THE Lawsuit That Changed IP Rights in America for Authors

From someone who actually DID something for Indy Authors, unlike that other guy

About 5 years ago I filed a lawsuit that had major repercussions on the ebook industry in the USA and probably the world. This lawsuit IS a LANDMARK lawsuit when it comes to IP rights for ebooks and other digital IP. All other lawsuits filed since I won my lawsuit have relied on my lawsuit. And almost no one talks about it, and they do everything they can not to mention me if they do, because I’m ‘just an indy author’, who did what no publishing company or famous author in the world would do: I took on the pirates and I won.

And it cost me. It cost me a LOT.

Back around 2019 it was brought to my attention that there was a website pirating my books - for money. Turns out they were pirating tens of thousands of books. I won’t mention the site or the person behind it, but he bragged about how HE was making $300K (US) a year off of this. He was (and is) scum. He was destroying people’s retirement, he was destroying new writer’s careers, and he was hurting everyone. He was THE biggest pirate site in the world. THE BIGGEST.

He would not honor Cease & Desist notices, DMCA notices, anything. He would laugh and say ‘take me to court! I DARE YOU TO TAKE ME TO COURT BECAUSE I WILL WIN! (or something to that effect). He believed that he was right and fuck all those authors who he was destroying. He was costing me well over $10K a year in lost revenue (he had ALL of my books up). I suspect he was costing publishers ten or a hundred times that. He was rude, obnoxious, all of that.

He believed no one could touch him. Because a) the Canadian Government was protecting him (not kidding, they were ignoring the Berne convention)*** and b) it costs $10K (US) to set foot in court. $30K to set foot in US Federal Court. What author can afford that? And publishing houses are notorious for not giving a shit.

Well, I got my lawyer and I filed C&D’s, DMCA’s all of that, even contacted the Canadian government (he’s an American Citizen living in Canada and running his site out of Canada). All to no avail.

So I, an INDY AUTHOR filed suit in United States Federal Court for Copyright Infringment, abuse, and all the rest of that stuff. Again, it was not cheap.

Before I continue I would like to THANK all of the people who contributed to my gofundme that I did to help defray costs, it raised $30K (US) about a third of my direct legal costs. It was greatly appreciated. For those who want to see the final court documents, there will be a link at the bottom*. I also want to THANK the Romance Writers Community. I got a LOT of support from Romance Writers (Susan Tisdale was one of the biggest helpers in all of this, there were a lot more, and I’m sorry I can’t remember all of their names right now - Romance Writers rock!).

Now, I filed in the Dallas Texas federal courts, because I’d moved to Texas a couple of years prior. This led to the first accusations and a lot of harassment. Turns out that the best judge in the USA for dealing with IP abuse is in Dallas. So people thought I was judge shopping. Ha, right. That judge was taken OFF THE CASE by…. Chief Justice Roberts of the United States Supreme Court of America.

Wait, what’s that you say? The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GOT INVOLVED?

Yup. Turns out, there was a ‘public meeting’ at the Library of Congress at this time, from which the notes (which in many places are a tad ‘vague’) were not released until after my court case was concluded and the judgement was beyond appeal. Turns out that people from the Library of Congress, the Patent office, and a lot of other places, were looking for a test case to help secure IP rights for digital content. They specifically mentioned that they couldn’t go to congress, because congress had so badly fucked up the DMCA. So they needed a lawsuit.

While MY case was not clearly stated - it was alluded to, because they talked about the guy I was then suing. Specifically. A week later, my judge was pulled and a 2nd Appeals Court Judge that worked for Roberts was put on the case. That ended up costing me. Over $50K in legal fees. On top of the $50k or so I’d already spent.

Why? Well, you see, we were on our way to winning the case by default. But that wouldn’t DO for the government. No, the government needed all of those arguments (information just wants to be free! It’s a religious right! blah blah blah) that pirates have been making for the last two decades argued in court. So the new judge went out of his way to give the guy I was suing another chance to come back to court (he was representing himself - of course**) and fight the case.

This was after almost six months of legal stuff, with a team of lawyers who were NOT CHEAP. I’d burned through all of the gofundme money, and an almost equal amount of my own at this point. The lawyers I had (more than one!) were among the best in the country - I’m not really in to ‘half-measures’. (An aside: my lawyers were awesome - I spent a lot of time talking and meeting with them. When the judges got swapped on us, they were NOT happy with that and they went out of their way to cut me a break and cut their hourly rate in half - still a lot of money as they have staff to pay - but it helped a LOT). Further, if I’d walked away all of that money would have just been flushed down the drain.

Plus I’m just not the kind of guy to walk away from a fight that someone else has started. Especially not after having my life threathened (more than once) and the lives of my loved ones threatened.

I’ll try to make this part short. Like I said, he came back and started showing up in court again (all of this was via phone, Covid and such). He’d make an argument. My lawyers would research (you have to do ‘cites’ in court) reasons why that argument was bullshit and illegal. Judge would pretty much agree. Kid would make new argument. Lawyers would research (did I mention that they got paid by the hour?), present reasons why it was BS and illegal. This went on for MONTHS. I’m dropping 5 figures in legal costs EACH MONTH FOR A YEAR and the judge is more or less encouraging this to continue.

