Charles Carreon Having Some Difficulties Trying To Represent His Wife In Court Over Copyright Infringement Claims

Okay, let's start this one with a full and fair disclosure: We've written about Charles Carreon plenty of times. However, in the past few months, his wife, Tara Carreon, has posted numerous graphical and textual attacks about this site on her own sites (multiple sites, multiple attacks!). We will not link to her various attacks, though we will note Ars Technica's report from last year, concerning her calling us "nazi scumbags" and just note that only provides a slight inkling of the nature of some of the attacks on us to date. Furthermore, it appears that Charles and/or Tara have also set up an entire site -- again, we will not link to it -- in which they are profanely and viciously attacking myself personally, along with nearly every lawyer or reporter who has ever mentioned their ridiculous crusade against Matthew Inman. So, feel free to take whatever I say about the following with however many grains of salt you prefer, knowing that Charles and Tara have decided (ridiculously) that I am among a group of folks out to get them. Okay, with that settled... a couple of years ago, before any of the Carreon/Oatmeal/Inman mess happened, we wrote about an internet jurisdiction case, called Penguin Group v. American Buddha, in which we were dismayed by a ruling in New York State, which said that the company American Buddha, from Oregon, but run out of Arizona, could be dragged to a New York court under its "long arm" statute, for a claim of copyright infringement by Penguin Group. We, along with many others, feared that this ruling might allow lots of copyright holders to drag individuals from around the country to New York to deal with copyright infringement claims. In a later ruling in that same case, the case went around again on the question of whether or not there was "substantial" revenue earned -- which also was required to bring the case to New York. Thankfully, on that round, the court recognized that someone earning basically nothing was not substantial, and thus, the jurisdiction in NY was inappropriate. What we did not realize back then, was that "American Buddha" is an operation set up by Tara Carreon and defended by Charles Carreon. I believe (irony alert) Charles is now seeking attorneys fees in NY over that case. However, Penguin Group did what you might expect, and filed the lawsuit again, but this time in Oregon, where American Buddha is registered. You can see the docket here. Tara Carreon argues that "American Buddha" is a library, which grants library cards (to a few dozen patrons) and this gives her an exception to copyright law to post full digital copies of books to her website. Now, there are some important legal questions concerning copyright, fair use and libraries that come out of this case. But would you trust Charles and Tara Carreon to make the best, most reasonable arguments on those issues? Personally, seeing how Carreon acted throughout the Inman/Oatmeal situation, followed by his actions against Public Citizen's Paul Levy after Carreon's incredible threat to sue Levy's client resulted in Levy filing for declaratory judgment and eventually successfully getting sanctions awarded against Carreon, it leads me to feel less than comfortable that Team Carreon would be making these arguments. You can laugh off whatever strategies they might take, but as with the NY case we wrote about, what I really fear is the possibility (perhaps likelihood) of a really bad precedent being set here, that might impact other cases where there are legitimate fair use issues or issues involving libraries, at play. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately for any ultimate result, the case is not off to a good start. Penguin's lawyer raised certain issues about Charles' effort to represent American Buddha in Oregon, since his license to practice law in Oregon had lapsed years ago. Even worse, it noted that Carreon had told the NY court (where he's still trying to get legal fees) that he was licensed in Oregon. As they point out, misrepresenting his status to the court in NY might cause trouble in renewing his status in Oregon. They also mention the attorneys fees he has to pay to Paul Levy over the disastrous case in California, noting that he was sanctioned for "malicious conduct during the course of this case." There are also a number of procedural issues concerning liability insurance (in which it's suggested that Carreon totally misread the rules), and with regards to his attempt to claim that he i