Tweaking an old strategy for a more effective one.

For those of you who speak to me on Twitter, I am working on implementing a new strategy based on Matthew Sag’s “Defense Against The Dark Arts of Copyright Trolling” paper.  Most relevant to this is finding representation for John Doe Defendants who did not do the download and who rightfully do not want to pay settle the claims against them.

Our Cashman Law Firm, PLLC for years has represented clients in what we called “ignore” route representation, where we would not settle the claims against the John Doe clients (unlike settlement factories who did).  While the “ignore” route representation strategy was very effective for many years, in recent years where plaintiff attorneys name and serve defendants, it has lost some of its effectiveness.

The need for a low-cost strategy to represent innocent defendants.

Come Matthew Sag’s “Defense Against The Dark Arts of Copyright Trolling” paper, where he suggests that attorney provide a low cost service to innocent defendants to “call the copyright troll’s bluff,” so to speak.  Our Cashman Law Firm, PLLC is working on how to implement the strategy, and we are looking to focus it on those who did not do the download.

THE PROPOSED “NO SETTLEMENT” REPRESENTATION STRATEGY

• To see the proposed “no settlement” representation strategy, click here.

COMPARING IT TO OUR FORMER “IGNORE” ROUTE REPRESENTATION STRATEGY

• To compare the “no settlement” representation strategy to what we used to call the “ignore” route representation (or more commonly, ‘playing chicken’), click here.

WE ASK FOR YOUR SUPPORT

A strategy is only as good as those who implement the strategy.  While we may develop the strategy further, we ask for your support in publicizing the existence of this strategy.  We also ask for support from other attorneys to provide their clients a strategy such as this one.

Should you find in our community of attorneys an attorney who is taking clients at a low cost and sending the ‘innocence’ letters as we propose in this strategy, but clients taken are not innocent, this could ruin the credibility of the strategy.  Similarly, we ask attorneys to adhere to the ‘no settlement’ stance, and not to give in to ‘nuisance’ settlement payments.  Although a nuisance settlement can be a few hundred or a few thousand dollars here or there, this is exactly what will perpetuate the copyright troll scheme, and will keep the copyright trolls in business and thriving.

CREDIT GIVEN WHERE CREDIT DUE.

We credit Matthew Sag and his”Defense Against the Dark Arts of Copyright Trolling” paper for exposing to the world the problems with the copyright troll lawsuits, and we look forward to seeing an end to copyright trolling once and for all.

-Rob Cashman, Author of the TorrentLawyer blog, and owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC