Now We Know Who Trolled Who

Back in August, Creators Against Pinterest published Will The Real Troll Please Stand Up, an account of what can happen to content creators that attempt to protect their intellectual property through the legal channels, with parallels to potential lawsuits against pinners. This particular story concerned poet Linda Ellis whose poem The Dash was infringed upon by one April Brown, who found oil for her fire on the website extortionletterinfo.com, operated by Matthew Chan. The website, and affiliate websites, posted derogatory, "photoshopped" pictures of Ellis and devoted an entire subforum to deride and mock her.

A Georgia Judge has decided that the real troll was Matthew Chan and imposed a restraining order as follows:

The Respondent has knowingly and willfully violated O.C.G.A. §§ 16-5-90 et seq. and placed the Petitioner in reasonable fear for the Petitioner’s safety, because Respondent contacted the Petitioner (and urged others to contact Petitioner) and posted personal information of the Petitioner for the purpose of harassing and intimidating Petitioner (1.) As the owner and operator of the site, Respondent has the ability to remove posts in his capacity as the moderator. However, Respondent chose not to remove posts that were personally directed at Ms. Ellis and would cause a reasonable person to fear for her safety. Because the Respondent’s course of conduct was directed at Ms. Ellis through the posted messages and information relating to Ms. Ellis, and the conduct was intended (and in fact did) create fear and intimidation of the Petitioner, Respondent is hereby ORDERED to remove all posts relating to Ms. Ellis.

According to Linda Ellis' blog, Chan

boasted about driving around near my subdivision in a forum with a photo of my home and my address. He posted threats about he and others driving around my neighborhood with video cameras, threats that I was “dead,” threats that he was speaking with people who want to “put me in the ground.” He posted my personal information and records. He called my employee’s home. He posted videos in which he yelled obscenities directed toward me, loudly screaming: “Linda, you’re a piece of __it!” adding that I “won’t understand anything but BRUTE FORCE!”

Following the judgment, Chan has cleaned up the forum of everything Linda Ellis and seems to have reduced himself to mere veiled insider innuendos.

Perhaps, just like we have "innocent infringers," we have "innocent stalkers." In a spectacular example of not-knowing-when-to-let-go, April Brown responded to the judgment with a press release stauchly defending Chan's actions.

Convincing Pinners Might Be An Uphill Battle

Pinterest is a pain to many creators.
Pinterest doesn't "get it." Will the public?

Meet The Real Linda Ellis is a disturbing read where a self-described innocent infringer berates a copyright holder for attempting to enforce statutory damages to the tune of $7500.00.

Linda Ellis wrote a rather simplistic poem entitled "The Dash" that some years ago has made the FWD: FWD: FWD: email rounds that grannies love to send each other. The poem is about the dash between the birth and death years on a tombstone, metaphorically speaking, the "living" between the two dates. Linda Ellis claims to have registered this work, and it has become her bread an butter, going as far as expanding the little ditty into a book about not wasting time.

When the poem was found, posted in its entirety, on April Brown's website, Linda Ellis sent her a demand for $7500 for the use of her poem.

What resulted is a very long exchange that, regardless of the merits of the poem, demonstrates the entrenched disregard and the deep lack of understanding of copyright law found in some segments of the general public.

While it's easy to sympathize with Brown's shock, anger and frustration at having to pay an amount many, many times greater than the value of her use of the poem, her misadventure illustrates the pitfalls of using a copyright-infringement platform like Pinterest.

Like a minefield, most of the steps you will take won't blow your leg off, but eventually, you, or someone in your village will be the unlucky one to pay the price.

If the Brown/Ellis conflict is any indication, creators attempting to defend their copyright against pinners (because Pinterest itself rejects all blame in their ToS) will be labelled copyright trolls, and the infringers, innocent infringers.

Ben Silbermann may wax poetic about making Pinterest "beautiful" but Pinterest is a hideous reality to the many creators whose contents its users grab, for it to commercially exploit some time in the near future, as the hiring of Tim Kendall suggests. If creators don't defend their copyright, they lose; if they defend it, they lose, too - legal fees and public opinion.

Thanks, Ben.