Received a Complaint from BWP Media USA

[Greg Troy (KeepFighting)]

Lucia, your insights are as always very informative and appreciated.  Thanks for posting!

[stinger]

Lucia, what Greg said.  I am beginning to believe you were a lawyer in a previous life.

[JLorimer]

Here is a little update on my own situation.  I also have some new information from others.

It has now been several months since I mailed my letter to Sanders.  I have not heard anything by mail, email, or phone.  Even though I check here to keep up with others' cases every day, I've nearly forgotten my own.  I'm hoping it stays this way.  At some point I plant to make a version of the letter I sent available for others since it seems to have helped my situation.

I've been in touch with another letter recipient who somehow missed all attempts Sanders made to serve her.  She received a default judgement which she is now appealing.  Sanders attempted to push the new hearing date out into the future.  She opted to keep the original time.  It seems, as others have speculated, that a large part of their strategy is to make you sweat it out as long as possible.  Sanders probably thinks people will settle if they can make them worry long enough.  I don't spend enough time in the legal world to know if this is common practice, but it seems to me that they know they have a weak case.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

how can there be a default judgement is she was never served? doesn't make sense, she must have been properly served at some point in time.

[DavidVGoliath]

Robert,

Depending on the jurisdiction, service can be achieved and deemed valid by simple, unregistered mail (that's the short version); I'm in no way cognizant of how this would play out in all states, but a quick search shows the following as just one example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_of_process_in_Virginia#Effecting_service

EDIT: should have linked to this too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_of_process#Service_by_mail

[JLorimer]

I don't know every little detail.  I do know this is in Ohio though.  She said the papers were dropped off at her house and were very informal in appearance - no envelope, no staple, etc. 

Perhaps the person who attempted to serve her saw her through a window and decided it was safe to just leave the papers.  I read somewhere that you don't have to accept the papers to be officially served.  The source where I read that suggested that a person could technically identify you in the street, drop the papers at your feet, and run and you would officially be considered "served".

I read somewhere else that if all reasonable attempts fail, there is some type of notice you can put in a local newspaper that also counts even if you never read that paper.  I don't know how true any of this information is.

how can there be a default judgement is she was never served? doesn't make sense, she must have been properly served at some point in time.

[JLorimer]

I should also clarify.  I believe she was served but she was never aware that she had been served because nobody had made any type of contact with her.

how can there be a default judgement is she was never served? doesn't make sense, she must have been properly served at some point in time.

[JLorimer]

Here is another interesting quote I found back in January or so:

"BWP filed suit against our site. Haven't been served officially yet but never heard anything from them and then boom a lawsuit is filed. Not very happy about this but apparently these trolls are everywhere now."

I tried to get more information but never received a response. 

Either these people are omitting information about their cases or BWP/Sanders is taking shortcuts somewhere.  Any insight on this aspect of the situation would be appreciated.

[DavidVGoliath]

http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/LegalResources/Rules/civil/CivilProcedure.pdf

Looks like the plaintiff could avail themselves of several options here that, if the defendant did not respond to, would lead to a default judgement.

[JLorimer]

One of my contacts settled with Sanders/BWP for somewhere near $4,000 about a week ago.  She said she had accumulated about $12,000 in lawyers feeds in addition to that.  As I'm sure everybody knows, these guys count on the increasing lawyer fees to push you closer and closer to settlement. 

[spicer]

What!? $16K into this? Ouchie. I haven't heard from them in 4-5 months. I don't plan on sending a damn dime, even if I do.

[JLorimer]

Same here, spicer.  It's getting close to somewhere around 4 or 5 months for me too I think.  I couldn't believe those numbers when she told me.  That is an expensive mistake.

[JLorimer]

I was doing my daily search for BWP Media/Sanders Law PLLC today when I stumbled across the following:

http://www.mizozo.org/2014/04/these-dmca-takedown-requests-are.html
http://www.mizozo.org/

It looks like Sanders is changing up their process a little bit.  They are now spamming contact forms found on websites and attempting to direct them to a link to pay online: https://payonline.sanderslawpllc.com/

I read about this type of scheme being used against IP addresses found in a torrent download swarm.  This is an interesting twist.

I especially enjoy the part where they are attempting to use the SSL that belongs to payonline.bakersanders.com and it causes my browser to generate an untrusted connection message because of the domain mismatch.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

the problem with Mizzo is they are actually hosting most of the images.. for example this page:

http://www.mizozo.com/entertainment/02/2014/20/the-incredibly-sexy-heidi-klum-stuns-in-sports-illustrated-swimsuit-50th-aniversary-issue.html is using an image from Sports Illustrated even including their watermark.. the image is not linked to as can be seen by the path:

http://www.mizozo.com/images/item_images/77000/76914_gallery.jpg

my guess it won't be long, before many other trolls start piling on. The site states that all content is uploaded by users, in which case they would be covered by dmca providing they have a registered agent..which i'm not so sure of.

[JLorimer]

I didn't mean to speak to the innocence/guilt of Mizozo.  It was the new online component that interested me most.  Since they provided the details, I may or may not have logged in using a proxy to check out what is inside