Daily Nonsense

What do you get when you mix a sharp entrepreneur, a misguided and bitter photographer, and a inept lawyer? You get a hilarious e-mail thread which excites, mystifies and saddens us in turn. It’s well worth spending 15 or 20 minutes and reading everything including the comments. Good stuff, better than fiction.

This post is for you, Robert Tourtelot

Welcome, Boing-Boing and Reddit readers!The saga continues beyond this post; make sure to read

• part 2
• part 3
• part 4
• part 5

…and two new posts on the topic, with more emails from Mr. Tourtelot, will go up soon, so make sure to sub to the RSS feed.

…and, of course, check out SmartFlix.com!

I recently ran into someone who was a bit confused about copyright law, and wasn’t happy.

I sent him a polite email, and gave him my phone number.

He called, and was very tightly strung.

I tried to calm him down.

He threatened to have his lawyer call me.

I said that that might be a good idea.

His lawyer called, and was very angry and curt.

The following is from memory:

Lawyer: You’re breaking the law by renting out videos with out my client’s permission!!

TJIC: What law, specifically, do you allege that I’m breaking?

Lawyer: It’s not my job to educate you, get your own attorney for that!

TJIC: So, I’m breaking a law, but you won’t tell me which one?

Lawyer: We’ve been looking forward to having a class action lawsuit on this issue!!

TJIC: OK, great, because you’ve got one.

Lawyer: What?

TJIC: You want a class action lawsuit. Go ahead, you’ve got one now.

Lawyer: I’ll see you in court!!

TJIC: Yes, that’s what I said.

I next sent an email to the lawyer, CC-ed to my lawyer:

Mr. Robert H. Tourtelot,

Thank you for returning my phone call just now regarding the matter of me renting out XXX’s DVDs.

For the record, I was somewhat surprised that you told me that renting out a DVD was “illegal”, but that you refused to specify what law you allege we are breaking. I’ve had dozens of interactions with lawyers, and I’ve never once had the experience of someone telling me that we were breaking a mystery law, which they were unwilling to cite.

With regards to your statement that you’ve been “looking forward for a class action lawsuit on a case like this”, I, too, would enjoy such a lawsuit. The publicity that we would derive from defeating your firm in court over a baseless allegation of copyright infringement, brought about by a law firm and a lawyer that does not understand the First Sale doctrine, and which are entirely ignorant of the Supreme Court case law on the topic, would be of incalculable value to us, and would be a very cost efficient way to further publicize our service.

As I have repeatedly assured Mr. XXX, we are 100% in compliance with the law, and I continue to hope that Mr. XXX will become convinced of the proven track record of rental markets increasing profits to content creators such as himself.

However, if Mr. XXX persists in believing that we are acting illegally, and you encourage his belief in some unexplained “mystery law” that somehow refutes 17 USC 109 and several Supreme Court cases, then we will see you in court. As I mentioned on the phone, we would also likely counter-sue both Mr. XXX and – potentially – your firm.

You can direct any legal documents about the lawsuit to the our firm’s lawyer (who is CC-ed on this message), at YYY

Thank you,

Travis J. I. Corcoran

The lawyer, after taking enough time to actually crack a law book and realize that he has no case at all, replied:

Mr. Corcoran: We understand more than you think about copyright law. What I was referring to and what you failed to mention in your e-mail concerned the copying of DVD’s. Enough said?

See the original pages here.

I wrote back to the opposing attorney:

Ah, it would have been nice if you had answered my question on the phone instead of telling me that you didn’t have the time to “educate me about copyright” – we could have saved some time.

As I have already assured Mr. XXX, we have never copied a DVD, we have no illegal copies of DVDs in our inventory, and have a program to allow authors and vendors to audit our inventory.

If you allege that we either are illegally duplicating DVDs, or are breaking some other law, then I advise you to take us to court, ASAP, because I’d love the publicity.

If you do not allege that we are breaking any law, than I assume that our interaction is at an end, and I wish you a good day.

I then wrote to the opposing party and – because what is best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women – I CC-ed his lawyer:

I had the “pleasure” of having your lawyer tell me on the phone that it was illegal for me to rent out DVDs, and then – believe it or not – refuse to tell me what law forbid this.

In email, I challenged him, and later – perhaps after doing some research – he backpedaled, stating that he had only been talking about copying DVDs. ( I note that this is manifestly untrue; he explicitly said on the phone that “renting is illegal” ).

Your lawyer’s website says that he specializes in “real estate law” and “personal injury” law, among 12 different areas of expertise.

Nowhere does he list copyright law.

A bit of well-intentioned advice:

1) in my experience, no lawyer who does real-estate law is top notch.

2) any lawyer who claims 12 areas of expertise has ZERO areas of expertise.

3) if you have copyright concerns, you want to deal with a lawyer who does copyright, copyright, copyright, and nothing but copyright.

A good copyright lawyer would have told you during the free phone consultation that renting out DVDs is deeply settled law, and is fully legal.

I hope that Mr. Robert H. Tourtelot doesn’t charge you too much,

If you’re going to be in the business of producing copyrighted work, you really want to find a halfway decent lawyer.

[Thanks,BoingBoing]