Attorney Mike Meier used to be only a little bit infamous. A few sites like Fight Copyright Trolls criticized him, painting him as someone who used to decry copyright trolling but then switched sides and became a copyright troll.

But those posts were relatively obscure.

Then Meier, whom one senses did not come to the law via rocketry, came up with a cunning plan: he sent DMCA notices complaining about blog posts criticizing him. There were several problems with these notices: (1) he sent them to the sites' registrars rather than their hosts, (2) he used them to complain about defamation, which is not covered by the DMCA, and (3) he complained about uses of his images that were clearly, on their face, fair use.

The natural and probable result of Meier's flailing attack was widespread infamy. His targets Fight Copyright Trolls and Extortion Letters ridiculed his hamfisted efforts. Those posts were picked up, and gleefully discussed, by far bigger sites including The Consumerist, BoingBoing, TorrentFreak, Techdirt, and others. The number of people who have read negative things about him has gone up by a couple of orders of magnitude. Some of the past unpleasantness he has experienced — like the time a federal court excoriated him in a sanctions order, or the time he stipulated to a reprimand by a state bar — have reached a far wider audience.

But Mike Meier's legal threat was not foolish just because it exposed his behavior to more readers. It was foolish because it exposed him widely as a fool. People hire lawyers they trust. They want to be able to rely upon their lawyer's advice, and to make difficult decisions based upon that advice. But who would trust the advice of a lawyer who would engage in a legal tactic that is so foreseeably self-destructive? If Meier had sent the DMCA notices on behalf of a client, I would call it rank malpractice and tell his client to consider suing him. In 2014, minimal legal competence requires an attorney to anticipate and understand the Streisand Effect.

Last 5 posts by Ken White