There Is No Lawsuit-Funding-Fairy
Following up my comments on the "RIAA 4" lawsuit settlement, I went and researched some numbers for showing that there is no lawsuit-funding-fairy.
In the old State of Oregon v. Randal Schwartz case (unauthorized security testing and remote access by a consultant turning into felonies), I just checked the amounts from the message at his information server, "The Fund Daemon" <fund[at]stonehenge.com>
Legal costs, total: $186159.85 . Defense fund: $22319.19
That is, 12% of the legal bill was covered by donations.
Another old one, the LaMacchia case (though very relevant to the recent Grokster, Streamcast win, for the David LaMacchia Defense Fund total defense contributions, I get $8343.20 .
I don't have good data for recent individual-defendant cases. I think people stopped publishing the specific numbers because the amounts were either embarrassing or discouraging.
But that's reality.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in activism , copyblight , legal | on May 05, 2003 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink) | Followups
