Quote:
Originally posted by Carrie
Damn! Let's all just start up freaking anti-acacia organizations and collect money. This is becoming more popular than the "hey guys I'm in trouble and need donations now or I'll lose my business" threads. Get in on the ground floor now, start your own donation website today! Ugh.
60% of the people responding in this thread act like they've never heard Acacia's name before, and 95% of the people in this thread certainly have never been to IMPA's site or Acacia's site or you WOULD know what attorneys have been hired and what their addresses are. Christ, I found that info at the beginning of the freaking year when all IMPA had was a white page with some text!
A.) If you do not sign the license agreement and tell Acacia to take you to court, they will sue you IN YOUR STATE.
B.) NO lawyer is going to accept a measly $100 per client to fly to that client's state and represent him in court. And no, there is NO such thing as a class-action DEFENSE suit, you CANNOT all get together and say "we're all being sued by this company so we ALL want to be represented at the same time by the same lawyer."
If Acacia sues the webmasters who do not sign, they will be separate suits and THEY MUST BE HANDLED SEPARATELY.
C.) Trying to group all of the TGP owners together and say "we only link to the content" is a joke. How many of those TGP owners host their own advertisements and/or their own seeded galleries? All Acacia has to do is find ONE within your group that does, and YOU ARE DONE. Your entire premise has just been ripped out from under you.
IMPA has been around and will still be around through all of this. If they WIN in court, they win for ALL of us.
Who can't understand this????
All IMPA has to do is get a judge to rule that there was prior art preceeding Acacia's patent, and their patent, all of their papers, all of their lawsuits... MEAN NOTHING.
And IMPA is ALREADY involved in the legal system with Acacia, whereas none of you have actually been sued yet!
What the industry NEEDS is for people to get behind IMPA and support them and the sponsors/companies that are involved with them. They HAVE the best patent attorneys in the country. They HAVE every piece of prior art that anyone has ever been able to dig up both on and off the boards. I went digging and found a pre-1989 expert and got a list of prior art from him - how many of you have even bothered to do that?? (Yes, I sent the info I found to IMPA, they had already found him 2 days before.)
If you can't even pay attention to what is going on with this 10-month threat long enough to know what the hell is going on, who the players are, and who their lawyers are, what the HELL makes you think that you'll suddenly be able to turn around and win in court??
Just because YOU are suddenly in the crosshairs with a packet sitting on your desk, you think it's time to start up a group or start donating money? There has BEEN a group around all of this time and you SHOULD have donated whatever you could long ago.
For those that prefer Cliff Notes:
This is insane.
You cannot file a class-action defense suit.
No lawyer will fly to your state to represent you for $100.
IMPA already exists.
and
IF IMPA WINS, WE ALL WIN.
SO SUPPORT IMPA!!!!!! www.impai.org
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I have nothing against IMPA. I practically know nothing about them. How many people do?
If I am going to open my wallet up, it is going to be for my interest, not someone elses. I do not want to give money to help fight issues like the "cybersex" patent issue. I could care less about that. What I care about is this letter I got, and the fact that I have until the end of November to reply. I run TGPs, not videos. All I care about is the fact that Acacia is coming after me simply because I link to sites with movies on them. Now with that said, the replies in this post is a pretty good indication that I am far from alone. If IMPA can't change and adopt to what is going on, then of course more groups like TGPers are going to form up and fight their respective battles together as a group. TGPers do not care about every issue IMPA supports. They care about themselves. If I give money to IMPA does it go to the defense fund of someone else? So we are waiting on our money to help someone win a court victory over Acacia? No sir, this does NOT help me go to sleep at night. What would put me to sleep is knowing that my money is funding a defense of MY SPECIFIC problem. If IMPA can ADOPT and accomadate the TGPers, then great. If not they can form their own group. You don't ask for money from all these webmasters on your terms. You accomadate their terms. And the TGPers pretty much stated in this post their concerns. This is probably the largest group of webmasters on the web. Gallery builders, etc, look at all the webmasters that do business with TGPs in one way or another.