Last Updated on January 16, 2026 by Rob Cashman
In this article, I will give a few suggestions about MINDSET. In this article, I will approach it from an unemotional standpoint. UNEMOTIONALLY — How to effectively SEE your lawsuit.
MINDSET is relevant and important to your lawsuit, because having a healthy mindset will help you keep yourself ‘whole’ as you move through an experience that is by nature, not meant to be pleasant. By understanding who you are in the lawsuit, what the plaintiff thinks you did, what you actually did, and how you too might have been injured by someone using your IP address without your knowledge, authorization, and control, you will be able to stand tall and rise to your defense and not fall prey to the strategies and tactics of copyright trolls or even other attorneys who try to convince you to settle when you should not.
I am writing this article as part of the upcoming series of articles that I am undertaking to delve into “The emotional aspects leading to you being sued as a “John Doe” Defendant, and an attempt at a glimpse into what you are experiencing.” The goal is not to ‘tell you what to think’ but to help you understand and explore your own thoughts and visceral feelings, specifically as they revolve around your current circumstances of being accused of copyright infringement from an account holder who believes you were the one who infringed their copyrights and copied (downloaded) their copyrighted movies, videos, books, music, or software.
The ‘slant’ in writing this article is I am an attorney who is defending clients accused of doing something that caused another to file a lawsuit against them. I am writing this with the intention that “if you understand your lawsuit this way, you might be able to best cope with it and make effective decisions in getting out of the lawsuit unscathed (as much as possible).”
– Rob Cashman, the Author of this article, Attorney, and Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC.
MINDSET defined.
Most broadly, I could define MINDSET as ‘how to most effectively view your lawsuit‘.
You can ‘see’ your lawsuit UNEMOTIONALLY (this article), just looking at the facts and understanding what is going on without getting caught up in the emotions of how this lawsuit is affecting you.
To have a complete understanding of your lawsuit, however, you will also benefit from ‘seeing’ your lawsuit EMOTIONALLY. Viscerally, as how you are feeling the effects of the lawsuit as the feelings manifest in your body and influence your emotional state. Mentally, how the lawsuit is affecting your ability to focus, concentrate, and function within the other areas of your life.
It is also important to have a toolset of COPING MECHANISMS so that you can integrate your feelings, release whatever stresses or feelings you probably are feeling from the lawsuit, and regulate the ‘alarm system’ set off and screaming, “Emergency! Emergency!” simply from the IDEA of being sued.
All three of these together will help you form a proper MINDSET with which you will be able to navigate through this lawsuit, move past it (whether through a dismissal of your lawsuit, a settlement payment that you negotiate with your attorney and the copyright holder who sued you, or through NON-SETTLEMENT where you let things play out and run their natural course — whether that leads to a dismissal, to you being named and served (and forced to cooperate in your defense), or the worst scenario (but still managable for most people), a default judgement, a judgement against you (leading to you needing to use another mechanism placed into the law [bankruptcy] to discharge the civil judgement against you).
I am not saying that every outcome is a preferred outcome —
- NOBODY wants to be sued.
- NOBODY wants to spend money to defend against the accusations against them.
- NOBODY wants to pay a settlement to compensate a copyright holder thousands of times the value of the content actually stolen. And,
- NOBODY wants a judgement against them (in case this outcome materializes out of necessity [of being unable to defend one’s self] or guilt [of being found guilty or liable for copyright infringement damages].
But having a proper MINDSET, namely, that no matter which outcome ends up happening, nobody is putting you in jail. Nobody is taking you away from your family. Nobody is putting shackles on what you will do today, or any day in the future. Even if the worst manifests, there is still a way to discharge a debt. This last resort approach will destroy your credit for 7-10 years, maybe permanently, but it will not stop you from waking up in the morning, taking a deep breath, and manifesting the best life you could possibly live given the circumstances you have been put through.
[In future articles, I will re-approach the topic EMOTIONALLY — How TO FEEL about what is happening to you, and How to COPE with what has happened to you. I tried to include them in this article, but it grew to such a size, it only made sense to move this content into a separate article.]
RECEIVING A LETTER from your ISP implicating you as a potential “John Doe” Defendant is an emotional experience.
Receiving a letter from your ISP telling you that you are implicated as being a “John Doe” Defendant in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court (a Federal Court) is not only scary, it is traumatizing.
Whether you did what the lawsuit is claiming that you did, OR NOT:
- Receiving the notice that there is a lawsuit filed; seeing the ISP subpoena, looking up your case number (e.g., on PacerMonitor) and learning that the lawsuit is real, and
- Learning there might come a time that you will be named and served as a defendant in that lawsuit AND
- You will need to spend money and time (that you probably don’t even have) to defend against the lawsuit…
No matter whether you believe you are ‘guilty’ or not, this is going to be an emotional experience.
