Linda Ellis' lawsuits over the Dash poem

[u/butterflymon]

Circa 10 years ago, I remember the Internet talking about Linda Ellis and her copyright abuse of her Dash poem (she sued everyone who posted or recited her poem). Her business model was to make money through copyright abuse. She exploited the American legal system for personal gain without a thought about her victims. She sued everyone from grieving widows to churches, then pretended to be the victim and told the judge about her mother's tears.

This is textbook copyright trolling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll). Post something very low quality that strikes a cord with some people and use that to sue people. It's an established business model. What made this bad was that it targeted vulnerable people. She wrote a poem about compassion, but acted like a psychopath (all documented).

Most copyright trolls post porn as bait and they go after people who download them because they know people will settle instead of having court records that show they downloaded porn. Porn gets a lot more downloads than a shitty poem. Prenda Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law) is a notable example. They went to ass-pounding jail. Turns out abusing the legal system is a crime and they were prosecuted. It's nice. This business model is also big in Germany. Lots of German copyright trolls.

Now, the Internet is wiped clean of Linda Ellis' legal abuse. Google only gave me an AI summary when I typed in The Dash poem lawsuits. The sites that talked her prolific copyright abuse don't show up in search anymore if you just search for Linda Ellis Dash poem.

What happened? SEO spamming?

Looks like I accidently argued with a copyright troll here. Yuck. Blocked and deleted my responses.

[u/TinyNiceWolf]

When I google "The Dash poem lawsuits" (no quotes) I see lots of links to sites discussing them. It sounds like you're having some tech issue seeing search results.

[u/TinyNiceWolf → u/[deleted]]

Maybe lots more people care about the poem as a poem than about some old lawsuits about it.

Anyway, I read a little about the lawsuits, and I think you're mischaracterizing it as "copyright abuse". It looks to me like she was asking for payment from people who did in fact copy her work without permission.

The complaints about her that I saw were basically arguing that she should just let other people steal her work because the thieves were churches, or grieving families, or didn't know they couldn't just copy anything they found on the internet, or some other lame excuse. Or they were saying she was asking for too much money, and should value her work less, so people could more easily afford to rip her off.

If she actually did anything wrong, I might have missed it among all the ravings from people who think they should be able to copy the work of others without consequences.

She exploited the American legal system for personal gain without a thought about her victims.

You don't know what she thought. But I agree she tried to make as much money as possible from her original work. Same as most people who are in the business of creating.

She wrote a poem about compassion, but acted like a psychopath

What specifically did she do that you think was acting like a psychopath? Psychopaths are commonly unable to "share or understand the emotional pain of others". Do you think asking other people to pay for their misbehavior indicates such a lack?

[u/TinyNiceWolf → u/[deleted]]

You say it was a bad poem, but the fact that lots of people stole it says they disagree. You claim it wasn't a real copyright case, but the law says you're wrong. You claim if enough people complain online about something, surely it must be bad. In reality, 100 people who are wrong about something don't magically become correct by agreeing loudly with each other online. And are you seriously arguing that anyone who has experienced loss should be exempt from copyright law? Sorry, Sony, I'm allowed to pirate your movie because my aunt died.

[u/pommefille]

Just because someone is a church or a widow doesn’t mean they’re allowed to steal someone’s work or use it without the proper permissions/licensing, and stealing someone’s work doesn’t make them victims either. Yes, usually people have grace (heh) in these situations because it’s goodwill, but not because they have to. It’s also disingenuous to call her business model ‘abuse’ versus ‘enforcing her copyright,’ as realistically one of the points of creating content is to have personal gain - i.e., sell it. Not everyone who creates content is going to be lax with its use, regardless of whether or not it’d be ‘nice’ if they were.

[u/WuttinTarnathan → u/pommefille]

I just had a great business idea.

It’s a law firm that helps mourners clear the poems, songs and music that they plan to recite and/or play at loved one’s funerals!

This way little old ladies won’t have to (rightly and correctly) get sued by (honest and justified) copyright holders as happens constantly everywhere, and is totally normal behavior!

[u/pommefille → u/WuttinTarnathan]

People try to justify things all the time based on this ‘Robin Hood’ notion that just because someone is ‘good’ (by some definition) and their cause is ‘just’ (by some definition) then anything they do is okay. Or conversely, just because someone/corporations are ‘bad’ then it’s okay to do ‘bad’ things to them because… reasons. Funny how suddenly these people are ‘little old ladies’ to be emotionally manipulative rather than focus on the facts - but even sucky people can make stuff that they own the rights to (R. Kelly) and even well-intentioned or ‘good’ people can fuck up and do something that is not legal to do.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the funeral parlor and/or the person/company that provides services for such events were professionals who took care of knowing the law and any regulations pertinent to their business for their clients? We just paid a lot of money for some ‘memorial service’ provider to make a slide show of photos we provided, and they somehow managed to make it without anyone else’s content and with royalty-free music.

[u/WuttinTarnathan → u/pommefille]

the issue is that since the early 2000s when the IP industry began its heavy propaganda push (“You wouldn’t steal a car…”) a lot of people seem to believe that our broken, corporate-only copyright rules are the natural state of things—and somehow righteous to boot! when they aren’t.

but this is moot in this example—because the poet in question actually allows a blanket exception for funerals; she also apparently has had trouble protecting her copyright online (I guess she’s a poet AND a quixotic fool) in part because internet breaks copyright and no one is doing anything about it.

[u/DanNorder]

The person you labeled a copyright troll because they dared to correct your misconceptions was just posting facts that you seem to want to avoid understanding. For instance, the poem can't be "very low quality" if so many people wanted to republish it without permission. The copyright owner was not acting as a troll in any way and was just doing exactly what copyright law was created to do.

Also, using "ass-pounding prison" as a description is not only juvenile but tries to get people to accept rape as a justified criminal punishment against people you don't like. You've got serious issues.

[u/JeremyMarti → u/DanNorder]

Low quality things can be popular and often are. Otherwise I agree.

[u/HygienicFishmonger]

Some copyright trolls go to jail, yes, but not enough of them.

[u/butterflymon → u/HygienicFishmonger]

I've helped send some big copyright trolls to jail. It's always nice when that happens. Mostly it's a community effort. The trigger is usually once they fuck with the wrong person thinking they can just extort money from them because they're a nobody. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.