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0 pointsmonocasa5y ago0 comments

I understand that. I'm saying that the same people that are patent trolls would add misuse of copyright to their set of tools if it became that became a viable option available to them. Today's patent trolls would just be called IP trolls, but they'd be the same set of people.

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adolph5y ago· 2 in thread

Copyright is already misused to perform DCMA takedowns of fair use and is a well known option available to all comers. I think the classic example was the Prenda lawsuit firm.

Prenda made its money by suing people who allegedly downloaded pornographic films online. Its targets frequently agreed to settlements worth a few thousand dollars rather than facing a courtroom process. These copyright trolling tactics netted the company more than $6 million between 2010 and 2013.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/prenda-law-porn-...

monocasaOP5y ago

I mean, that article is about how the Prenda saga ended with the lawyer disbarred and in prison.

If his strategies had ended up a valid, legal option we would absolutely see trolls expanding into this. John Steele was testing the waters and got eaten by the deep acting as a warning for how not to go about this.

There's some DMCA takedowns and such still, but they aren't quite lucrative enough to show up on patent trolls' radars. Aquila non capit muscas and what have you. A several billion dollar copyright claim like Oracle's passing SCOTUS muster absolutely would have shown up on their radar though.

adolph5y ago

> the same people that are patent trolls would add misuse of copyright to their set of tools

Prenda is an example of how misuse of copyright is already in the trolls' toolbox.

Since you think about this stuff you might find the latest on the Santa Cruz Operation interesting:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/xinuos-finishes-pick...

Xinuos is the company that purchased the remnants of the SCO Group in 2011. The SCO Group, in turn, is a company most famous not for its actual products but for its litigation against IBM and Linux. That litigation began in 2003—partially funded by a very different Microsoft, only five years after the leak of the Halloween documents in which Microsoft acknowledged the "long-term viability" of open source software and discussed strategies to choke it out of the market.

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