Originally published at: Another emulation project disappears amid Nintendo crackdown - Boing Boing
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This may sound idealistic and naive, but with the legal power of these massive corporations spinning out of control, I think there needs to be a limit placed on how much a participant can invest in prosecuting a case.
Maybe as much as the poorest party can afford?
So if it was determined that the defendant in this case could only afford, say, $10,000 in legal fees, Nintendo would only be allowed to spend $10,000 prosecuting it.
Like I say, idealistic and naive, but something has to be done when the richest in society can effectively bypass the law and dictate how it applies to them by just throwing large sums of money around that aren’t even a percentage point of their total wealth.
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If this were ever not “speech” it definitely is nowadays.
Now can I take my feet out of this bucket of wet concrete, Mario?
I’d like to see something like a public defender system for civil suits, and a public prosecutor, with the latter having discretion over what cases to pursue that a plaintiff brings them. Most of these kinds of suits are lazy and could be defeated if, in general, companies expected any pushback (instead of pre-emptive folding) to be typical.
There are anti-SLAPP laws for things like this, because the whole “giant corporation deposits a lawsuit on you and will spend you into bankruptcy to defend against it because their costs are coming out from their legal department’s couch cushions” is a very old tactic.
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Yes, but there’s no federal anti-SLAPP law, and as I understand it copyright, trademark, and patent lawsuits are (generally?) federal.
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