Blockshopper Scumbags Settle Lawsuit with Jones Day

From "The Plain Dealer" with our comments added.

Jones Day settles lawsuit against small Internet site, defendants say

February 11, 2009 17:19PM
A small Internet site says it has settled a lawsuit filed by the Jones Day law firm - a suit that ignited criticism from bloggers and free speech advocates across the country.

Jones Day wanted to stop Blockshopper.com, a real estate site, from linking to the law firm's Web site. Jones Day also claimed that Blockshopper's use of the firm's name without permission constituted trademark infringement.

Under the settlement, Blockshopper can continue to link to Jones Day's site, but it must use the firm's Web address as the link.

Blockshopper says it spent more than $100,000 defending itself against the lawsuit.

"They had no shot at winning, but they were going to bleed us dry," said co-founder [and complete piece of human filth] Brian Timpone, who described the settlement Wednesday.
Jones Day did not return calls requesting comment.

BlockShopper posts information from public records on residential sales in 11 U.S. markets. It adds to that brief articles about transactions involving lawyers, doctors and other buyers and sellers whose names show up in Google searches.

[I.e. Blockshopper scumbag pieces of crap Brian Timpone and Edward Edward Weinhaus mine pubic data and post it for their personal profit, with a complete and total disregard for personal privacy and the well being of others. Their "brief articles" are nothing more than a cheesy search engine optimization ploy that mines Linked-in and other personal profile information and posts it on their site to increase their internet traffic through key words.

This isn't a free speech issue, you morons — it's about privacy and not having your address show up in Google and having every jackass, stalker, and nutcase know where you and your family live. While it is true that the information may be posted on assessor's pages, these pages are not indexed by Google.

Furthermore, people concerned about their privacy spend thousands on trusts and LLC's to get their names off of assessor's sites - all a wasted effort thanks to these two f-ing punks. These a-holes don't give a crap about "free speech" - what they care about is making money at other people's expense, regardless of the consequences.

When someone gets raped, a kid gets abducted, or home gets burglarized because some criminal found their address through Blockshopper, LET'S MAKE SURE THESE TWO PIECES OF SHIT GET HELD PERSONALLY LIABLE FOR MAKING THIS PERSONAL INFORMATION APPEAR ON GOOGLE SEARCHES.]

Jones Day sued BlockShopper in August after it posted articles about Dan Malone Jr. and Jacob Tiedt, lawyers at its Chicago office who had recently bought condos. The articles linked to the lawyers' profile pages on the firm's 2,300-attorney site.

Jones Day asserted that the links could give viewers the mistaken impression that it endorsed BlockShopper or was affiliated with it.

Critics scoffed, saying that Jones Day's position was an attack on Blockshopper's First Amendment rights and jeopardized the common practice of linking from one Internet site to another.

The two sides talked about a settlement almost before the ink was dry on Jones Day's suit. Jones Day offered to drop its claim if BlockShopper stopped writing about its lawyers and paid $10,000, Timpone said. BlockShopper refused -- agreeing would have gutted its business model by laying it open to anyone who didn't like a BlockShopper link, he said.

BlockShopper in September offered to "make the link more literal" by including the law firm's Web address -- the terms agreed to this week, Timpone said. At the time, BlockShopper had incurred $10,000 in legal fees.

Jones Day rejected the plan. About four months later, a few weeks before the case was set for trial in Illinois, the two sides agreed to settle, Timpone said. By then BlockShopper had rung up $110,000 in legal fees.

[Piece of shit] Timpone said his 15-employee company made a business decision that it couldn't continue the fight.

"It's harrowing," he said. "I hope nobody has to go through what we went through."

[We'll do whatever we can to make sure that you'll be going through it again and again you F-ing prick.]

Under the settlement, provided to The Plain Dealer by BlockShopper attorney James Klenk, BlockShopper can publish links to Jones Day but they can't be "embedded links." Those are defined as hyperlinks that are placed on a word or name.

Instead, BlockShopper will have to place the Web address next to references to the firm. In other words, instead of writing Daniel P. Malone Jr. is an associate in the Chicago office of Jones Day," BlockShopper must write "Malone (www.jonesday.com/dpmalone) is an associate . . ." BlockShopper is permitted to use "deep links" to any Jones Day site. Those are links that directly access a specific page beyond the home page, such as attorneys' biographical pages. While the settlement may seem like a fig leaf, it still rankles digital rights proponents who say BlockShopper did nothing illegal.

Links are "one of the accepted methods of dissemination of information on the Internet," Klenk said.

Paul Levy [another complete moron who can't distinguish between free speech and privacy rights], a lawyer with the consumer group Public Citizen, encouraged people to "replicate the lesson to Jones Day" by posting hyperlinks to the firm "as a way of daring, 'Big boy, try it again.'" While the case was pending, BlockShopper agreed to remove links to the condo-buying associates in Chicago.

Now those postings will go back up, along with listings of property transactions by other Jones Day lawyers, [pathetic loser] Timpone said.

BlockShopper also will have a new link for visitors curious about why Jones Day references come in a different format than all the other tie-ins appearing on the BlockShopper site. "We're going to link to a page that describes what happened in the lawsuit," Timpone said.

[We are deeply disappointed that Jones Day has decided to settle this case. Someone else please sue this piece of shit company out of existence... We need to get a class-action law suit going by everyone who feels their rights to privacy have been comprised by these selfish greedy scumbags. In the meantime please feel free to post any additional info you can find on Blockshopper scumbags Brian Timpone and Edward Weinhaus... what their personal problems are, who they or their wives are having affairs with, where their kids go to school, etc.]