Being sued in a FEDERAL COURT sounds more scary than being sued in a STATE COURT or a SMALL CLAIMS COURT.
Generally, people know courts are separated into the categories of “Small Claims Courts,” “State Courts,” and “Federal Courts (which include one or more U.S. District Courts in each state, Appellate Courts (where appeals to lower court decisions are heard), and a Supreme Court (as ‘the law of the land’).” [There are also ‘Supreme Courts’ also found in many State Courts, and these courts could either be the name of the highest court of the state, or the lowest court of the state.]
“Federal Courts” have an entirely different connotation. When you are sued in a FEDERAL COURT, the assumption is that you are being accused of doing something BAD that could land you in prison, or worse.
The common understanding is that ‘you could lose everything in a Federal Court lawsuit,’ and that ‘Federal Courts have their own set of rules and procedures’ (the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure), their own way of handling evidence (the Federal Rules of Evidence), often a federal judge’s own rules (Local Rules), and a quickened pace of prosecuting an accused defendant.
Even for seasoned attorneys (who slept through their ‘Civil Procedure 101’ class in law school, or who are an expert in their area of law, and they practice in one area of law within the confines of their state’s laws, rules, and case law (court rulings based on previous cases), Federal Court Practice even to them is nothing less than intimidating. So for a non-attorney accused defendant (likely, you), the idea of hiring an attorney to represent you in a federal court (or worse, the idea of defending yourself ‘pro-se’ [on your own without an attorney]) will certainly cause you an unbearable amount of stress.
Specters of ‘being railroaded by a federal judge’ are common in our society’s mind, and all of these fears are all brought up when you learn that you might experience this outcome, even if you didn’t do the downloading or weren’t the one who infringed the plaintiff’s copyrights.
These are merely a snippet of the fears and emotions you might face when you learn that the lawsuit [apparently] against you was filed in a FEDERAL COURT.
(This is before you even consider guilt or non-guilt, defenses, whether you can afford to pay an attorney, whether you can afford the litigation costs to defend yourself in what is really an ‘uneven playing field.’)
Federal Courts can often be the ONLY place a certain type of lawsuit can be filed.
But to calm your fears a bit, understand that certain cases can only be tried in a Federal Court.
Patent Infringement cases, Copyright Infringement cases, Admiralty cases, and Bankruptcy cases (somewhat) — these should only be filed in federal courts.
So just because your lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court for a particular District in your state, it could be that this Federal Court was the ONLY type of court in which your case could be filed.
In law, Federal Courts have EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION for trying a number of types of cases, most relevant here — Copyright cases.
Copyright holders DO incorrectly try to file their lawsuits in State or County Courts
Copyright holders DO try to circumvent the Federal Court’s oversight over the subject matter of their lawsuit. In the past, the HAVE tried to file their lawsuits in state or county courts (and for a short while, they were successful in doing so), but these attempts eventually fail and in the end, their copyright infringement claims must be filed in the Federal Courts.
As two examples, a few years ago, Strike 3 Holdings, LLC tried to file lawsuits against internet subscribers who downloaded their content in the Miami-Dade County Court (under a legal loophole that allowed them to do so. Last I checked, Arizona’s Maricopa County Court has that same loophole).
Similarly, Kerry Culpepper has routinely filed his cases in state courts invoking a federal statute (Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), §512(h)) that allows him to send a subpoena to the ISP to learn the identity of the accused defendant who was assigned a particular IP address at a certain date and time, and then close the case (so that he can file the lawsuit in the proper location). [You can read about Culpepper’s strategy in invoking DMCA §512(h) here].
[However, like other copyright holders have done, for his movie company clients, instead of suing individual users in the Federal Courts where they lived, he used the information gathered from the subpoenas sent to the ISPs to pursue VPN Companies and ISPs themselves (in addition to asking each accused internet user for a modest settlement to fund his legal pursuits). Unrelated, I have seen copyright holder attorneys do this in the past as well, going after ISPs looking for multi-million dollar settlements in return for them allowing their paid subscribers to infringe their client’s copyrights using their internet service.]
Most Copyright Infringement Lawsuits based on an IP Address are Civil Cases for Money Damages; they are NOT Federal Criminal Court Cases
Also, not all Federal Courts are criminal courts.
It should also give you some comfort that most of the cases filed in federal courts are CIVIL CASES (meaning, that the plaintiff who filed the lawsuit simply wants MONEY DAMAGES in return for what he or she believes the accused defendant did to him). They are not looking to punish you wish incarceration or jail time for breaking the law.
