Last week Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver (DGW), the law firm operating as the "US Copyright Group", requested sanctions against Graham Syfert, the attorney who created the $19.99 do-it-yourself motion to quash forms for file sharing defendants involved in recent mass lawsuits. Now, correspondence between DGW and Syfert sent prior to the request are beginning to surface.
"Mr. Syfert knows that these Doe Defendants will not do their own due diligence and will not comply with the proper rules and procedures for filing motions with the Court," wrote DGW attorney Tom Dunlap in papers submitted to the court. "Attached as Exhibit 1 hereto is a true and correct copy of an email from Mr. Syfert, wherein he admits that his form motions are a money-making scheme. The Court should not tolerate such actions."
The email submitted as “Exhibit 1” is as follows:
"I don't represent any of these people. I don't care! You couldn't tell by the tone of my voice when we were on the phone? I care more about my punctuation and my research than the people using it… When I'm not defending cases, I squeeze cash out of poor people for a living just like you. I understand, and I don't care—not my clients, they didn't hire me. Putting up a warning such as 'DGW has advised me that they would be charging double for people who file these forms' wouldn't be a good business practice and would hurt form sales, so obviously I wasn't going to do that.
I hope you all make a load of money, and if you had a job opening making $200K a year, I'd take down my forms or put up whatever warning you wanted and join you in Virginia. And, if I ever do end up representing any of these folks against you, I will be coming full bore, because it is my job. It seems as if you are taking this whole thing too personally and need somewhere to direct your energy. Call or e-mail someone who is actually in the case. If you're not going to invite me to join you, then lay off me taking advantage of the poorest chum that attracted you sharks in the first place.
In short, if you're not going to hire me, take a flying f**k and leave me alone about the forms—both of you. But, if y'all want to keep up a correspondence about some other topic because you find it entertaining, I'll be happy to reply. Hire me or eat sh*t. Sincerely, Graham."
People are now questioning how much of Syfert’s email was serious and what was intended to be facetious.
"My friends and people that know me, people who can hear my voice when they read what I write, could tell you that I will make seemingly crazy requests in order to make a point," Syfert told Ars Technica this week. "In this case, it was basically an attempt to make myself appear fairly crazy and ballsy, and also to convey an understanding of their position that they're just doing a job, but the e-mail was written so that they'd leave me alone."
But Syfert isn’t letting DGW’s allegations get to him all that much. “If they had offered me 10,000 cash to take down the forms, or a job making $200,000 a year, I very well might have swallowed my pride and taken down the forms and released them through BitTorrent instead… I'm hardwired to be selfish. I could have been lured to the dark side, but I had never had any intention of going there,” he claims. “And I swear if I see a headline saying 'ATTORNEY WANTED 200K JOB OFFER OR 10K in CASH TO TAKE DOWN FORMS' I will put voodoo hexes on you."
So let this be a lesson to you all: If you compose a blatantly sarcastic email and send it to a film industry law firm, they are likely going to submit it to the courts and request that it be taken literally and used against you.
Of course Syfert intended to make money off of the forms, since that’s what most people in any line of work are trying to do. In fact, isn’t that what DGW is attempting to do as well by sending their settlement letters to file-sharing defendants? What exactly makes DGW think that their actions are any more noble than Syfert’s?
In my opinion, the fact that DGW actually submitted this email by Syfert as a piece of evidence to be taken seriously only makes them look worse than they already did. Not only were they harassing file-sharing defendants to pay up, but they were also apparently harassing Syfert for ruining that line of income for them. What's missing here is whatever DGW representatives said to Syfert first to provoke such a response. Could they have been baiting Syfert all along? Let’s hope that the judge is wise enough to see through all of this when ruling on DGW’s request to sanction Syfert.
