Duration: 05:22

The law finally caught up with Ben, and served him the Bricks & Minifigs court papers, aka "service of process", aka, "You've been served."

But is this the end, or just the beginning?

Duration: 19:52

New York just became the first state in the country to order your 3D printer to scan what you make — and decide whether you're allowed to make it. It's buried in the state budget, it redefines a computer file as a "firearm product," and the software to enforce it was picked out seven months before the law existed.

Duration: 27:15

The American Fork Police Department's accidental upload of 48GB of unredacted bodycam footage has brought a new dimension to the ongoing saga involving Reckless Ben and Bricks and Minifigs. This incident raises questions about what was truly hidden and the implications for qualified immunity. We dive into the details of this astonishing accidental release and its potential impact on the case.

Duration: 29:40

Bricks & Minifigs has permanently closed its Salem, Oregon store and parted ways with franchisees Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson, blaming a "devastating social media campaign" while conceding "gross negligence" and revaluing the disputed Star Wars LEGO collection it once promoted at over $200,000.

Your Favorite Copyright Attorney reads the June 4 press release the way a litigator would — for the admissions, the shifting valuations, the defamation exposure, and what the civil RICO suit against Reckless Ben is really for.

Duration: 17:23

The one-sided court Order telling  @RecklessBen  to take down his videos has been met with a stunning silence. Or was, until Jack Conte of Patreon told Bricks & Minifigs corporate what to do with their takedown notice: "Stuff It".

 @thecivilrightslawyer  video: https://youtu.be/Hs3bElrHKUE?si=f22Rs7pF0_I9Nzaq

 @JackConteExtras  video: https://youtu.be/36jxNeV5L1Q?si=Hp2ZIAdwbYsGmt-l

00:00 - Introduction

02:47 - Disclaimer

03:06 - I. What the order actually says

07:52 - III. An order is only as strong as someone's willingness to obey it

09:38 - IV. The order may not have reached anyone

11:40 - V. The platform that said "Stuff It"

14:03 - VI. June 22

16:04 - Please Support Lawful Masses

Duration: 15:55

A recent federal court ruling has brought a fascinating twist to a copyright infringement lawsuit, challenging a multi-trillion-dollar tech company's attempt to remove all mentions of bittorrent. The judge's colorful analogy about 'dolphin painting' highlights the core issue in this file sharing case. This decision could reshape how p2p protocols are viewed in legal battles.

Special thanks to my wife Kayleigh for speed painting the dolphins on canvas.

Want to do something about it? postcardstocongress.org — code Just5Dollars sends postcards to all three of your federal reps for $5.

Support the channel: patreon.com/ljfrench

00:00 - Nvidia has done the big bad

01:17 - WHAT JUST HAPPENED

02:27 - THE COX CURVEBALL

04:10 - THE PIPELINE

06:18 - NVIDIA'S BET

09:05 - THE PAINTBRUSH

10:40 - WHERE THIS LEAVES THE INDUSTRY

13:41 - CLOSING

14:27 - Please Support Lawful Masses

Duration: 39:24

A Utah judge has signed an order telling Reckless Ben to take his Bricks & Minifigs videos down — and that's only the third-strangest thing that happened this week. The criminal charges came in as misdemeanors.

The company answered with a ten-count civil RICO suit built from Ben's own footage. And the franchisees who lost the store have now sued corporate themselves, which means the same people are plaintiffs in one courtroom and defendants in the one down the hall.

I read both complaints and the restraining order so you don't have to. This is the secured-creditor fight over the collection, the prior-restraint problem with the takedown, and the two-lawsuit collision — explained by someone who does this for a living.

Nothing here is decided; a complaint is one side talking, and I'll flag what's contestable as we go.

Link to Ben's Channel: @RecklessBen

Link to Ben's GoFundMe for Bryan: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bryan-recover-his-lego-collection

Want to do something about it? postcardstocongress.org — code Just5Dollars sends postcards to all three of your federal reps for $5.

