A legal complaint seeking class action status filed in Houston on Friday accuses social-publishing site Scribd of egregious copyright infringement.
Joe Sibley (left) and law partner Kiwi Camara.
(Credit: Camara & Sibley law firm)Scribd managers have "built a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale and in the process have also built one of the largest readerships in the world," the attorneys representing the class wrote in the complaint. "The company shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."
While this may sound like a generic copyright case, there's one interesting side note. The attorneys that filed the lawsuit are at the head of Camara & Sibley, the Houston-based firm defending Jammie Thomas-Rasset against copyright claims made by the music industry.
Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara have made names for themselves largely by representing Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman accused by the music industry of copyright violations. In June, a jury found her liable for willful copyright infringement and ordered her to pay $1.9 million in damages. Thomas-Rasset has asked for a new trial.
In an interview for a story published in July, Sibley said he and Camara could see themselves working for copyright owners, if they believed in the issue. He told me that they weren't locked into any legal dogma and would take cases based on their merits. It's not unusual for lawyers to argue both sides of copyright issues.
In their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the lawyers wrote that plaintiff Elaine Scott, a book author, found on Scribd in July an unauthorized copy of one of her titles, "Stocks and Bonds: Profits and Losses, A Quick Look at Financial Markets." They claim that the book had been downloaded more than 100 times from Scribd, which her attorneys called the "YouTube for documents."
Neither Scott nor Scribd representatives were immediately available for comment.
The class purports to represent "every author who owns a valid registered copyright in a work infringed by Scribd." Camara & Sibley said the number of infringing material on Scribd was known only to that company but predicted that the size of the class could be huge.
They did note that Scribd has said it would remove infringing documents when notified by a copyright owner, as is required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. San Francisco-based Scribd also has created an automated filtering system designed to prevent the publishing on its system of unauthorized works, once identified, from being uploaded again.
Camara & Sibley say very clearly what they think of Scribd's business model.
"Under the aegis of self-promoting misinterpretations of federal statutes," the lawyers wrote in their complaint, "the West Coast technology industry has produced a number of start-up firms premised on the notion that commercial copyright infringement is not illegal, unless and until the injured party discovers and complains of the infringing activity, and (the) infringer fails to respond to such complaints."
Camara & Sibley added to the complaint, "Apparently (the West Coast start-ups) believe any business may misappropriate and then publish intellectual property, as long as it ceases to use a stolen work when an author complains...Many millions of dollars have been invested in this business plan."
Update 5:48 p.m. PT: To include quotes from Thomas Rasset's attorney.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman found liable for willful copyright infringement of 24 songs last month, has asked a federal court for a new trial or a reduction in the amount of the $1.92 million damages she was ordered to pay.
Thomas-Rasset, who a jury found liable for willful copyright infringement, asked the court Monday to either alter or amend the judgment, remove or change the award of statutory damages to the minimum, or give her a new trial. The minimum damages would be $18,000.
Joe Sibley (left) and Kiwi Camara, attorneys for Jammie Thomas-Rasset.
(Credit: Camara & Sibley law firm)"(The $1.92 million) judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law," her lawyers wrote in the filing with U.S. District Court for the district of Minnesota. "Moreover, such a judgment is inconsistent with the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution."
In 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America accused Thomas-Rasset, 32, of copyright infringement. The trade group for the four top recording companies initially accused her of sharing 1,700 copyright songs--the equivalent of 150 CDs--but the RIAA whittled down the number to 24. A jury heard the proof against her as well as her defense, which boiled down to her denying any wrongdoing, and rendered a $222,000 verdict against her.
That decision was thrown out by the judge after he acknowledged erring in his jury instructions. Last month, Thomas-Rasset's retrial again saw 12 jurors decide against her. This time, however, they awarded damages of $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she was accused of sharing.
The $1.92 million award outraged many, and last week, Joe Sibley, one of her attorneys told CNET News that she would appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. He said Monday night that he and and legal partner Kiwi Camara still intend to file the appeal but have some time before the deadline.
Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman declined to comment on Monday, but last week, following Sibley's statement that Thomas-Rasset would appeal, Lamy said: "What's increasingly clear, now more than ever, is that she is the one responsible for needlessly prolonging this case and refusing to accept any responsibility for the illegal activity that two juries decisively found her liable for."
In the filing, Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camera once again took aim at the evidence gathered on behalf of the RIAA by MediaSentry, the Web sleuths that gather evidence of copyright violations for entertainment companies. MediaSentry did so for the RIAA in the case of Thomas-Rasset.
Sibley and Camara argued that the evidence submitted by MediaSentry is inadmissible because it was collected through illegal means. In Thomas-Rasset's retrial, she alleged that MediaSentry violated private investigator and wiretap statutes in the states in which it operated.
The judge in the case denied her original motion to suppress the evidence. Finally, Thomas-Rasset's attorneys wrote that the courts must distinguish between commercial and non-commercial forms of copyright infringement when assessing penalties.
"Even the plaintiffs were shocked by the verdict," Thomas-Rasset said in her motion. "No one could have expected $1.92 million for 24 songs. That alone justifies remittitur; at a minimum, Mrs. Thomas should not be subjected to a penalty that no reasonable person could have expected would flow from the noncommercial music sharing of which she stands convicted.
"But the verdict reveals a deeper problem with the statutory-damages scheme of the Copyright Act as applied in cases like Mrs. Thomas'. The Act does not distinguish, in determining the range of statutory damages, between commercial and noncommercial infringers, between those who infringe for great profit and those who do so for personal use."
Corrected at 4:40 p.m. PDT: The document filed by Thomas-Rasset's attorneys on Monday was a motion for a new trial.
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