Copyright Troll Carl Crowell Ups The Ante

Carl Crowell is a special kind of copyright troll who has graced our pages in the past. The lawyer who worked with Voltage Pictures and whose tactics were underhanded enough to warrant a lawsuit from his former business partner and for a federal judge to setup a pro bono legal team for the targets of his trolling threat letters, Crowell has always operated at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to copyright trolls. That said, a recent demand he made of someone he accused of pirating the film Mechanic: Resurrection takes things a step further by simply demanding the accused turn over his computer upon accusation.

Bill Sheldon mostly uses his personal computer, a Hewlett-Packard Envy laptop, to watch how-to videos for car repairs so he can make an extra buck now and then by fixing a neighbor's radiator. So Sheldon, a 55-year-old Portlander, was surprised in early April when he was sued for copyright infringement for allegedly using BitTorrent software to illegally download a movie called Mechanic: Resurrection—a Jason Statham flick he says he'd never heard of before seeing the title on the court papers. He soon received an even bigger surprise. On April 28, a second letter arrived, asking Sheldon to hand over his
computer's hard drive for testing.

Sheldon refused and adamantly insisted he's never heard of either the film or the term "bittorrent" before. Instead, he was afforded a pro bono lawyer, who was mandated to only work for three hours on his case, but who instead chose to stay on once he saw that Crowell had demanded that Sheldon turn over his personal and private property for review.

"There's no judicial oversight of what [Crowell] can and cannot do with the hard drives," says Perriguey. "There's no order to destroy the data or to keep it safe. He's getting access to people's highly private and personal information, including legally protected health information."

Crowell says he asked for Sheldon's computer only to make sure he had stopped illegally downloading movies.

"I have neither the time nor the interest to review the personal information that might be on a party's computer," Crowell says.

Which is, of course, entirely besides the point. And, it should be noted, taking Crowell at his word after he has spent the better part of the decade being a factory for settlement threat letters built on flimsy evidence and fear doesn't seem like a reasonable course of action, either. Whatever you think of Crowell and his copyright trolling ways, there are proper and improper tactics to use in a copyright infringement case. Demanding the receipt of private property that almost certainly contains highly private information about what is merely an accused copyright infringer is plainly bonkers. It's worth repeating at this point that it isn't only Crowell's victims crying foul, but also those on the other side who have worked with him on his copyright efforts.

James S. Davis, a former law school classmate of Crowell's who helped him bring dozens of copyright cases in California, sued Crowell in July for allegedly misleading him about the legitimacy of his cases. His suit alleges Crowell has not done enough to prove the cases have merit or even that his clients own the right to sue for copyright infringement.

Nicholas Ranallo, Davis' attorney, says Crowell's cases use scare tactics to drive defendants into settlements.

It seems to me that when every side of an issue thinks you're doing something wrong, you probably are. For Sheldon's case, Crowell attempted to drop the case, suddenly proclaiming that he believed Sheldon was telling the truth. But he refused to pay Sheldon's legal fees for what was apparently a self-admitted frivolous case. And so the case goes on as Sheldon tries to get his piece of justice.