Rothken Law Firm

Megaupload filed a motion for a TRO and Preliminary Injunction against UMG today to ask the Federal Court to stop UMG's allegedly abusive DMCA takedown notices of the Megaupload Video. Here is the TRO motion and the declaration in support of the motion.

Update: Here is a CNET News story

Update: Here is Megaupload's reply brief

Megaupload Ltd, a leading internet cloud storage company, filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California, to stop Universal Music Group (UMG) from sending alleged sham DMCA notices to YouTube and others. The Complaint alleges that UMG sent DMCA notices to YouTube and other similar internet services providers representing that the "Megaupload Video" was infringing on copyrights when the true facts are that the Megaupload Video was an original work owned by Megaupload.

According to the complaint the Megaupload Video includes appearances from multiple celebrities speaking or singing about Megaupload including: Will.i.am, P Diddy, Kim Kardashian, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Lil John, Jamie Foxx, Mary J Blige, Floyd Mayweather, and more. The complaint alleges that written agreements were signed by all those involved in the production or appearing in the video.

The complaint alleges that "...it appears as though UMG permits recording artists to exercise their views and free speech only when UMG agrees with such speech. The type of wrongful behavior alleged against UMG and Defendants herein is exactly the type of behavior that the DMCA Sec 512(f) was designed to remedy."

Megaupload is asking the court for injunctive relief to stop the alleged UMG misconduct and for damages according to proof. You can read a copy of the complaint here.

Here are news stories on the Megaupload Video - UMG litigation from the New York Times and Wired.

The Rothken Law Firm on behalf of an alleged nationwide class of consumers is suing Carrier IQ over the alleged installation of hidden software on select mobile phones that siphon off data without sufficient consumer notice and consent. The Federal lawsuit requests monetary damages and injunctive relief. If you believe you have been adversely impacted you may submit information via our Contact Us form to assist in our investigation. Read CNET news coverage of the Carrier IQ controversy.

The well known management consulting firm of Booz & Co. published a research report today that tends to demonstrate that Copyright centric regulations like SOPA/PROTECT IP have a chilling effect on angel and venture capital investment in high technology startups.

More than 70% of angel investors reported they would be deterred from investing in high technology companies if anti-piracy regulations against “user uploaded” websites were increased.

The Rothken Law Firm did assist Booz in the study as indicated in the report.

You can read the Booz report here.

A Forbes contributor writes that Sony has attempted to bind consumers to an arbitration clause and a class action waiver in revised Terms of Use that purports to cover the Playstation Network.

According to the Forbes story:

"It’s a slap in the face to consumers already weary of the company’s practices, as they’re essentially saying they could have another privacy breaching screw-up like the hack, and you wouldn’t have recourse against them in the form of a class action lawsuit. There’s currently a lawsuit filed against Sony for the hacking breach by the Rothken law firm on behalf of the 77 million customers affected, but this does not fall under these new terms of service, and will be going forward."

You can read the entire Forbes story here.

See related story from the ABA Journal: First Lawsuit Filed Over Sony Playstation Data Breach

Citigroup said that it suffered a security breach in the bank's network impacting the data of about 200,000 credit-card holders in North America. Allegedly the bank waited more than a month before making the full extent of the breach public, drawing criticism from Regulators and lawyers.

U.S. Representative Mary Bono Mack is preparing legislation to ensure faster notification to customers, her spokesman told Reuters.

Ira Rothken, a San Francisco-based attorney who represents plaintiffs in hacking cases, said his firm is investigating whether the information compromised in the Citi breach has led to any secondary intrusions against impacted customers.

"If a bank can't keep data secure, it's going to have a chilling effect not only on the banking industry, but on ecommerce," Rothken said.

The full story from Reuters can be found here.

Last week the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument in the Isohunt copyright appeal against the major motion picture studios. The main issue on appeal is whether or not Isohunt, a bit-torrent search engine, could be held secondarily liable for copyright infringement under an inducement theory without proof of causation. You can listen to the oral argument below. Ira P. Rothken argued on behalf of Isohunt.

 IsoHunt MPAA hearing

As we are sure you understand, given that over 70 million individuals are impacted by the Sony Playstation Network security breach or disablement, the Rothken Law Firm is receiving numerous calls and thousands of emails requesting information, offering assistance and/or providing further factual support. During this time period we urge you to continue to pay attention to directions from Sony.

