

Just for a bit of extra protection, use off-shore hosting (ExtraWinner and ezlegion have their service here) and internet.bs to register domains.

 

[albaniax]

Do you live in Germany?
If yes, you propably have to pay.

It sucks, here are to many laws, especially in the internet.
F* lawyer's make money out of everything. It's the student's who just have finished studying law.

 

[myniche]

Did your domain registrar or hosting company give your mailing address to the lawyer?

Who was your domain registrar or hosting company, so we know.

 

[Expertpeon]

This thread is only evidence that you shouldn't be in SEO.

Not only does this letter not matter, but until I get police or the IRS at my door serving me subpeonas, I make it a policy to not give two craps what any two bit lawyer does.

Copyrighted images and content? please.
Crumble it up and throw it in the trash.

The glorious part of bankruptcy law is that, you can make millions of dollars off trademark violations through an LLC, and 90+% of the time all they can do is file civil claims.

Meaning, you file bankruptcy of the company based upon "outstanding liabilities or losses" and your assets are effectively protected from the violations post bankruptcy.

I make it a policy to not give a crap about anything, just make sure you stay on the civil side of the law breaking and nothing criminal. Certain lobbyists in the US have turned some civil issues into criminal ones (television programs etc), so a high degree of intelligence + dedication are once again, the two most important things to become successful in SEO.

Hide the assets of the company into trusts/wages/dividends to the members, whatever, and they're effectively untouchable in a lawsuit.

 

[cybersage]

I think this is a great idea, however keep in mind that you are in essence trying to defraud creditors with filing a bankruptcy to get out of a judgment (but proof of this matter would be a different story altogether, because I believe the standard of evidence is clear and convincing, AND not to mention that people do this all the time).

Just my 2 cents (and I am a licensed lawyer in the US). But I agree any of those cease and desist letters are only to scare and usually ignoring them is often the best way to go. Obviously, I don't intend this to be legal advice.

 

[Expertpeon]

I think this is a great idea, however keep in mind that you are in essence trying to defraud creditors with filing a bankruptcy to get out of a judgment (but proof of this matter would be a different story altogether, because I believe the standard of evidence is clear and convincing, AND not to mention that people do this all the time).

Just my 2 cents (and I am a licensed lawyer in the US). But I agree any of those cease and desist letters are only to scare and usually ignoring them is often the best way to go. Obviously, I don't intend this to be legal advice.

You're not defrauding creditors at all. By filing for Chapter 11 at the start of a lawsuit (assuming you actually successfully made tons of money from a trademark violation), assets can simply be "out of the running" in the suit for damages.
Judgements issued in the suit could only be paid out prior to the closing of the bankruptcy, but 99% of the time anything but liquid assets would be off limits in such cases anyway, which if you did anything correctly, would not even be in the company.

The level of proof required for copyright and trademark violations can be fairly large, especially in the case of replicas and things of that nature.
Effectively they must show a reasonable level of certainty that you knowingly distributed such non-authentic goods knowing they were such.

This can be a very challenging thing for any plaintiff, especially if you are uncooperative.

In the case where a judgement is still pursued and issued, the above (bankruptcy) would be the logical step. Why any company would actually go this far is beyond me. The only thing I could think of is a scare tactic to deter others, but honestly nothing but a huge, huge company would bother with such.

 

[sreamNwolf]

I've been sued by them all, msn, aol private people, fuck'em. Get your money and make investments in your girls name. When you get ready to get something in your name, file bankrupt like all those rich pricks, and you will be ready to go again within 6 - 8 months.

Sounds fucked up, but it's the bigboy world bros. Look at donald trump, he does it like he's going to a fuckin bbq

wolf

 

[bakai]

Last thing you want to do is reply. If they have not had the hosting company freeze your account then just take down the offending images/content and do nothing else. Start an LLC and keep a small amount of money in your personal accounts under your name in case of lawsuits. Keep most of your money and assets, even your car and house, under your LLC. I have dodged process servers a couple of times and nothing has ever come of it. Hurts your credit rating for a while but it passes.

