As you can see, I am taking some time educating individuals involved in the Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG-TEK) / Ira Siegel DMCA letters being sent to thousands of individuals across the U.S. by their http://www.CopyrightSettlements.com system.
As a recap, anyone involved in receiving such a letter should read the following three articles I have written on their tactics:
1. Why CEG-TEK’s DMCA settlement system will FAIL (2/22/2013)2. When CEG-TEK’s DMCA notices contain duplicate titles. Purposeful luring of defendants or not? (11/26/2012)
3. The trouble with Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG-TEK)’s DMCA scare letters. (11/2/2012)
Now, as far as the topic of this blog entry, the question people often ask is “what are the risks that CEG-TEK or Ira Siegel will sue me if I don’t settle?”
While the easy answer is that so far it appears as if they are NOT suing (remember, they are soliciting their clients under the premise that they’ll make more money by making use of their DMCA settlement system rather than by suing), that answer needs to be elaborated. I hope you will forgive me saving time in answering this way, but I have laid out my answer below in the form of an e-mail I sent to one of the individuals who called me for assistance.
LETTER SENT TO CLIENT:
It is good to hear from you. Just to reiterate, the “case” numbers are not actual lawsuits (at least not yet). If you did not settle by their due dates, their threat is that they would file a lawsuit against you [likely for only one of the titles; knowing them, in order to maximize their return, they would reserve the other titles for separate lawsuits]. Also, my opinion is that the lawsuit would be filed in the Northern District of California (where Ira Siegel is), or the Southern District of New York (where Mike Meier is). Even though you live here in [LOCATION REDACTED] and [COURT REDACTED] would be the proper location for a lawsuit, by filing in the wrong location, they know by doing so they would push you to settle rather than hire an attorney (someone like me) to fight the jurisdiction issue on your behalf.
So far as we discussed, their lawsuits are few and far in between. In fact, up until a week or so ago, I was ambivalent whether a client ignores the letter or settles it (see below article link for what has changed). If you want to see what they are doing lawsuit-wise, you’ll find them by looking for the words “Digital Sin” or any of their other clients on the http://www.rfcexpress.com website. Alternatively, you can search for “Mike Meier” since he seems to be their top guy as far as skill in suing defendants aside from Ira Siegel himself.
It is my opinion that they are not in the habit of suing at this point, which means they are trying to “milk” the settlements for all they are worth. However, they do have three (3) years from the alleged date of infringement to sue, so if you didn’t settle, you’ll be looking over your shoulder waiting for them to have a bad day when they decide to press the button and sue everyone.
I wrote an article yesterday on my http://torrentlawyer.wordpress.com website which should answer your questions as to the factors influencing the odds of whether they’ll be suing defendants in the near future, or whether they would wait the full three-years to sue everyone at once.
Once again, it drives me nuts when attorneys try to scare defendants into settling their cases. With these DMCA “scare” letters, I am merely stating the obvious paths CEG-TEK and their attorneys can take.
For me, I think Ira Siegel and the Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG-TEK) would like to avoid suing defendants. It didn’t seem that profitable for them the first time around, and it took incredible resources to maintain their copyright infringement lawsuits prior to the creation of their out-of-court turn-key settlement system. Then again, they are IP enforcement companies who are serving the needs of their production company clients (the copyright holders), and if the clients pay them to use their CopyrightSettlements.com system and send DMCA letters to the ISPs, they send the letters. If the clients instruct them to sue, they sue. It is my understanding that they dislike the other copyright trolls, and that they compete for business (e.g., the production companies). Thus, if their settlement system dries up as I believe it inevitably will, they will do anything not to lose their clients to the likes of Lipscomb, Steele, or the other less credible trolls out there.
That’s why I never, ever use American hosting services. I’ve been hit with illegitimate DMCA takedown notices in the past on articles I’ve written. It seems like a lot of people do not like being criticized.
Since I host in Canada, I can ignore them. Yes, Canada has something similar, but it is based on Notice and Notice, instead of Notice and Takesown.
FYI, I realize you are probably talking about file sharing, but illegitimate takedowns are a huge issue too.
Wayne
Wayne, thank you for your comment. I have been pacing the DMCA take down notices in the U.S., and I have been quietly lurking the hacker forums to represent clients who have had their websites or content taken down. It is my suspicion that many of the take downs are illegitimate based on corporate interests who are protecting rights that do not belong to them, and I’d have a ball representing a client on a fair use issue and suing a company or copyright holder who improperly took down their content claiming DMCA or copyright protection when there was none.
That being said, this is an evolving issue here in the U.S., and it has not yet become the problem it is in Canada, at least not with people wanting to hire a lawyer to have someone like me help them object to the take down of their content. My experience is that people just shrug and give in when it is my opinion that they should object and speak up. I am itching to have our firm take on a case like this though.
If you have any resources on the topic, I am very interested in the subject as I believe it is a ripe area for misuse and abuse.
Everything I know on the American side is anecdotal, most of my contacts are in Canada (I live 8 hours north of the border). I do know of a case where a Canadian singer/songwriter has had issues with YouTube. I know Heather Dale, she’s a really talented lady, and as she says in the video, she isn’t the only one this has happened to.
I sometimes here about things like this on Groklaw, and TechDirt.
Wayne
Well please keep me informed if you hear anything further on the topic. As I said, I’m very interested.
Respectfully, you indicate in your email reply as above that the suit would most likely be sued in the North District of California. Unless Ira Siegel has moved from Beverly Hills, he’d probably sue it more local to his office, no?