Support the channel: patreon.com/ljfrench

00:00 - This week in the Bricks & Minifigs Star Wars LEGO saga

02:50 - Part 1: The Recording

05:12 - Part 2: The "Reposession"

12:03 - Part 3: The Ammon McNeff Livestream

14:30 - The Counter-Suit

24:01 - Part 5: The Gorman's Lawsuit

29:49 - Part 6: Reckless Ben

33:57 - Part 7: Two Lawsuits and a Restraining Order

37:46 - Please Support Lawful Masses

Duration: 34:04

Imagine spending fifteen years and around thirty thousand dollars building the world's largest sealed Star Wars Lego collection with your eighty-three-year-old father. Imagine that you finally decide to sell it, to fund your grandkids' college, and you take it to what should be the safest place in America to consign rare Lego sets — a national franchise dedicated specifically to buying, selling, and consigning Lego.

Imagine that franchise sells some of your collection. Pays you for it. Things are going well.

And then one day the corporate parent walks in, takes over the store, and announces that your collection now belongs to them.

Link to Ben's Channel:  @RecklessBen 

Link to Ben's GoFundMe for Bryan: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bryan-recover-his-lego-collection

Want to do something about it? postcardstocongress.org — code Just5Dollars sends postcards to all three of your federal reps for $5.

Support the channel: patreon.com/ljfrench

00:00 - $200,000 in Legos, Stolen

02:14 - The Parties

04:40 - The Consignment Law Trap

07:12 - Bailment & Conversion

09:50 - The Seizure

13:01 - Mansell Revokes

14:40 - Enter Reckless Ben

15:59 - Assymmetric Legal Warfare

16:24 - Interference with a Lottery

18:19 - Fraud in the Execution

21:01 - Ten Plaintiffs & Ten Small Claims

22:10 - Store Defaults, Closes

24:38 - The Mirror Corporation

26:11 - GoFundMe Arrest

28:22 - The Edited GoFundMe

29:10 - My Autopsy

32:34 - Support Lawful Masses

Duration: 10:54

In this video, I provide an update in the ongoing dispute between Bambu Lab and the AGPL regarding their 3D printing software. Bambu Lab's slicing software, a fork of PrusaSlicer, operates under an open source licensing framework. I discuss why the AGPL may send a cease and desist, impacting users of Bambu Lab and Orca Slicer.

Sources and further reading:

Paweł Jarczak, AGPL analysis (bambu_agpl.md) — https://github.com/jarczakpawel/OrcaSlicer-bambulab/blob/main/bambu_agpl.md

Software Freedom Conservancy, "Dealing with Incomplete Copyleft Source That Doesn't Correspond" (May 17, 2026) — https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/may/17/incomplete-corresponding-source-code-copyleft-agpl/

The first video — https://youtu.be/0tdZ5Z7nRDY

Want to do something about it? postcardstocongress.org — code Just5Dollars sends postcards to all three of your federal reps for $5.

Support the channel: patreon.com/ljfrench

Disclaimer: This video is general legal commentary, not legal advice. I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. The contact between the developer and the Software Freedom Conservancy described here is based on the developer's public account; the Conservancy has not, as of recording, publicly named Bambu Lab.

#RightToRepair #BambuLab #OpenSource #AGPL #Copyleft #SoftwareFreedom #CopyrightLaw #3DPrinting

Duration: 16:21

Alex Murdaugh's conviction for the murders of his wife and son have been overturned after a unanimous South Carolina Supreme Court ruling finding the Clerk of Court had put her thumb on the scale of justice for personal gain.

Duration: 19:49

A Polish developer published an OrcaSlicer fork that restored what Bambu Lab's January 2025 firmware update broke. Days later, Bambu's lawyers came calling — and the cease-and-desist they sent exposed something the company probably didn't want examined too closely.

In this video I walk through the Bambu Lab / OrcaSlicer dispute as it stands in May 2026, and what it actually means under U.S. and EU law. We cover Bambu's "Authorization Control" firmware, the leaked RSA private key that surfaced within 48 hours, why DMCA Section 1201(f) and the Sixth Circuit's Lexmark decision are bad news for Bambu's strongest legal theory, and the AGPL counterpunch hiding inside Bambu Studio's own source code. Then we zoom out to John Deere, HP, the EU Right to Repair Directive, and the question worth sitting with: do you actually own the smart devices you've already paid for, or are you permanently leasing the right to turn them on?

00:00 - Introduction

01:00 - Bambu v. Orcaslicer - Again

04:58 - Authorization Controls

08:47 - Community Response

10:50 - Who has standing

13:43 - Similar to John Deere

15:19 - Europe Contradicts Itself

18:17 - Lawful Masses is community supported

Want to do something about it? I built a tool to make contacting your representatives easy: postcardstocongress.org.

