"Liebowitz wasn’t alone in the copyright trolling practice. A number of entities scour the internet looking for photographs that they can claim are “unlicensed” and demanding thousands of dollars to settle the matter knowing that between statutory damages for copyright infringement and the cost of litigation, most companies will just pay it. Many times, the photo in question actually is legally licensed through an agency like Getty Images, but the plaintiff photographer has, for whatever reason, pulled the image since the license was granted."
This article is so poorly written and uninformed, it conflates asserting copyright infringement against an entity that licensed the photo, with the court demanding past licenses as a means of calculating actual or statutory damages.
Liebowitz problem is that he has lied to courts several times previously, about things as trivial as scheduling issues, or the basic facts of his case as the article points out. His disbarrment has nothing to do with him asserting copyright cases, it has to do with him lying. Unfortunately the term troll is used against pretty much any photographer asserting their legal rights over the work that they own.
I think the term “troll” is generally accepted where someone’s MO is to spray-and-pray settlement demands that the troll doesn’t actually want to take to court. Given that his behavior was all related to trying to avoid demands of judges and court time, it sounds like it actually was related to his trolling indirectly.
Yeah, but look at any thread where patents are an issue, any plaintiff that isn't a big tech company gets called a troll. Also, Liebowitz had no fear of going to court, he'd sue before he'd send letters. Liebowitz was disbarred because he repeatedly lied. The issue with him not producing licenses is because they didn't support the damages award he wanted, not because he just didn't want to deal with judges or being in court. Like I said, the article is very poorly written.
Part of Liebowitz's problem was that he did ~0 research before filing a lawsuit. Often the only thing he did was send the photographer a list of URLs and ask for "GO" or "NO GO" for each one. In at least some cases there was a license that he or probably should have known about, but he didn't even bother to check. He probably would've been fine with that though if he hadn't lied to the judge(s) so, so much.
In cases like these, you need to rely on the photographer, they are the ones who will know there is a license. So him relying upon the client, who might make a mistake, wont necessarily be the end of him as you point out, which I agree with. These photographers do not have agents, and to the extent they did, it'd be Getty, who pays them less than $5 for perpetual web-use licenses. That's why so many of them leave Getty. Getty then continues to offer new licenses for the photographs, despite their contract being terminated. The article seems to mistake that as well. I'm a copyright attorney and we have the opposite approach of Liebowitz.
This article is so poorly written and uninformed, it conflates asserting copyright infringement against an entity that licensed the photo, with the court demanding past licenses as a means of calculating actual or statutory damages.
Liebowitz problem is that he has lied to courts several times previously, about things as trivial as scheduling issues, or the basic facts of his case as the article points out. His disbarrment has nothing to do with him asserting copyright cases, it has to do with him lying. Unfortunately the term troll is used against pretty much any photographer asserting their legal rights over the work that they own.