Brett Kimberlin's Persecution of Kimberlin Unmasked

W.J.J. Hoge has posted Brett Kimberlin's amended complaint for copyright violation against Kimberlin Unmasked ("KU").  See it here.

What has the terrible copyright violator, Kimberlin Unmasked, done to damage Kimberlin?  She or he published screen grabs of Kimberlin's face from his "Justice Through Music" videos that are published on YouTube.

So now you know.  According to Kimberlin, someone's face is copyrighted, no matter how infamous, and no depiction of it can be published without permission lest he be accused of copyright violation. However, I doubt that this is true in most cases.  Use of a celebrity's face without permission to promote a product would obviously be a copyright violation, but use of an ex-felon's face for purposes of criticism is another thing altogether, particularly when the YouTube videos are political in nature and advocating a cause or political position.

Of course, the YouTube videos of Brett Kimberlin's face in the "Justice Through Music" videos are all linkable and embeddable on any blog that chooses to display them.  I know, because I just checked.  Obviously, Kimberlin wants these images disseminated far and wide, or the videos would not be linkable or embeddable.  What he doesn't want, obviously, is for them to be disseminated for purposes of criticism.

Also, there is no fee to view Kimberlin's mug on YouTube.  It's all free.  So what did Kimberlin lose by KU posting screen grabs of his face?  Nothing financial.  The screen grabs were fair use for purposes of criticism, education or satire, and therefore not a copyright violation.  Kimberlin's beef, as usual, was to damage anyone who criticizes him, to suppress criticism and free speech, to deny First Amendment rights to anyone he doesn't like, through the abuse and misuse of the court system.

In the process of shutting up KU, Kimberlin, or one of his minions acting on his behalf, lied to Blogger that the Kimberlin Unmasked's Blogger blogsite was a "spoof site," which is against Blogger's terms of use.  A spoof site is one where the author pretends to be someone else, i.e. by impersonating them.  The KU Blogger blogsite was most certainly not a "spoof site," but was taken down anyway by the bad-faith misrepresentation of Team Kimberlin.  Sounds both fraudulent and actionable to me, but I am no attorney.  So when Kimberlin claims in his court filings that KU was taken down by Blogger due to "violation of its terms of service," naturally he doesn't mention that it was taken down due to his own possibly fraudulent misrepresentations.  In a similar way, Team Kimberlin got two of KU's twitter accounts shut down by equally bad faith misrepresentations.

After KU replaced its Blogsite blog with another one hosted elsewhere, persons unknown but undoubtedly loyal to Brett Kimberlin, launched an illegal DDOS attack on the site, shutting it down for several hours.  Of course, there's the possibility that Brett Kimberlin had nothing to do with this felonious act, but I personally find that very hard to believe.  DDOS attacks are a specialty of the illegal hacker group "Anonymous."  Neal Rauhauser, a top Kimberlin associate, has been linked to "Anonymous":

Neal Rauhauser is a far-left activist who has engaged in violent rhetoric, contacts members from the hacking group Anonymous, and is an admitted associate of Brett Kimberlin’s. He has written how-to guides regarding methods to use phony identities and hide one’s Internet activities from law enforcement.

The truth is this:  Kimberlin Unmasked has violated no laws, federal or otherwise, against Brett Kimberlin.  However, there is substantial evidence that Kimberlin and/or his associates have committed torts or crimes against Kimberlin Unmasked.  If the ill-advised copyright suit against Kimberlin Unmasked is allowed to proceed, I would expect a countersuit and counterclaims against Kimberlin, and my money is on Kimberlin Unmasked as to the outcome.

Corrections as to any errors in facts in this post are welcome.  Brett Kimberlin is invited to rebut the above, subject to counter-rebuttals, should he wish to do so.