Thank you for your comment. I actually think Ira Siegel would attempt to avoid filing the lawsuit himself altogether and he would ask Mike Meier or Marvin Cable to file it for him in their own federal courts. California is not the most plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction anymore, especially with Judge Otis Wright’s order earlier this month in the Central District of California (I wrote about the CACD order here).
In which particular court he would choose to sue was not the point. Rather, Ira Siegel falls under the definition of a copyright troll, and if he sued, I understand that his intentions would not be to take anyone to trial, but rather, to extort a settlement from a putative John Doe Defendant. For this reason, I suspect he would not be sensitive to filing in locations in which the defendants resided. He was very aware of the personal jurisdiction issues when he sued people across the U.S. in CAND then; I assume he would follow suit if he started suing again.
Not sure if Cable will be filing any new copyright infringement lawsuits anytime soon due to the beating he has been getting in MA. Most recent example http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2013/02/court-severs-dismisses-quashes-in.html
The Ira Seigel law firm is now generating multiple DMCA takedown notices for a single download. I have received 3 DMCA takedown notices via Charter for what appears to be one download. Charter is clearly simply passing on the notices without doing anything other than adding headers and footers with warnings. This is spamming, pure and simple.
I’m currently going through this, and as just about everybody else that has, I’m fairly concerned and I’m unsure with what action to take. Would you mind sharing your story or how things have went for you?
Having a similar issue, would you two keep us updated on the actions you take and whatever progresses out of the situation.
[...] to be clear, for a long time, when people ask “Should I settle or ignore CEG-TEK’s DMCA letters? What are my chances of being sued if I igno…” I have been telling people that they could do either, and I laid out the factors to [...]
[...] to be clear, for a long time, when people ask “Should I settle or ignore CEG-TEK’s DMCA letters? What are my chances of being sued if I igno…” I have been telling people that they could do either, and I laid out the factors to [...]
[...] to be clear, for a long time, when people ask “Should I settle or ignore CEG-TEK’s DMCA letters? What are my chances of being sued if I igno…” I have been telling people that they could do either, and I laid out the factors to [...]
What I want to know is how likely will they choose to take legal action when I foolishly entered my case # at copyright settlements.com. They know I looked it up right?
Yes. As for likelihood of taking action, it is not Ira Siegel you need to be scared of, but the copyright holders. Read my “Six Strikes” article. Will discuss further over the phone.
We just received a letter from our ISP stating that an unspecified title was torrented from our IP address. There was no mention of a subpoena. There has been no other contact and this letter was dated one week ago. We did not respond to the letter. How long, generally, does it take for further action? Will they subpoena for our information for one title? And also, if we did decide to make a settlement payment, would that ensure further action would not be taken? Am just wondering very prematurely if/when I should expect anything.
C, you are confusing these DMCA letters and actual copyright infringement lawsuits. The letter you received from CEG-TEK is a pre-lawsuit settlement attempt. No lawsuit has been filed, and thus, no judge has authorized a subpoena to be issued to your ISP. CEG-TEK sent a letter to your ISP saying “One of your subscribers having IP address at this date and time downloaded my client’s copyrighted titles. Please forward this letter to them.” This is how you got your letter. They usually give you roughly a month before they take the settlement down from their copyrightsettlements.com website.
On a personal note, please do NOT run and log into their site. Call a lawyer (myself or anyone else) and speak about what they have accused you of doing. You can get in a lot more trouble (as in, them asking for more $$$$) than $200 if you play this incorrectly.
I received a letter today as they sent it to my internet provider, who then sent it to me. I made the mistake of going to the website (the username and password were already typed in) and hitting enter and it showed the $200 settlement. I didn’t enter any info and would just prefer to just get it over with, but I don’t want to enter my name, address, email, etc. and give them my info and then have them try to come after me more because they have all my info.
I suggest that you enter the following:
George Washington
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
They’ll know it is a lie, but they won’t know who lied to them. Do it using Google Chrome, having opened a Private Browsing Window. When you close it, it wipes all the data.
Then get all of your friends and relatives to visit the same page, and enter the information for other deceased people, preferably the more obscure, the better. If 20,000 people do this, just think of the work involved in checking all of the information out…
Wayne
I laughed out loud when I saw this.
This is obviously not my endorsement, but be sure to use a VPN if you try to do this yourself (just in case the transaction does not go through). Remember, CEG-TEK has upgraded their website to a flash-based website, so they can pull a lot more data now from you when you log on. And, watch out for their website form doing name verification with the credit card if you use fake names.
Yes, but you should have Flash blocked anyway. If you don’t, you shouldn’t be surfing.
Flash is one of the major outside causes of Windows Security flaws.
Or use Firefox with the FlashBlock plug in, or go to the site using an iPad or iPhone, neither of which will run Flash. They get a ton of visitors who can’t run Flash, they’ll have to do something about it…
Wayne
OK, so I received one of these notices and immediately logged in. Please simplify this for me. Am I screwed already just for doing so and not paying? Or should I be reasonably assured that paying will make it go away, or increase the likelihood of further action? I understand any response is not direct legal advice.
This is something that is better covered over the phone. I’d be happy to speak to you about the particulars of your situation.
Hello,
I have same problem for web site, hosted in US. I received email from my server provider for abusing for 3 images($500 each). I don’t know what to do, because I’m not a US citizen, I’m from Bulgaria(Eastern Europe). I remove all images from host. Please, can you tell me what will heppen with me and with my site/hosting if I don’t pay?
@to pay or not to pay, the issue you are dealing with is not the same issue we discuss in our website which deals with CEG-TEK DMCA letters sent to internet users for the downloading of copyrighted videos via bittorrent. Rather, your issue falls under the “photo” copyright troll category which I have written about here.
I hope this helps.