US Marshals Ordered To Seize Righthaven Property 120
An anonymous reader writes "Troubled times ahead for Righthaven, as Ars Technica reports that the U.S. Marshals have been instructed 'to use "reasonable force" to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets from the Las Vegas copyright troll after Righthaven failed to pay a court judgment from August 15.'"
Re:Make an example out of them (Score:2, Interesting)
Really?
1. Set up shell company.
2. Shake down people for easy money
3. Pay yourself lots of money immediately.
4. Let shell company go bankrupt.
5. Profit!!!
No question marks. This formula will be repeated over and over. Probably by the same people.
You should probably read up on the case a little more. For one thing, in order to pursue the cases they ended up having to transfer actual ownership of patents/copyright to Righthaven. ALL the intellectual property is potentially up for seizure if they don't have enough other assets to cover. Those companies are shitting themselves right about now.
Setting up a shell company like that is fraud, textbook almost. It doesn't shelter anything, and could open the actors up for even more liability and possible criminal charges as well.
This. (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to know a guy that had become a millionaire using the "calculated risk" model.
He created bunch of B2B "information" and "benefits" products that were really just marketing copy in large volumes. He'd pay online contract workers $pennies to create both the marketing and the essentially nonexistent/useless product that amounted to a website with a login and a search box (that didn't show results for much of anything) and a lot of graphics of people playing golf and enjoying themselves and sitting and desks being productive and other $1 microstock-style photos.
He'd then sell annual contracts to corporations for $hundreds of thousands or even $millions. Eventually in the case of each "business" than he started there would be legal action from one or two clients, but he always settled and many more clients just wrote it off and didn't "renew" the subscription to the "service" the following year.
Of course, the following year there would be another service on the market, different name, different website, different graphics, different "product," same quality level.
What made it work for him was the way he presented in person—professional, gregarious, confident, with a great suit and a great golf game.
The man was a millionaire many times over and I'm glad I don't know him anymore.
Re:A pity... (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL - I believe the legal language is something along the lines of 'The corporate veil (or shield) protecting agents of the corporation from judgements and legal action can be pierced if the agent in question has performed the offending actions while significantly outside the scope of the agent's duties with the employing offending organization.' Basically, it protects employees from personal lawsuits for actions taken by the corporation when the employee was acting as an agent of the corporation in performance of his/her/their job duties, when those duties are in compliance with their stated scope of their duties and those duties do not directly violate the rule of law. So, can't sue a CEO directly for when his towing company accidentally repossesses your car, causing damage - can only sue the corporation. If the CEO was using his towing company to steal cars, then you can 'pierce the corporate veil' and charge him/her directly.
Re:Retribution (Score:4, Interesting)
"Retributive justice is deeply ingrained in human society, but we have the tools to progress beyond that now."
The assumed conclusion is that something else will produce better results against determined opponents!
Retributive justice is the only deterrent to logical people that also deals effectively with those it does NOT deter. It compels, rather than "asks for", some degree of obedience. It can be used to destroy those who harden their neck and will not obey.
Qaddafi feared no law. He was killed. That's "retributive justice". He won't act again because he has been deleted. He had no qualities making his preservation desirable, but the example of his death is a nice reminder to others that they shouldn't shit on their people beyond tolerance.
"I want to be able to search a database of scumbags - their name, dob, and known mailing addresses, so I can avoid ever getting into a business transaction with them."
Boycott IS retribution, of the mildest most weakling sort.
White collar criminals should be thrown in with vicious convicts who will abuse them, with the goal of frightening others into compliance with the law. Such "financial predators" are as bad as armed robbers, so put them together.