Marc Randazza

Early life and education

Randazza was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on November 26, 1969. He graduated from Gloucester High School in 1987. Randazza attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he majored in journalism. Randazza worked as a journalist and in advertising in Washington, D.C., Palermo, Rome, New York City, and Miami. In 1996, Randazza was inspired to attend law school by the film The People vs. Larry Flynt. He attended Georgetown University Law Center and graduated in 2000. During law school, he interned for Denise Johnson of the Vermont Supreme Court. He continued his First Amendment education by attending the University of Florida, where he earned a master's degree in communications, writing his thesis on vote pairing, which was cited by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Career

Randazza is licensed to practice law in Massachusetts (2002), Florida (2003), California (2010), Arizona (2010), and Nevada (2012). Randazza's first case was representing a fraternity at Boston University when the brothers of that fraternity were accused of destroying their house and other misconduct. He then began practicing in Florida as a real estate attorney. He quickly returned to the First Amendment and media field, taking on representation of an adult bookstore in Fort Myers, Florida. Soon thereafter, he moved to Orlando, Florida where his practice in First Amendment and media law expanded. He started representing defendants in SLAPP suits, pornography businesses, protestors, in often unpopular constitutional law matters.

In 2004, his University of Florida thesis gained attention as vote pairing became a minor issue during the 2004 election. Randazza was asked to debate the issue on Fox News, and thereafter has been a frequent legal commentator on television and in print. Randazza served as a professor of law at Barry University School of Law, located in Orlando, Florida. where he taught First Amendment law, copyright law, trademark law, and entertainment law.

Randazza has a practice that primarily focuses on the areas of First Amendment litigation, adult entertainment, trademark and copyright litigation, and domain name arbitration disputes. He has represented a number of well-known adult entertainment companies including Kink.com, Bang Bus, and Milf Hunter. He also represents media businesses such as BME and bloggers in SLAPP suits.

Randazza has gained notoriety for handling high-profile First Amendment cases and for his defense of the adult entertainment field. He represented Anthony Ciolli, one of the administrators of AutoAdmit in the high-profile case regarding that website, securing his dismissal from that case. He has represented the defendant in Beck v. Eiland-Hall, a case before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) filed by political commentator Glenn Beck, concerning a satire website parodying Beck. The WIPO arbitrator ruled against Beck in the case, and in favor of Randazza's client. Citizen Media Law Project assistant director Sam Bayard said of the WIPO arbitrator's decision, "It's good to see that this WIPO arbitrator had no interest in allowing Beck to circumvent the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution". He went on to congratulate Randazza, "Congratulations to Marc for this big victory and for his innovative brief that not only won the case, but also brought 'Mr. Spock Ate My Balls' into the legal lexicon."

Randazza has been criticized by feminists for supporting Rush Limbaugh and the rights of the adult film industry as well as his representation of adult film companies in copyright infringement cases. However, despite representing copyright plaintiffs, in late 2011, Randazza and his firm effectively killed Righthaven, a "copyright troll" company briefly infamous for buying limited rights to copyrighted works for the sole purpose of bringing lawsuits against alleged infringers. On May 9, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court's decision dismissing the case for lack of standing. Righthaven complained of what it called Randazza's "scorched earth judgment enforcement efforts" in its legal filings. This is consistent with Randazza's use of the Latin term murum aries attigit when he defends defamation cases. In addition, in October 2012, Randazza launched a crowdsourced investigation of the "revenge porn" site IsAnybodyDown?, run by Craig Brittain and Chance Trahan, which posted women's nude photos and personal contact information while advertising the services of the non-existent "takedown lawyer David Blade III", who promised to have the photos removed for a fee. Randazza described his approach, "When it comes to porn, here are my rules: Rule #1: The subjects must be adults. Rule #2: The subjects must be consenting adults. If you don’t break either of those rules, I am on your side. I will defend your right to make, watch, display, and sell that content. Break either rule, and I want to hurt you for the damage you do to others".

Randazza was named one of the Top 50 newsmakers of the adult entertainment industry by XBIZ World Magazine for the year 2011, and in January 2012, he discussed being admitted to the Nevada Bar, his plans to reform nationwide anti-SLAPP legislation, and changes to copyright protections as a result of Righthaven. In July 2012, VegasInc and Avvo.com named Randazza one of Las Vegas' Top Lawyers.

Randazza has handled a number of "cameras in the courtroom" cases, defending the rights of the news media to attend and televise courtroom proceedings. Most notably, Randazza successfully argued this issue against Alan Dershowitz. In that case, Randazza represented Courtroom View Network in its quest to televise a highly publicized trial in Las Vegas involving the Las Vegas Sands.

In 2013, Randazza was instrumental in lobbying the Nevada legislature to update Nevada's Anti-SLAPP statute. This brought Nevada's Anti-SLAPP statute up to date, and in line with California, Oregon, and Washington, thus protecting free speech in Nevada to the same extent it is protected in the West Coast states.

On Oct. 1, 2014, Randazza was named by Desert Companion Magazine to its top lawyers in Southern Nevada list.

On June 8, 2015, Governor Sandoval signed Nevada Senate bill 444, which in its initial form, stood to largely repeal the Nevada Anti-SLAPP law. The initial form of the law was backed by casino mogul, Steve Wynn. Randazza lobbied to keep the statute in its speech-protective form.

