A mall developer sicced his lawyers on a man who started a website to praise a new mall. He says: "Since I possess very limited resources with which to defend myself from this legal onslaught, I decided that my best option was to make use of that great equalizer, the World Wide Web."
Did he ever.
(Via BoingBoing)
Interesting post, Dan as always...
BTW, I just came across a suggestion that power to the people might be short lived ...
Tories fight back via Web?
The Conservative Right is to turn to new American campaigning techniques and the internet to try to revive the party and overcome what it sees as opposition from the metropolitan Establishment.
Only weeks away from the general election, senior Conservatives will open a new front today in the battle for ideas by creating a website advocating “social conservatism”.
It will invite people to bypass the media and put forward their own views on how the party should evolve. The faction behind it denies that it is “rocking the boat” in the pre-election period and says that in the early weeks the website will be used to campaign for a Conservative victory. It wants people to use the increasingly popular practice of “blogging” — writing online diaries — to break the power of the broadcast media.
The website — conservativehome.com — is being started today by Tim Montgomerie - via Memeorandum
Posted by: Jozef Imrich | March 28, 2005 at 01:00 AM
Dan, what are you doing in AA tomorrow? Private meeting with the Fellows or a public event? If it's an event, I'd love to go...
Posted by: JennyD | March 28, 2005 at 09:03 AM
I read a great deal of this guy's web site (I should have switched to the "condensed version" long before I did), but I actually found it discouraging. I respect his sheer pig-headed determination, but what I noticed is that he lost every round until he got legal help, despite the large numbers of mistakes made by the opposing lawyers. It seems to say that you have to have a trained attorney on your side, either paid or pro bono, to prevail in such cases, and that there's no penalty for lawyers who lie repeatedly in official court filings (if they are found out, the worst that happens is that their client loses the case).
Posted by: Joe Buck | March 28, 2005 at 10:12 AM
An amazing read. I took me several hours to go through the 100+ pages of documents and read about the case and it was a terrific adventure. What is stunning is how much money a corporation was willing to spend to kill a *favorible* website about their Dallas area shopping mall.
The biggest villains in the case appear to be the principles of the law firm, who may have committed malpractice by not first suggesting that their client use the ICANN domain dispute arbitration. ICANN is notoriously business friendly and probably would have resolved the case in the mall owner's favor. Luckily for cyber rights case law, they didn't and lost a federal appeals case that is now the standard for deciding whether non-commercial sites or protest sites are in violation of trademark law.
What is discouraging is how much Hank Mishkoff had to put on the line to defend his rights. Had he misstepped at any point in the case, it could have turned against him and he could have been stuck paying the legal costs of the no-doubt overpriced and litigious law firm who represented the mall owners.
(This represents my non-legal opinion.)
Posted by: Scote | March 28, 2005 at 01:32 PM
Based on the narrative, I tend to agree with Scote, although I doubt it's necessarily malpractice for a legal firm to keep on chugging away clients' money. On the other hand, any executive from Taubman who approved this ongoing legalistic stupidity better be out jobhunting. Any company that lets business decisions be made by attorneys needs a different kind of counsel.
The judge, on the otherhand, seems to have uncommon common sense and an understanding for both the substance and the form of the law. He obviously has no future on the bench...
Posted by: Owen | March 28, 2005 at 01:41 PM
and that there's no penalty for lawyers who lie repeatedly in official court filings
No, actually, the other party can request sanctions. Courts generally are NOT AT ALL HAPPY with lawyers who deliberately and knowingly lie to them.
What baffles me is if this guy has (as his says) numerous lawyer relatives, why did it take him so long to get legal help?
Posted by: mythago | March 29, 2005 at 07:59 PM
The Inside Story
For those who do not know me I founded the Professional Inventors Alliance
http:www.PIAUSA.org in 1993, and in 1995 I became one of the key people
driving the creation of the Alliance for American Innovation whose goal was
to stop so called patent reform legislation and to create a voice for
independent inventor interests in Washington, DC. In 1995 I started an
organization to educate independent inventors www.InventorEd.org and
incorporated it as a 501(c)3 non-profit in 1998. My passion is innovation
and First Amendment issues.
As background information it is important to mention that this is the same
Taubman who was convicted in the Sotheby's art auction house scandal.
These is a bit more to this case. I was contacted by a journalist about
Hank Mishkoff because of the role I played in defending Mrs. Tibbets as
detailed on http:www.Skippy-SCAM.org. At this point Mr. Hank Mishkoff was
defending himself and not fairing too well. Taubman had prevailed in
getting an order shutting down the fan web site and Mr. Mishkoff had put up
a sucks web site in response.
The first thing I did was contact Mr. Krass at GIFFORD, KRASS, GROH,
SPRINKLE, ANDERSON & CITKOWSKI of Birmingham, Michigan because I knew him as
a result of his relationship with a personal friend and inventor named Mike
Levine. I suggested to Mr. Krass that suing a fan was very poor judgment
and that they should end this case. He did not respond well, and shortly
after the contact an order was issued shutting down Mr. Mishkof's sucks web
site about Mr. Taubman.
I was outraged by the court's attack on the First Amendment and responded by
creating http:www.Taubman-SUCKS.com, contacting Mr. Mishkoff and suggesting
that he contact Paul Levy with the Public Citizen Litigation Group. Paul
Levy had helped deal with threats of litigation by Edward B. Friedman
http:www.InventorEd.org/caution/friedman/ (Invention Submission
Corporation's attorney http:www.InventorEd.org/caution/isc). I then called
and wrote Paul Levy about the Mishkoff case, pleading that he should step
into the case.
Paul Levy took the case, and he kicked the crap out of Taubman. I have
little doubt that if Paul Levy had not stepped into the case that the
outcome would have been much different.
Ronald J. Riley, Exec. Dir.
1323 West Cook Road.
Grand Blanc, MI 48439
www.InventorEd.org
Direct (810) 597-0195, Off (810) 936-4356
Also President www.PIAUSA.org
And former advisory board president of the Alliance for American Innovation
1995-2002.
Posted by: Ronald Riley | March 31, 2005 at 08:12 AM