Federal Court Pulls Plug On Porn Copyright Shakedown 136
netbuzz writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling it a 'crushing blow for copyright trolls.' A federal appeals court today has for the first time ruled against what critics call a shakedown scheme aimed at pornography downloaders and practiced by the likes of AF Holdings, an arm of notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit called the lawsuit 'a quintessential example of Prenda Law's modus operandi' in reversing a lower court ruling that would have forced a half-dozen ISPs to identify account holders associated with 1,058 IP addresses."
Re:The US needs a loser-pays legal system (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, you Republicans are getting more brazen. Creating a system where the poor can't afford to sue because they may have to pay for the other guy's legal costs means that only the rich would be able to afford to defend themselves. The legal system would become instead of 80% biased for the Republicans like we have now to 100% against the normal people. That is a horrible idea.
Re:The US needs a loser-pays legal system (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem becomes: Pay how much? A set standard rate regardless of what the loser actually paid their attorney? If I bring a lawsuit against a large corporation with an internal team of lawyers, how do I know much it really cost them to litigate? And even if I 'win' against a guy with no money, so what? And when is someone considered a 'loser', since there are so many levels of appeal?
I think the bigger problem with our legal system is that it even requires a lawyer to handle the most basic of procedures. That shows that the legal system has just become too complex to be useful. But since the legal system is ruled by lawyers (on all sides of the equation), there is little incentive for them to make the system more simplified and easy to access for the average person.
Re:The US needs a loser-pays legal system (Score:5, Insightful)
The current system sucks, but "loser pays" is even worse because it assumes that the person who is "wrong" is the person who always loses, and that simply is not the case.
Re:The US needs a loser-pays legal system (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you Republicans are getting more brazen. Creating a system where the poor can't afford to sue because they may have to pay for the other guy's legal costs means that only the rich would be able to afford to defend themselves. The legal system would become instead of 80% biased for the Republicans like we have now to 100% against the normal people. That is a horrible idea.
Wow, Talk about knee-jerk smears.
How the hell is holding lawyers accountable for this kind of crap REPUBLICAN???
You want your little guy to have the ability to sue? Exempt class-action suits from loser-pays, or, better yet, make the plaintiff's LAW FIRM pay in class-action suits, or maybe even in suits with contingency-based fees.
Capcha: slither. Quite appropriate when responding to someone defending lawyer's ability to win huge fees no matter what the outcome of the case is.