Why Did ISPs Take Down Ronald Riley's Sites?

from the make-sure-you-have-a-good-ISP dept

Paul Alan Levy writes "In a new post, I consider the Dozier-Riley controversy from a different angle. Some ISPs knuckled under to Dozier's threats of trademark claims, while others stood up to him (or tried to do so). Consumers who are considering purchasing web hosting services should consider the host's record on free speech issues. I also discuss whether the CDA should be amended to provide immunity against trademark claims. "

Levy raises some excellent points. I, too, was troubled by various ISPs caving in to Dozier's complaints, when it seemed clear that there was little real legal basis for them. While I had pointed out that the ISPs should be protected by Section 230 safe harbors, Levy mentions that Dozier is relying on the fact that Section 230 exempts "intellectual property" claims, which is a loophole that Dozier is exploiting. Levy points out, as we have plenty of times in the past, that trademarks really shouldn't be considered "intellectual property" any way. They don't stem from the same part of the constitution, and they are designed to do totally different things. Trademark is really about consumer protection in protecting a buyer from being tricked into buying Bob's Cola believing he is buying Coca-Cola. It's not about "property" at all. And, of course, copyright has its own safe harbors as found in the DMCA. The fact that trademark is somehow left out seems like an accidental loophole that will hopefully be closed shortly. Still, it's troublesome that Dozier was able to get so many ISPs to shut down Riley's websites over highly questionable claims. I may dislike Riley quite a bit (and while he had been silent since the lawsuit, he showed up again last Friday in full form, insulting me repeatedly, and never even acknowledging that I've been defending his position in this lawsuit), but I will stand by his legal right to post his obnoxious websites.

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Public Citizen Sues Dozier Over Failure To Serve Ronald J. Riley

from the this-just-gets-better-and-better dept

We've written a couple times about lawyer John Dozier's highly questionable case against Ronald J. Riley. As I've pointed out, even though I disagree with Riley on almost everything, and find that he regularly insults me and my family, Dozier's lawsuit seems highly suspect. Most of the "lawsuit" is just a personal attack on Riley. And while it's slightly ironic to see an attack on him that's so similar to the attacks Riley does on others, it's difficult to see what that has to do with the actual lawsuit, which simply accuses Riley of violating Dozier's trademarks by hosting some websites that make fun of Dozier (in an over-the-top manner). Dozier seems to be accusing Riley of trademark infringement because he did some search engine optimization (SEO) tricks to drive his own, anti-Dozier sites, up in Google. But SEO isn't illegal. Nor are most of the things Dozier mentions Riley has done in the lawsuit.

In fact, others have pointed out that Dozier seems to be using the lawsuit not as an actual lawsuit but as a way to defame Riley without recourse. That would explain why Dozier has been promoting the lawsuit everywhere, highlighting all of the negative statements about Riley, while failing to respond to everyone pointing out that the actual lawsuit is focused on trademark issues and seems baseless. The entire focus of the lawsuit seems to be to trash Riley over many things that have nothing to do with the questionable trademark claim. To add more fuel to the fire, it now appears that while Dozier is promoting the attack on Riley everywhere... he's failed to actual serve Riley.

Paul Alan Levy from the group Public Citizen finds this highly distasteful and abusive, to the point that Public Citizen has now filed suit against Dozier for his tactics in this case, telling us:

Although we certainly understand why Ronald Riley arouses some pretty strong feelings around the community, we see no basis for Dozier's trademark claims. It is particularly interesting that Dozier filed a lawsuit, and has extensively publicized the lawsuit, and has used it as the basis for takedown letters to Riley's ISP's, but he has never served the lawsuit on Riley. It is as if he wants there to be a lawsuit out there but does not want to get it decided. So, we have filed suit on Riley's behalf against Dozier, asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement.

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Dozier Continues To Go After Ronald Riley

from the same-tactics dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the bizarre and troubling lawsuit filed by John Dozier against Ronald J. Riley. Riley, of course, is a well-known pro-patent system supporter who has generally made a nuisance of himself in the comments. Whenever he stops by here, it's usually to personally insult me (and, in some cases, my family) and to spew what usually amounts to lies or totally unsubstantiated comments about the patent system. In other words, this is not someone I'm likely to defend. Yet, Dozier's lawsuit is very troublesome. It basically highlights all sorts of questionable things that Riley has done to establish his "reputation" as a patent expert -- but then the actual lawsuit is on trademark issues. The background on Riley, while amusing and interesting to us, has absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit at hand. Dozier seems to merely be dragging Riley's name through the mud. Why? Well, it appears that Riley insulted Dozier (similar to the way that Riley insults us) and even went so far as to put up some websites making fun of Dozier. Dozier, of course, isn't known for taking criticism well, so apparently, he decided to go after Riley on very questionable trademark claims, while also dragging his name through the mud (which very well might be deserved -- but if it's got nothing to do with the lawsuit...)

