That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars —
My talk I gave at DEFCON 17 is now available.
It talks about the legal case I was involved in in which, that’s right, I was sued along with a few others for 2 billion dollars. This is quite unusual compared to a lot of my talks, because some fire code crap meant that my audience had to leave the room and then come back and so by the time we got to starting, it was 20 minutes into an hour presentation. My solution? Jack everything up to 11, and so this is probably the most manic and fast speaking I’ve done in a public speaking situation.
I really like the new video + slides approach DEFCON took this year – that really gets all the information across. And it looks great!
People might be surprised to see me talking with slides, but I do use them now and again, and this presentation was more entertaining with illustration.
Simply go here to download the talk in video+slides, slides only, and audio.
Oh, and I’m all up for speaking engagements in the coming year, so feel free to contact me if you need more profane historical ranting for your birthday party or conference.
Update: I uploaded it to Vimeo for instant gratification.
That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars from Jason Scott on Vimeo.
Categorised as: jason his own self
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“You can’t say the Internet doesn’t love you, Mr. Scott.” I see your sabbatical is 100% funded with five days to go. I salute the man who can make something like that happen.
Great, I was waiting for this recording, and it delivered. Thanks.
You described perfectly the state of fear/intimidation generated by PAM’s legal vomit on this humble mirrorist.
http://www.paulandrewmitchell.com/.m/2001.08.01.009.vc.jpg
“the time he surveyed the entire Internet” is 404
I think its interesting that he offered a settlement of you paying him $25. Isn’t that humble? Like, I’m a nice person and I don’t ask for much. Just $25 that’s it. Just do what I say and you’ll be on my good side. Don’t do what I say and you’ll be on my bad-side, you don’t want to be on my bad-side.
I was largely indifferent to this type of personality, and I would go so far as to say it’s a personality type, until I started dating someone like this. I broke-up with her mainly because she drank too much and held grudges on people for way too long. While we were together I took a picture of her which, for information’s sake, is here:
http://bayimg.com/image/laeehaaco.jpg
over time (I’d say maybe a year) I got lots of messages concerning my blatant misuse of her copyright on… the picture I took of her. Here’s a sample.
…
remove my image or be prepared to see things like goatse and the horse scene from freddy got fingered…or better yet stills from the video of me burning your
books and hardware. It’s in a metal glob in the garbage.
…
This serves as notice that you will be sued in Hennepin county court for
unauthorized use of copyrighted images (I am the copyright holder) if
it is not removed within 72 hours. I could have simply used your
passwords that you carelessly left but I want to do this nice and legal.
I have a $500/hour lawyer at my disposal. Shall we take this to the next
level or do you want to end it here. I don’t want to be associated in any
way with someone like you, I therefore demand that you cease and desist
all use of any and all images of me on your livejournal or any other web
sites you control or maintain. You have 72 hours to comply or the case
will be filed. Your move.
…
Remove the pictures by midnight or I will call my lawyer. (You’ve met
him). Can you afford to fight this or would you like to just push back
from the table and call it a night? Here’s how it goes down…I file the
case, I pay a process server to serve you with papers, (They will wait at
Mai’s because she is your LKA) – there’s a waiting period for you to
prepare your case (you don’t have one but you are welcome to try), we go
to Federal court (the standard venue for copyright issues) and…guess
what, you’ll lose. Shall we call this even? LMK by midnight.
…
and so on. I bring her up because I see a few parallels to your case with paul andrew mitchell. One is how both these people humble themselves. My ex says (which of course was a lie) that she “could have simply used your passwords that you carelessly left but I want to do this nice and legal.” Awww, isn’t that nice? How civil. With Paul andrew he says that all you had to do is pay him $25, that’s all he asked for! What an understanding guy, there could of been a settlement for a few thousand dollars but he only asks for $25.
Jason scott, do you know what I hate? I hate it when people largely view the law as something there to help assist them in fucking other people. I think both my ex and paul has displayed this inclination about how the world works. Paul especially because he does hold a belief (probably many beliefs) that he’s figured out how to trick the law- it’s like putty in his hands, you know.
So, thanks for your story. I’m sure there are many other people who’ve had the luck to be threatened by people like this. Take care, hey