Clist,
I think you are on the right track in your thinking. It is consistent with my thinking.
When ELI started, most of the extortion letters came from the stock image agencies and worked through their employed clerical staff. As such, the company took the heat for the letters, not the employees. Once in a while certain employees would get called out by name but most of the time, the company name took the heat.
If the letters were sent by the lawyers, then the lawyers and their law firm would often take the heat hiding the fact that the end client ultimately had final say in what gets settled or not, or whether a lawsuit gets filed or not. We had many lawyers once they were written about publicly engaging in this business, they high-tailed out of it. One female Canadian lawyer, I was told, start going bat-shit crazy crying on the phone with Oscar's law firm at the time. She was so desperate, she even got a NY lawyer to send me a letter to take down the posts about her. The thing was, we never would have known her name if a letter recipient hadn't gotten upset and asked for our help. It was pretty sad, she even tried to be nice to the person she sent the extortion letter to and tried to sweet talk him to convince us to take down the posts about her. Ultimately, she changed her professional name and her law business name and I left it alone. She quit the business and nothing is to be gained further by naming her. She left us alone, we left her alone.
In any case, photographers are coming out of the woodwork and getting into the extortion letter game. Many photographers are getting unwanted "recognition" for the extortion letter racket so some of them are setting up corporate entities to hide their names.
For example, one photographer I had an online clash/debate with, the photographer (who got real paranoid about one of my posts thinking I was "targeting" him), it made me pay very close attention to how he operates. I did a cursory research on his corporation and listed his website and he got paranoid and thought we launched a supposedly "new program" and supposedly went out of our way to piggyback his website name. He was referring to Oscar Michelen's Defense Letter Program established back in 2008. The fact of the matter I only added his website name because we already had a number of people gripe and send me copies of his multi-thousand dollar "invoices". [This paragraph has been modified to remove incorrect information that I initially thought was true but does not appear to be.]
The point being is that I am noticing all kinds of interesting cover tactics being used by photographers to hide/obfuscate their copyright collections tactics. They want to demand outrageous amounts of money based on their say-so, scare tactics, and legal threats but they don't want people to know who they are.
Nick Youngson through Higbee & Associates sprayed a lot of people with their outrageous $5K letters. It might be that there is now too much association and written about the Nick and Higbee association that the shift to Sanders Law using RM Media Ltd. and asking for lower amounts is a rebooted program.
Again, none of us have any way of knowing. But as long as people ask, demand, and threaten these bullshit amounts of money, people will always report and "out" them. Since 2008, we almost never new solicit information. It just comes to us.
Sometimes it lands right here on the ELI Forums unexpectedly, sometimes it gets emailed to me privately, sometimes Robert of Copyright-Trolls.com gets it, sometimes Greg of CabaLaw.org gets it, or some other place. On the Internet, people have a habit of reporting and sharing information when they are upset, angry, and need help.
Ahh, i see.
In regards to this Sanders law situation, what do you speculate the motive is here?
To separate the individual from the business entity just in case of backlash?
?
Topic: Sanders Law is now Representing RM Media Ltd. (UK Photographer Nick Youngson) (Read 10522 times)