Dozier's still at it, with a blog post describing the latest details of what's been happening, where he repeatedly references our original post (which slams Dozier's lawsuit as being highly questionable). Dozier falsely suggests that Techdirt has somehow changed its opinion of his lawsuit. He says that a comment defending Riley on Techdirt was shown by commenters to likely have been Riley himself, but that's not true. I know the IP addresses that Riley uses. And, I know who the person is who "defended" Riley and it is not Riley. It is another regular commenter who knows Riley and supports Riley (and trashes us all the time), but it's not Riley himself. Dozier also suggests that Riley posted an article in a different forum pretending to be someone else, though there's evidence that that's not true either (edited to avoid confusion).

What's much more troubling is Dozier's claims that he's been able to convince various webhosts to take down Riley's websites. As much as we may find Riley to be an insulting pest, we would never suggest he doesn't have the right to speak his mind. Dozier claims that any new webhost that hosts Riley's websites will be accused of "aiding and abetting", "conspiracy", and "contributory trademark infringement" claims. Dozier must realize that such claims are a clear abuse of trademark law. The webhosts are quite clearly protected under section 230 of the CDA and are not responsible for the content hosted on those sites. Dozier, as a self-professed "internet law expert" should know this, suggesting that his claims to various webhosts are misleading. Once again, we're probably the last people on earth to ever want to defend Ronald Riley -- but Dozier's campaign against him is equally as abusive as anything Riley has done.

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Ronald J. Riley Sued By The Lawyer Who Copyrights Cease-And-Desist Letters

from the who-to-root-for? dept

If you read the comments on this site regularly -- especially concerning posts having to do with patents or the patent system -- you're probably quite familiar with a guy named Ronald J. Riley. He's quite the character. He's also quite the fan of the existing patent system. He's started a bunch of different "organizations" supposedly to protect the patent system, though there are plenty of accusations that Riley's main focus in life is getting unsuspecting inventors to give him money. Someone has even created a site cataloguing Riley's ridiculous statements. It's not clear what Riley has actually done in his life, but he has been effective over the years in using his made up organizations to give himself an air of legitimacy, which often gets him quoted in the press on patent issues, despite showing a consistently poor understanding of the process of innovation, technology and the patent system itself (for example, he believes the purpose is only to protect small inventors, not to promote overall innovation -- and he believes that anyone accused of patent infringement clearly "stole" the idea, even if they came up with it independently).

Riley also has a history of being... well... a bit abrasive in comments on various sites all across the internet, including here at Techdirt. He enjoys personally insulting me or lying about me and does so on a regular basis (such as here and here for just a couple of examples). Most hilariously, he continually accuses me of somehow being on the payroll of companies who support the patent reform bill that keeps showing up in Congress every year, despite the fact I have clearly stated that I think the bill will make the situation worse rather than better. Riley is also famous for taking credit every time this same patent reform bill fails to move through Congress, ignoring that it's actually the powerful pharmaceutical industry lobbyists that kill it, not Riley. In the three plus years that he's been commenting here, Riley has never once had anything other than an insult or a lie to say about me.

Given all that, I can't believe that I'm actually about to defend him.

A few people have sent in the news that Ronald J. Riley is being sued by the Dozier Internet Law Firm. From Dozier's press release, the actual charges are not at all clear. The only thing listed in the press release is that "Riley's misconduct includes his attacking bloggers and blog and forum moderators with threats of getting IP addresses of anonymous bloggers and then tracking them down." Given the way Riley acts around here, those accusations don't seem particularly surprising -- but it's not clear what's illegal about them. Perhaps there is more to this lawsuit, and if so, Dozier should be much more forthcoming about it, because based on what's been described, it certainly seems like Dozier is just suing Riley because Riley is a pest. And while Riley may be a pest, may be insulting and may even be misleading, it's hard to see what's illegal about his activities. Despite the fact that he regularly insults me and lies about me, I have no problem with Riley posting his ridiculous messages -- as it just encourages others to show how clueless Riley is.

And, of course, Dozier is something of a piece of work himself. You may recall his name from when he tried to send an online review site a cease-and-desist letter that he claimed they could not post on their own site because it was covered by copyright. He later announced that courts had said cease-and-desist letter copyrights were acceptable, even though that turned out to be quite an exaggeration of what had actually happened.

So, here we have a lawyer who has repeatedly tried to silence critics with questionable use of copyright law, suing a patent system defender who throws around insults and lies like they're going out of fashion. These two were made for each other, so it's really difficult to root for one over the other -- but, based on the facts explained so far, it's difficult to see what Riley has done wrong, other than be an annoying jerk. And, even if that's annoying, it's still not illegal.

Update: In the comments, someone points out that the entire lawsuit filing is available on Dozier's website. Amusingly, it actually quotes one of RJR's comments here on Techdirt (though, the lawsuit doesn't mention where it's from). Basically, I stand by what I said originally. While Dozier does a good job outlining RJR's history and pattern of lies and mistruths, his ability to either make up organizations or surreptitiously recreate defunct organizations that had a good reputation, there's little in there that appears to be illegal. The only actual charges seem to be from highly questionable claims that RJR somehow infringes on Dozier's trademarks.

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