 

[Expertpeon]

Last thing you want to do is reply. If they have not had the hosting company freeze your account then just take down the offending images/content and do nothing else. Start an LLC and keep a small amount of money in your personal accounts under your name in case of lawsuits. Keep most of your money and assets, even your car and house, under your LLC. I have dodged process servers a couple of times and nothing has ever come of it. Hurts your credit rating for a while but it passes.

Wrong
You do never ever reply, ever.
You can effectively avoid cease and desists this way also, as email is not sufficient evidence of receipt.

Best way?
Start LLC for your company
Process with said LLC...
Transfer all hard assets (homes/cars/property that you buy to avoid paying taxes on profits, etc) to another LLC, in that LLC place the assets into a small interest bearing trust.
if you get eventual trademark claims (trust me even with huge companies, and 100ks coming into your company, this can take months to raise red flags)... you simply file for bankruptcy on LLC #1

The investments in the trust can be charitable and ergo, impossible to touch.

 

[flashgordon88]

Thanks for the replies guys. I can assure you that I am not writing a fake thread just for the kicks.

However, I must reply with an "official apology" letter. I will just reply by saying that I will never ever use their images again. But I will not pay immediately.

My concern is that they will sue me if I don't pay the bill from their lawyer. Should I talk with their lawyer and talk the amound down?

I live in Germany and I should have considered offshore hosting a while ago.

They also wrote that I copied the entire article and posted in on my website. This is impossible because I took their RSS-Feed to post articles and their RSS Feed only displays a sentence or two of the article. They can't make me pay for sentences like "i am a fucking douchebag company" just because it was on their website?

 

[gloom]

dont be panic, just removed text and image, and tell her/him what you do...

 

[cameltoe]

Thanks for the replies guys. I can assure you that I am not writing a fake thread just for the kicks.

However, I must reply with an "official apology" letter. I will just reply by saying that I will never ever use their images again. But I will not pay immediately.

My concern is that they will sue me if I don't pay the bill from their lawyer. Should I talk with their lawyer and talk the amound down?

I live in Germany and I should have considered offshore hosting a while ago.

They also wrote that I copied the entire article and posted in on my website. This is impossible because I took their RSS-Feed to post articles and their RSS Feed only displays a sentence or two of the article. They can't make me pay for sentences like "i am a fucking douchebag company" just because it was on their website?

Fellow German here. I'd suggest you talk to them. I don't know whether they would be able to push it through court. If it really is only minor excerpt of an article - I don't think so. If you've taken their images - then I think they can.

I would love to know whether your whois contained your physical address - and what the name of your hosting provider is.

 

[flashgordon88]

It's not only one article, they said they caught over 300, so I think it's best if I pay.

The hosting company is GONEO. I remember calling them a while ago and their customer service was very rude. I will stay away from them.

Will look up oversea server hosts as soon as this clears.

 

[sabre007]

It?s a scam mate they have search the net seen your post claimed it as there?s.


A mate of mine had a similar issue over some claim that he downloaded a game from a torrent site he did not bother contacting them they went away after about 3 tries.


If you think about it why would they tell you they caught over 300 people with same image? For one solicitors don?t reveal anything they don?t need to.

 

[songer]

These are common scare tactics used to extort money. I got a letter from a Canadian StockPhoto company demanding $2,700 for the use of one image (which I altered) on a free fitness site.

After digging around on Google, I found that many people had received such letters, and amazingly, some people actually paid them!

The good news, many ignored the requests or demanded they cease contact or a harassment suit would be filed. They never heard a word about it after that.

 

[designafi]

They wouldnt win if they didnt give you enough notice / time to remove the copyrighted material. If you refuse they can sue. So just remove the content and thats that. I wouldnt apologise though, id call them morons and just move on lol.