Congratulations to our client, one of ninety-nine defendants who have have been dismissed from the Lightspeed Media Corporation lawsuit (Civil Action No. 1:10-cv-05604).
This is an ongoing lawsuit with Mr. John Steele at the helm, where aggressive attempts to solicit and collect settlement offers for the alleged downloading of copyrighted materials via the bittorrent protocol.
The guilt of the defendants were not at issue in this case. We did not even get the chance to defend the copyright portion of the lawsuit itself. As with the other cases, defendants were improperly sued in courts which did not have personal jurisdiction over them.
This is a victory for now, but as always, there remains the threat that the plaintiff will sue each defendant either individually or in a class in a federal court having personal jurisdiction over each of the defendants sued. Of course, this would mean that the plaintiffs would need to hire local counsel in the relevant jurisdiction to file and serve each of the defendants, pay the filing fees for each defendant, and properly prosecute each lawsuit.
Considering the amount of defendants sued, this can be a costly proposition for the plaintiff client, but Mr. Steele has promised that this is the route he will take. Then again, this was the same promise that DGW’s notorious Evan Stone made when dismissing his clients in the Far Cry lawsuit.
I’m curious, were the copyright applications filed soon enough to entitle Lightspeed to statutory damages and attorneys fees, or are they looking to their lost profits alone and paying their own attorneys?
Dave, a lot of these cases contained defendants who were sued for alleged “infringing” activities that took place prior to the copyright application even being filed. This issue of enforcing unpublished works is one of the issues in the Shirokov case against DGW. My experience in defending these cases was that the attorneys were unwilling to hear evidence indicating that our clients were not guilty — they were not even receptive to our jurisdiction arguments that ended up being the flaw that caused the dismissal in many cases — instead, they acted more as collection agents on behalf of their clients. I have not yet seen one plaintiff attorney fight the case on its merits.
Were all of the defendants dismissed or were there more than the 99?
There are more defendants in the case; the case is progressing now as we speak.
What is the best course of action? Is it to settle with the aid of a lawyer?
I would be happy to talk with you about your case offline. Please email me at [email protected] or call me at 713-364-3476.
I have recieved notice of supena from my ISP and called a lawyer in my area and he informed me to wait until I am actualy sued before getting a lawer as many times the case may not peogress any farther,and it may just be a ploy yo extort money. on other sites lawers are saying settle becouse it is often more expensive to fight what would you suggest. PS the company on supena is lightspeed.
Without stepping on the toes of the attorney you spoke to, if you have read the articles I posted on this website, I would highly advise AGAINST ignoring this case or waiting until you are sued (e.g., until you are “named”) before hiring an attorney. As soon as you are named, you step into a world that has timelines under which you have no control, and at that point, the lawsuit has moved forward and you are hiring myself or another attorney with a retainer fee and hourly rates that would broke any non-corporate entity within a few weeks. Obviously once you read the articles, you will find that there is a less expensive and more proactive way to approach this case that will even serve as a deterrent to being named. It is certainly the more prudent and responsible way to proceed.
HELP Our daughter a college student in WV received a suit from LightSpeed saying that she illegally downloaded a movie in Sept, she says she never downloaded it. It says our attorney must respond by May 11 and she must appear in court in July in Illinois. I have no idea what to do–any suggestions out there?