And just now, French has updated that she has hired an attorney and has requested a continuance of the Temporary Restraining Order hearing which was scheduled for July 13th. He has offered reassurances that she will not issue new DMCA takedowns or take action on existing DMCA takedowns. https://www.gofundme.com/starr-mazer-legal-support French has now increase the GoFundme to $25K - so this will be going through long haul.
Today, Honorable Judge Berle M. Schiller has granted the Temporary Restraining order for the Plaintiff.
According to SidAlpha, she has now fired her Attorney, the 5th she let's go, according to Musical Anti Hero, both who had followed the case and victims of Mauer's false DCMA-ing themselves at various points.
Destructoid posted an article about the situation.... and has completely gotten the situation wrong.
It looks like Destructoid, Jonathan Holmes included, has backtracked a little bit in their posting about the whole controversy. As of two hours ago, the article has been edited a number of times by Mr. Holmes himself and his editor to seemingly correct themselves.
The editor has made an attempt to somewhat distance the site from Holmes' article by pressing that it is an opinion piece.
Destructoid is a multi-author blog. This story in particular was an opinion piece that should not have appeared on our home page, but instead on Mr. Holmes's personal blog. We stand by Holmes in that he should always write from his gut, but that doesn't mean Destructoid endorses any part of this editorial. There's two sides to every story, and that's become very apparent here as more sources come forward. This is a story that is still developing and requires more investigation.
Meanwhile, Holmes has made at least two edits to the original article, whereby he's collecting his thoughts, a bit, and making what looks like a halfhearted apology, of sorts.
All of this can be read in the actual article, linked here.
My $0.02 on Holmes' coverage of this is that, simply put, he drew conclusions without assessing all the facts. Assuming what he said in his article is true and he picked this up randomly on Twitter, I don't think he did enough research on what was going on -- namely by approaching only Alex Mauer for their take on this, and not others (e.g., RCR's devs, Leonard French).
Someone who claims to know Mauer from the chiptune community recently posted this, on another online community.
Dino Lionetti, a music collaborator for Imagos, just submitted this document to the courts. In a signed statement asserting the legitimacy of what he's giving the courts (under penalty of perjury or being held contempt, most likely), he's submitting screenshots of a text message conversation he had with Mauer. In said conversation, she openly admits to him that she's wasting everyone and the court's time with the intention of running up legal expenses for the prosecution. She also talks about using various documents, like her 1099's, to either prove she wasn't paid or to try and make Imagos 'self incriminate' themselves.
I doubt this will shut the case in French and Imagos' favor, but this sort of thing could get Mauer held in contempt of court or, at the very least, weaken her argument in court due to bad faith.
WOW!!! THIS won't be good for her and I can't wait for the Judge's decision in a few hours from now, cause Mauer has a lot of explaining to do ... and she thought it would be smart idea to remove her attorney in a desperate bid to delay the process.
A much clear definition of what happened on the hearing - Mauer has until Aug. 21 to find a Lawyer to defend her and is given until September 25th to file and answer to the Plaintiff's complaints.
Also she changed her name to essentially gibberish, showing the kinna DMCA troll she really is.
Reading the comments, SidAlpha just asked for a screenshot of the DMCA notice. Wouldn't surprise me if he forwards it to Leonard French as evidence that Alex violated the restraining order.
If I remember reading the temporary restraining order, it said that Miss Mauer was legally prohibited from ordering DMCA strikes against videos about Star Mazer DSP. Assuming this is the case, that means Mauer can still place DMCA strikes, but they can't be placed on videos about Star Mazer DSP.
The problem, here, is that Mauer might be carpet-bombing people with these strikes on videos related to other games (such as River City Ransom Underground), which is technically allowed per the TRO. If French wants to get Mauer on the hook for violating the TRO, they need to prove that it's videos about Star Mazer DSP and not, say, RCRU or another game.
The video in question that was recently claimed was exclusively music she made for Star Mazer. It was a concert performance with her and her (probably now former) friend at 8static. There is the possibility this was filed because it featured her before her transgender surgery, but it also featured the drummer, who posted the video, so he's still in his legal right to post it. And because it has Star Mazer content, this could violate her TRO. And since this was filed using the same email address used on her other DMCA takedowns, including her attempt on SidAlpha, this is indeed her filing it.
Speaking of, SidAlpha posted a video on this already.
Apparently, you can now file a case against Alex through the FBI.
[doublepost=1506747395,1502208450][/doublepost]Well... Things got a little more complicated.
To be honest, I'm getting a sense of déjà vue. Because the response seems very similar to how Digital Homicide responded to Jim Sterling.
Leonard is now giving Alex both barrels of the legal system.
[doublepost=1508310565,1507824340][/doublepost]And it looks like the judge is being a bit more forgiving than we thought, which is bad news for seeing a quick end to this.
From Musical Anti Hero, The case against Mauer has been dismissed, as both sides have agreed to a settlement - in return, Mauer will stop the attacks on Imagos, Don Thacker and Leonard French, as well will seize and desist filing DMCAs. Leonard French will have a live-stream on his YT channel with Don Thacker explaining the matter Dec.1rst.
Here's a summary of the settlement.
Judge Schiller responds to Mauer's Attacks to the Court.
Really hope they hold her in contempt over this. Bugging the court like this makes her look foolish.
Update from Leonard - Judge has set a new hearing on Mauer case Dec. 18th. Seems Mauer has been sending a flood of calls to the Court Clerk and the Judge seems to have gotten tired of the whole situation.
[doublepost=1513618096,1512602000][/doublepost]Update from Leonard on the Special Hearing that took place today with Judge Schiller.