Copyright Trolls, Pornography, Statutory Damages…
[Revised at 5:43pm to account for an idiotic mistake in Excel – Just going to show that you should not use excel for even the most simple things]
The gifts that keep on giving.
I have updated my data on copyright trolling to include cases filed up to June 30, 2014. The data is now available to anyone interested in replication. I have also revised my paper Copyright Trolling, An Empirical Study (download the full paper from ssrn) with the following table that shows the phenomenal influence of Malibu Media.
Bottom line: Malibu Media accounted for 10% of all copyright suits filed in 2012, 27% in 2013 and 40% in the first half of 2014.
Copyright Suits Filed in U.S. District Courts – 2001 to June 30 2014
The top section of the table shows how many cases were filed under the 820 code for Copyright in U.S. Federal District Courts in the years 2003 to 2014. The bottom section of the table translates the same information into percentages. The “Copyright – All” category includes all copyright cases. “Copyright –John Doe” includes all copyright cases where the defendant was a John Doe, without differentiating as to the underlying subject matter of the compliant. “Copyright – John Doe (Porn)” is a subset of the previous category and includes all cases identified as relating to pornography. The final category, “Malibu Media v. Doe(s)” includes every case filed by Malibu Media against one or more John Does.