On September 30, 2015 Randazza prevailed in his defense of Dr. Steven Novella in a SLAPP case in Florida, filed against him by Edward Tobinick. Edward Tobinick filed a civil action in Florida Southern District Court naming Novella, Yale University, Society for Science-Based Medicine, Inc. and SGU Productions, LLC as defendants. The main allegations of the action were that "in violation of the Lanham Act, Novella has and continues to publish a false advertisement disparaging Plaintiffs entitled 'Enbrel for Stroke and Alzheimer's', ('the 'Advertisement') and implying that the INR plaintiffs' use of entanercept is ineffective and useless;" and "The Advertisement is extremely inflammatory and defamatory in nature as it contains multiple false and misleading statements of fact regarding Plaintiffs." "The Advertisement" referred to in the action is an entry for the Science-Based Medicine blog that Novella wrote and posted on May 8, 2013.

Randazza filed an Anti-SLAPP motion in the under the California Anti-SLAPP law, despite the case being in Florida. The motion was granted, since one of the plaintiffs was from California. It was successful, and the federal court awarded Novella a victory in the case. "As a prevailing defendant, Novella is entitled to recover his attorney's fees and costs under the anti-SLAPP statute. Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16(c)(1). He may seek to recover his fees and costs by separate motion."

Thereafter, Tobinick's strategy was focused the "false advertising" claims under the United States' Lanham Act. Tobinick was unable to show that Novella had profited from his blog post or that it was in any way an advertisement. "

On October 21, 2015, Randazza prevailed in another high profile free speech case involving the website Pissed Consumer. Randazza represented the consumer review website when a diet company, Roca Labs, brought a defamation claim against them. In that case, Roca Labs sued the company, but then accused Randazza of bribery. Roca Labs then sued Randazza personally for defamation. Roca Labs sought a prior restraint against Pissed Consumer, which Randazza defeated. Ultimately, Randazza prevailed at summary judgment.

On April 27, 2016, Randazza filed a friend of the court brief in the lawsuit by Paramount Pictures and CBS against Axanar Productions on behalf of the Language Creation Society. The lawsuit concerned a 21 minute fan made short film, Prelude to Axanar. Paramount Pictures and CBS claimed, among other things, that the film infringed their rights by making use of the Klingon language. Randazza argued that Klingon is a living language, and as such, is a “state of mind”—a system or process, which cannot be copyrighted, unlike a work. Randazza contended that since Klingon was invented in the 1980s, the language has expanded past its origins, pointing to examples like dictionaries, translations of Shakespeare, the Klingon Language Institute, official government statements, a wedding conducted in Klingon, and translation service available through Bing. To support its point, portions of the brief were written in Klingon, employing the Klingon alphabet.

Response to the brief was generally positive. Attorney and blogger Kevin Underhill called it “a terrific brief”, and Attorney Ken White of Popehat wrote that “Marc continues to demonstrate that legal writing can be entertaining, irreverent, and persuasive at the same time.” In an article on the blog Mental Floss, Linguist Arika Okrent particularly praised the incorporation of the Klingon Language into arguments. Ethan Chiel of Fusion called the brief “a joy to read” and remarked that it was “wonderful to see what is essentially (very serious) fun being had in demonstrating a point in a legal proceeding.”

Approximately three weeks after the brief was filed, in an interview on May 20, 2016, J.J. Abrams said that Paramount would drop the lawsuit "within the next few weeks." Abrams further stated that he pushed the studio to stop the lawsuit because "we realized this is not the appropriate way to deal with the fans."

On March 14, 2017 MormonLeaks released a letter written by Randazza addressed to the Intellectual Property Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The letter is a response to a DMCA take-down request MormonLeaks had received from the LDS Church concerning a PowerPoint slide deck leaked in late February 2017. Randazza claimed that MormonLeaks had obtained the document "lawfully and had a right to distribute it in its capacity as a journalistic resource devoted to discussing facts about the LDS Church." He compared the Church's attempt to censor the document to a "single candle [knocked] over into a field of dried leaves" claiming that the "attempted censorship simply caused the document to be further reproduced and redistributed that even a hypothetical divine being could not possibly undo the dissemination."

On September 19, 2017 Randazza represented MormonLeaks once again in response to a DMCA take-down request, but this time from the heirs of Bruce R. McConkie in response to the July 24, 2017 release of 37 never-before-published documents penned by McConkie. Randazza claimed the documents were obtained and published legally under fair use. He accused the McConkie family of censorship saying "...the purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the creation of original works of authorship. It is not a tool for censorship."

Controversies

On June 3, 2015, there was an interim arbitration award against Randazza involving Liberty Media Holdings LLC, for whom Randazza had been General Counsel from 2009 to 2012. The Ars Technica article on that case referenced a statement from Randazza's arbitration attorney to the Law Society of Upper Canada calling the arbitrator's neutrality into question. The arbitration dispute arose following Randazza’s departure from Liberty and his filing of employment claims against them. Liberty’s counterclaims against Randazza in the arbitration focused on allegations Randazza had negotiated bribes from opposing parties in copyright litigation, engaged in conflicts of interest, destroyed evidence, unjustly enriched himself, and committed other breaches of fiduciary duty. Following two and a half years of arbitration proceedings, the arbitrator issued an interim award in favor of Liberty and against Randazza on all claims. Following his arbitration loss, Randazza filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.