In the meantime we are continuing our investigation. To assist us in this process, you may (but are not required to) fill out the intake form on our Law Firm website.  This would expedite our ability to compile contacts and prepare communications in an efficient manner.  Please indicate “Sony Class Action” in the subject line, then use the text box for describing your experience, including, but not limited to, whether you have suffered any fraudulent use of your credit information you attribute to the Sony data breach, and stating any specific questions you may have. Do not include sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and security questions in your communications with us - we will never ask you for such information. You will also find links to news articles regarding the case on this page including below.

There is nothing that you need to do at present to be involved with this litigation.  In the event we reach a settlement with Sony or obtain a judgment on behalf of the Class, there will be a notification process supervised by the Court, at which time all potential Class members will have the opportunity to consider the terms of the settlement or judgment and decide whether he or she wishes to be included or excluded or objects to the settlement. 

Please take whatever steps you deem necessary and appropriate to protect your own personal and financial information and to guard against identity theft.  Some recommendations from PC WORLD include:

1.    Be wary of people calling or e-mailing you asking for extra information such as your Social Security number or other personal information

2.    Monitor your credit card for suspicious activity or consider canceling it and getting a new one

3.    Review your online passwords to see whether you are using the same password and login ID across multiple accounts. If, for example, your PSN and e-mail logins are the same, change your e-mail address password immediately. Of course, for an extra layer of protection, you may consider changing your security questions and challenge responses on other sites.

San Francisco, California, April 27, 2011 – The Rothken Law Firm announces that it has brought a class action lawsuit against Sony PlayStation® Network to seek a remedy for over 70 million consumers arising out of one of the largest data breaches in the history of the Internet.

According to the complaint entitled JOHNS v SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT AMERICA LLC, and SONY NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT INTERNATIONAL LLC filed on April 27th, 2011 in Federal Court in the Northern District of California, Sony acknowledged that the personal information of its PlayStation Network customers has been compromised.

The complaint alleges that Sony failed to take reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data of its users which led to the intrusion that caused over 70 million customers the loss of their personal and private information, including customer names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, PlayStation Network and Qriocity passwords, and user names, as well as online user handles, and possibly credit card related data. The complaint also alleges "on information and belief, members of the Class have begun to experience losses from fraudulent use of credit card information believed compromised by the security breach alleged herein."

The lawsuit seeks monetary compensation for the data loss and loss of use of the Sony PlayStation® Network, credit monitoring, and other relief according to proof.

"We bought this lawsuit on behalf of consumers to learn the full extent of Sony PlayStation® Network data security practices and the data loss and to seek a remedy for consumers. We are hopeful that Sony will take this opportunity to learn from the network vulnerabilities, provide a remedy to consumers who entrusted their sensitive data to Sony, and lead the way in data security best practices going forward" says Ira P. Rothken an attorney who filed the class action complaint.

Contact Information:

If you are a subscriber to the Playstation Network and would like to tell us about yourself to assist in our investigation please fill out this form here.

CNET News.com story here

IGN News story here 

G4 News story here

Examiner News story here

Copy of Filed Stamped Complaint here

In December 2010 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval to a class action settlement brought against T-Mobile, Microsoft, and Danger regarding allegations of Sidekick smartphone data interruption and loss arising out of an incident that occurred on or about October 2009. Class Action Notice, settlement, claims forms, and related documents can be found at the SidekickSettlement.com web site. If after reading the documents on the Sidekick Settlement website you believe you may be a class member and have further inquiries then please contact us.

Isohunt today filed its opening appellate brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals urging the court to provide better protection from mass copyright lawsuits to search engines, such as Isohunt, that do not store, touch, or distribute copyrighted works. "This case is about the freedom to search on the internet and whether web search engines have to preemptively censor user generated links and torrent data files or be subject to keyword filtering" says Ira P. Rothken counsel for the Isohunt defendants. Here is a news story at Techdirt and another news story on an industry site.

Update from March 1, 2011 Isohunt filed its reply brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On the September 30, 2010 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Stayart v. Yahoo et al found that the plaintiff did not have a protectable commercial interest in her name under certain sections of the Lanham Act and thus affirmed the trial court's dismissal of such claims against a major search engine and adult social networking site. The Seventh Circuit's opinion can be found here.