For example, in defending our clients sued in Federal Courts across the U.S. for copyright infringement, they are often accused of downloading, streaming, or viewing the copyright holder’s copyrighted content (e.g., movies, books, music, software) without a license. This is the typical claim in most copyright infringement lawsuits.
Copyright Law gives the copyright holder the ability to sue for STATUTORY DAMAGES (meaning, whether the accused internet user INTENDED to infringe on the plaintiff’s copyrights, he is held liable to pay damages of $150,000). There are other damages that an accused infringer could be held liable for if he did NOT INTEND to infringe the copyright holder’s copyrights, e.g., $30,000 in damages. There are even MINIMUM STATUTORY DAMAGES of $750, and this discretion to award minimum damages is given to every federal judge or magistrate who resides over a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Specific to copyright law, in copyright infringement cases, the party who loses the lawsuit ‘on the merits’ is entitled to retrieve from the other side their attorney fees. So technically, the law intends to provide you a free mechanism (eventually) to allow you to defend your case and then collect your fees from the plaintiff who sued you and lost. (Unfortunately, there is an ‘in theory’ vs. ‘in practice’ problem here, but the point is that the law INTENDS to allow you to protect yourself without suffering financial ruin.)
Lawsuits filed in Federal Courts are no more severe than State Court Lawsuits
Lawsuits filed in Federal Courts which have subject-matter jurisdiction over a particular area of law (e.g., copyright law) are no more severe than any other lawsuit filed in a state or lower court.
The damages for your copyright lawsuit could be minimal (e.g., ‘minimum statutory damages’ + ‘the plaintiff’s attorney fees’, or $750 + ~$2,000 (or whatever the attorney fees were; I simply used the ~$2,000 number because I’ve often seen a number in the $2,000-$3,000 range applied against a defendant who was subject to “minimum statutory damages’.)
And, remember that your lawsuit might have been filed in a federal court simply because a federal court was the ONLY court in which your case could have been filed.
Copyright Infringement Lawsuits are Civil Lawsuits
UNEMOTIONALLY, in a copyright infringement lawsuit (which is a civil lawsuit for money damages only), nobody is going to jail.
In most cases, the plaintiff copyright holders who file these lawsuits are looking for a settlement payment (where the settlement amount that you end up paying can likely be severely diminished if you are unable to come up with the settlement numbers that your copyright holder would ordinarily ask for [this link refers specifically to Strike 3 Holdings, LLC settlements; other copyright holders have different settlement numbers that they ask for, but the considerations are often the same regardless of who sued you]).
Even if you can’t come up with any agreement (after trying with an attorney to share your financial circumstances), the likelihood of you being named and served is still very low — IF you are able to open up lines of communication between you and them through your lawyer, and the plaintiff understands your real circumstances.
But to navigate through the lawsuit (or the settlement process), it is important to realize that the lawsuit is really a “Fact Finding Inquiry.”
A Civil Lawsuit is merely a “Fact Finding Inquiry” to determine if you can be held liable for money damages (there is no risk of jail or prison in Civil Lawsuits).
Whether you did what the lawsuit claims that you did or not, while a lawsuit stirs up the emotions of ‘losing everything’ (emotionally, reputationally, financially, etc.), the most effective way to see your lawsuit is that it is merely a FACT FINDING INQUIRY.
The plaintiff’s attorney is simply filing a lawsuit claiming that you did something to affect his client’s pocket book, so in order for him to have the court dip into your pocket book to ‘make the plaintiff whole’, he needs to prove that you were the one who did it.
The law puts the responsibility of proving guilt on the party who filed the lawsuit. It places what is called a BURDEN OF PROOF on the plaintiff (the one who caused the problem by filing the lawsuit) for him to overcome in order for the court to hold a defendant liable for injuring that plaintiff.
In copyright infringement cases, the Burden Of Proof is called a “Preponderance of the Evidence” (which really means that their attorney needs to prove that it was ‘more likely than not’ you who infringed his client’s copyrights). “Preponderance of the Evidence” is the same as saying that he has demonstrated that he is over 50% (=51%) sure that this accused defendant violated his client’s copyright rights.
[I have written about the Burden of Proof in Federal Court copyright infringement cases in depth in the recent “Danger of Arguing ‘IP Address Evidence’ = ‘No Evidence’” article under the subject header, “BURDEN OF PROOF IN CASES ASSERTING IP ADDRESSES EVIDENCE.”]
MINDSET: Balancing your own guilt or non-guilt with the damage done by someone to the copyright holder.