At one point I even had to retain consul in the EU. I had to make legal motions against places like CloudFlare, (yes, I’ve had them in court too), for related things that had to be done for the case. CloudFlare and the rest will not provide evidence unless there has been a hearing, by a judge, with their own lawyers present, and the judge has ruled that they must, in fact, answer the subpeona.

I actually dropped my damage claims to the legal minimum set by statute just to be done with it all. Not like the guy was going to pay (he still owes me over $80k (US) - which he can afford) and I just wanted to be done with it by then as I’d known that I’d won. But what the judge was doing by allowing the kid to make every single legal argument as to why pirating should be legal that has ever been brought up - ALL OF THEM - was getting them on the record as part of the case. So that when MY lawyers, countered with facts, laws, precedent, all of that stuff, those too would all be on the record and a part of the case. And their validity ruled on.

The ruling at the end of this suit is a huge laundry list that covers pretty much every argument that has ever been made and why NONE of those arguments are legal. It Codified everything. This was the biggest win for online IP rights in the history of our legal system.

60 days after the ruling was filed, Amazon, and a whoooole bunch of people filed lawsuits (and won) using my stuff as a reference and a cite and a precedent. Every ‘KISS’ lawsuit out there is based off of my win. It was at this time I learned of what was going on, behind the scenes (the meeting mentioned above).

What pisses me off the most though is that while every publisher and related company followed the case (yes I even talked with zons legal department at one point) NONE of them would kick in a dime to help (with one exception - a publisher of erotica who requested anonymity).

The Author’s Guild refused to help. SFWA refused to help. The only people who kicked in, were author authors, and mainly INDY authors (a lot of whom were Romance authors). ALL of the ‘Indy Press’ all of the ‘Writing Press’ all of the people who went on and on an on an on about how ‘Brandon Sanderson is saving Indy Authors’ (and who stabbed us all in the back once the Audible check cleared) could not be arsed to say a damn word about this case or help me. Hell, none of them even reported on it (Surprisingly File 770 did). I mean one of the biggest YouTubers out there who goes over IP cases and the like constantly has gone out of his WAY to ignore the case. None of these people will even acknowledge I exist or what I did.

I think they’re even starting to attribute my case to someone else.

The ONLY press I got, the ONLY PRESS, during the lawsuit was from a single site that was supporting the guy I was suing. They were quoted by a number of bigger sites (and one I had to file some legal stuff against for some additional things they were saying) and all of it was hostile and nasty.

The Cost:

The legal cost(s) to me was six figures, in cash, upfront. This is greater than what I was awarded in the case, and not including the monies that were donated via the gofundme, because there were a lot of other legal things that had to be done or dealt with that did not fall under the ‘court costs’ which you get awarded. The lawyer in the EU, motions that had to be filed against other peoples, persons, or companies, etc.

The personal cost was I ‘lost’ a year of my life, to an extent, because about once a week I was doing legal calls with my legal team. I was not as productive as I could have been because again, every week I’m dealing with a case the the government has decided to drag on because they needed a test case and I had NO IDEA about this, or about why the judge was doing all of the things he was doing.

Oh, and let’s not forget the threats, the death threats, the harassment, the bad press, the attacks on me personally, my family (which is why I no longer give details about my family and am vague on line), all of that shit. I easily lost well over 6-figures of income during a time when my brand was hot and I was climbing in popularity. When I should have been writing and not burning out. When I shouldn’t be installing security systems on the house and packing a gun every time I went outside (I’m WAY out in the country), because my address is being spread around along with said threats.

It needed to be done. As I once told somebody: If not me, who? If not now, when?

I did it because no one else would do anything. I did it for a number of reasons, but the biggest was to help out other writers. Writers whose work I’d loved, and writers who were having their careers destroyed before they were even getting started. It was my chance to give back to the community. I just had no idea that it was going to cost me so much, and I’m not just talking about the legal costs.

I’m happy that I won. I’m still happy that I did it, and I’d do it again, because somebody had to. It’s so telling about this industry that there are many who don’t want me thanked for it, because I’m a ‘nobody’. Or because they don’t like what I write (not that they’ve ever read any of it - or maybe they’re jealous because I’m a better writer?). It would have been nice to have gotten more support. It’d be even nicer to just get a fucking THANK YOU from the famous authors who have been using my win to take pirates to court. But never seem to remember who made it possible.

To date, only Baen Books said ‘Thank You’, which is why I’m writing for them. Everyone else has been crickets.

There’s more to the story, there always is, and this took over a year. Hopefully one of these days I’ll have the money back that I was going to use to build a nice pool.

Notes:

*court documents can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/here-are-court-36225851

** I was told by one of the lawyers that he was getting legal advice and even the name of said lawyer he was getting it from, but they were doing it behind the scenes and wanted no public connection to the suit. No I don’t remember it, it wasn’t important to me.

*** There is a convention for protecting copyrights that most all countries have signed, including Canada. We tried to use it to stop this guy. The Canadian Government REFUSED to honor the treaty. The Government. So much for Canada upholding the treaties that it’s signed.