The Rothken Law Firm announces the filing of a class action lawsuit against Apple regarding  alleged defective design of the iphone 4. The lawsuit was filed in Federal Court in the Northern District of California. The Class Action Complaint and CNET's coverage can be found here. The alleged design defects include the antenna embedded in the case, when used and handled in the normal and ordinary course, caused a degraded signal and dropped calls. In addition, software that was meant to provide the display of the strength of the mobile signal via "bars" was programmed in a defective manner. If you are interested in learning more about the Apple iphone 4 class action or want to assist in our ongoing investigation please fill out a form here to contact us.

Isohunt today filed a Notice of Appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Isohunt is also filing a motion for stay of an injunction that in essence, to avoid violating the Order, requires Isohunt to filter search results using title words supplied by the motion picture industry. Isohunt believes the injunction is overbroad and is optimistic that the appellate court will provide relief. Here is an article in Wired and a post in Techdirt that discusses some of the free speech issues.

When discovery moved out of the filing cabinet and onto desktop computers and servers, it became e-discovery. Today, as the field expands beyond "traditional computers" to include cloud computing, data from smartphones, and recording devices in cars, a new era is dawning: E-Discovery 2.0. In an article Ira P. Rothken authored for California Lawyer Magazine he discusses five types of high-tech devices that are sure to test the rules of privacy, proportionality, preservation, and burden in e-discovery.

In this interview with tech news site ars technica Ira Rothken discusses why the Freedom to Search the internet is important even for a torrent file search engine accused of secondary copyright infringement under an ambiguous theory of inducement.

The Judge, at a status conference in January 2010, agreed to provide the isoHunt defendants after the injunction phase, but before the damages phase,  an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Rothken Law Firm filed a  Federal nationwide class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against T-Mobile and Danger, Inc. (a Microsoft subsidiary) over massive data loss by the Sidekick data service. The case is entitled Mapstead v. T-Mobile et al. Read more about this case at CNET News.com

According to the complaint the Sidekick service crashed on or about October 3rd, 2009 and then T-Mobile indicated that Danger, Inc., the service provider, lost massive amounts of customer data, and worse that due to backup failures it was highly unlikely it would recover such data.

The Federal Complaint alleges that T-Mobile and Danger marketed the Sidekick mobile phones as “automatically” storing and backing up customer data, such as contacts, appointments, and other digital files, and then breached its promises and was negligent in storing data in the cloud and backing up such data. The Complaint ask for monetary damages be paid to the class amongst other remedies.

"T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful in the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss" says Ira P. Rothken an attorney working on the case. "We are hopeful that T-Mobile and the rest of the defendants will do the right thing, use this as an opportunity to redesign the system as a new standard for cloud computing storage, and provide full compensation for the data loss" states Rothken.

If you would like more information about the class action lawsuit or have any questions please fill out our web form here.

Torrentspy and other defendants filed an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a copyright case of first impression regarding Bittorent technology. In the appeal brief Torrentspy argues, amongst other things, that the Court was wrong in its procedures and wrong in its Judgment.

Torrentspy argues that the Court issued Orders, including forced logging of user behavior and IP addresses, that were inconsistent with Torrentspy's longstanding privacy policy. Torrentspy, on its own, cut off access to the United States to help alleviate the privacy concerns.

Ultimately the court in an approximately one hour hearing citing amongst other things lost and redacted data, terminated the case and later on, with little or no findings related to statutory damages, provided for a judgment without a trial. Torrentspy argues that the Court abused its discretion and that the procedures and Judgment were unfair under the circumstances. Read a news story here on the appeal.

The Sedona Conference® Working Group 1 recently published a Commentary on the issues of preserving, managing, and identifying not reasonably accessible electronically stored information or “NRA ESI". The result is a five-step framework for analysis and six Guidelines for making reasonable, good-faith assessments where no “bright line” rules exist. Ira P. Rothken is a co-editor of the above Sedona Conference Publication entitled Commentary on Preservation, Management and Identification of Sources of Information that are Not Reasonably Accessible.which can be downloaded here and here is a web seminar  on the topic. You can find a review and summary of the commentary here in which the author states that "...I highly recommend that you read this new publication and, more importantly, consult it when faced with tricky preservation issues."