When an ISP account holder is sued for copyright infringement (or he thinks he is based on the letter and subpoena he receives from his ISP), he must take a moment and make himself aware of the consequences of everything that he must now undertake to defend himself. Even when he did not do what the copyright holder is claiming that he did.
To help with this awareness of who did what, the Analogy of the “Spinning Car” is useful.
The Analogy of a “Spinning Car” (discussed in depth in this article) is really important when taking an accounting of ‘what happened to whom,’ where your ‘liability or blame’ lies, and ‘who is responsible’ for the unlawful activities that apparently happened using your internet account (or perhaps, by some reckless internet user who spoofed an IP address that was assigned to your internet account).
By understanding the “Spinning Car” analogy, an accused internet subscriber could develop a proper MINDSET to 1) understand how he was wronged too in this lawsuit, and 2) why the copyright holder was also wronged, albeit not by him.
The confidence and strength an accused internet account holder can have from using the analogy to develop this mindset could help him make clear decisions:
- as to HOW TO APPROACH THE LAWSUIT,
- as to HOW TO INTERACT WITH THE PLAINTIFF (through your attorney),
- whether to SETTLE or NOT SETTLE, specifically when the account holder is being told by the plaintiff’s attorney (or perhaps his OWN attorney) that he is responsible for the damages caused to the plaintiff when he is not actually responsible for those damages.
What should be the MINDSET of an ISP account holder who is accused of downloading another person’s copyrighted works?
The MINDSET that an account holder should have when he learns that he is a potential defendant in a lawsuit filed by a copyright holder is the same mindset that the driver of the “SAFE” CAR (him) in the “Spinning Car” Analogy.
The account holder is not the downloader, and he holds NO GUILT OR LIABILITY to the copyright holder.
As such, he should not settle the claims against him and he should not pay the copyright holder anything, as he did nothing to damage the copyright holder (as I explained in the article about Strike 3 Holdings Settlements).
You will have the mindset that the copyright holder was indeed injured, as his copyrights were infringed. And, while he might misuse the federal courts, making them a weapon to solicit (extort) settlements, he is not wrong for trying to pursue and recoup the losses that the law has given to him in jumping through the hoops of obtaining copyrights for his creative works.
So he does deserve compensation for his loss… just not from you.
Generally, the rule is that an ISP account holder (who did not participate in, is not liable for) infringement that someone else did while either using his internet connection or engaging in online activities ‘wearing’ the IP address that was assigned to him.
In sum, the account holder is NOT LIABLE for the fraudulent activities of the actual infringer, and stands injured by him just as the copyright holder is also injured by that same actual infringer. He stands equal to the copyright holder as being hurt by the actual infringer.
This should be your mindset. Unemotionally, not considering yet how this lawsuit will affect you emotionally, financially, or otherwise. I am simply helping you develop a mindset of strength and clarity as to how to approach your lawsuit.
In the past, I have villainized plaintiff copyright holders who sued internet account holders for copyright infringement, and rightly so. A plaintiff copyright holder has a duty to investigate who actually did the downloading of his copyrighted content, and not jump to the conclusion that the account holder is the infringer (and thus he should pay them a settlement or else he’ll proceed against him in litigation).
I have also villainized plaintiff copyright holders for using the federal courts as ‘a sword, and not a shield.’ (This is the legal term of art where a plaintiff misuses the federal court to extort a settlement payment rather than going after the actual infringer seeking a judgement against him as the law expects him to do.)
But just like the copyright holder — even though I disagree with their tactics and how they make illogical jumps from ‘someone downloaded my stuff’ to ‘the account holder must have done it’ — for no moment do I or my clients deny that they have been injured, or that their copyrights infringed. My opinion is usually simply that it is an improper jump (a conclusory jump, if using a legal term) to conclude that my client did the download.
…And if my client did do the download, I have other ways of resolving the claims against him which avoid litigation altogether. This is a different mindset (the mindset of an account holder who actually DID infringe the plaintiff’s copyrights), and I will write about that mindset in a future article.
DISCLAIMER: I make a lot of assumptions in this article (and most articles I write), namely, that you are an account holder being sued by a copyright holder in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in a federal court.
-Robert Z. Cashman, attorney, author, and owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC.
None of the suggestions or items we discuss are to be taken as legal advice to do or not do any act. Most important in your legal matter is to hire an attorney who can help you resolve the claims against you, whether that be in litigation, out of court, or via a settlement, or no settlement at all.
And, although I am an attorney, I am not your attorney until we sign a Cashman Law Firm, PLLC fee-agreement together and you follow my instructions in order for you to become my client.
If you do not become a client, please continue to read our articles and benefit from its content. I wrote these articles for you – the accused defendant.