In reply to Samuel "Otto" Wood.

Quick but important clarification: just because the judgement was issued by default doesn’t mean it’s invalid. The court still did examine the case on the merits, and had to decide whether the damages we sought were allowed under the law. The court answers these questions whether or not the defendant shows up to argue, and we had to submit a few legal briefs to make our case (hence the big legal bill).

Now that we have the judgement - we can collect the damages from Nick Steiner (if he ever turns up), and more importantly, the decision is on the books. As Otto points out, there’s very little case law in this area, and previously *no* case law about what damages were available if a plaintiff were to win. It’s important here that the court held that we could recover attorneys’ fees and costs of suit…which were by far the biggest piece of damages. Now, any future victims of DMCA abuse can cite our case as precedent, and use it to collect damages/attorney’s fees in cases like this. If you’re interested, the case citation is: Automattic Inc., et al. v. Steiner, No. 13-cv-05413-JCS, 2014 WL 7894441 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 6, 2014).

It also sets the precedent that Automattic will fight back against DMCA abuse. Hopefully that, along with the rule that victims can collect damages (esp costly attorney’s fees) may cause future DMCA abusers to think twice before they pull the same stunt. Yes, it bites that the abuser will probably never pay up and so will go unpunished this time. But we did make a little bit of good law here, and don’t want that to be overlooked.