Use code Just5Dollars to send postcards to all three of your federal reps for $5.

Support the channel: patreon.com/ljfrench

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/piratelawyer.com

Disclaimer: This video is general legal commentary, not legal advice. I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

#RightToRepair #BambuLab #OrcaSlicer #3DPrinting #OpenSource #AGPL #DMCA #CopyrightLaw

Duration: 14:33

Five years of social media handles. Ten years of email addresses. Family information. Biometrics. DNA. This is what crossing the border into United States will soon require.

Duration: 15:40

The recent $99 million antitrust settlement involving John Deere creates the illusion of victory for farmers who are still paying a premium for software access.

00:00 - John Deere's $99 Million Settlement: A Down Payment on an Unfinished Fight

01:29 - The Settlement Itself

03:47 - The Illusion of Choice

05:26 - What the People Who Actually Turn Wrenches Had to Say

07:33 - Three Promises, Zero Deliveries

08:59 - The Tell

10:43 - The Legislative Surge and the Structural Hurdle

12:15 - The Pattern Across Industries

13:21 - The Question

14:18 - Lawful Masses needs YOUR support!

Duration: 12:14

What would it look like if a U.S. president were a Russian intelligence asset?

In this video, I apply a counterintelligence framework called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses to compare the strategic prescriptions in Aleksandr Dugin's "Foundations of Geopolitics" — required reading at Russia's military academy — with the observable foreign policy decisions of the Trump administration, including the 2026 Iran war, the lifting of Russian oil sanctions, and Russia's SVR plot to stage a fake assassination of Viktor Orbán before Hungary's April 2026 election.

I examine NATO, alliance fractures, institutional degradation, and the Russian oil revenue windfall — and I lay out the strongest counterarguments. This is not a verdict. It's the thought experiment nobody wants to conduct.

#trump #russia #intelligence #nato #iran #iranwar #orban #hungary #dugin #geopolitics #counterintelligence #foreignpolicy

Duration: 33:22

On April 12, 2026, at 3:12 AM local time, Vice President J.D. Vance walked out of the Serena Hotel in Islamabad after 21 hours of negotiation. Hours later, he stood at a podium, spoke for three minutes, took three questions, and announced that the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran had failed to reach an agreement to end a war that has killed thousands, closed the Strait of Hormuz, and triggered the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s.

He called what he left on the table "our final and best offer."

I've been a practicing attorney for almost fifteen years. I've negotiated divorces, custody disputes, bankruptcy arrangements, IP contracts, and thousands of copyright infringement settlements. I once spent 13 hours in a single sitting negotiating a settlement between one video game modder and a multibillion-dollar publisher — over a single piece of user-generated content.

Vance spent 21 hours trying to end a war. That ratio alone should tell you something is wrong. It gets worse the closer you look.

This is a 30-minute deep dive into why the Islamabad talks collapsed — from the perspective of a working negotiator. We walk through the room: 10,000 security personnel, 300 Americans, 70 Iranians in mourning clothes, and the children's shoes from the Minab school strike placed on the table. We examine the rhetoric Vance deployed before the summit — calling Iran's opening proposal a "ChatGPT" product written by "a random yahoo," telling the world it would be "dumb" for Iran to let talks collapse over Lebanon. We dissect the three unbridgeable impasses: nuclear zero versus NPT sovereignty, unconditional reopening of Hormuz versus multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency transit tolls, and Lebanon. And we examine the walkout — the three-minute presser, the three questions, "final and best offer" delivered to a counterparty with nothing left to lose.

The central analytical point: military victory and negotiating leverage are not the same thing. Leverage is a function of what the other party has left to lose. Iran, by April 2026, had lost its Supreme Leader, its navy, its air force, most of its missile production, and thousands of its people. A party with almost nothing left to lose is the hardest party in the world to move. Meanwhile the United States held overwhelming military dominance but was hemorrhaging economically — Brent crude above $120, gas prices up 30%, and 600 commercial vessels stranded in the Gulf.

Both sides walked in believing they held the stronger hand. That is the single most common pattern in failed negotiations. It is present in almost every divorce that goes to trial and almost every contract dispute that becomes litigation.

We also cover what a working negotiator would have done differently: months of patient technical preparation at the staff level before principals ever met, no public ultimatums, and — most importantly — structuring the deal so each side had something to carry home. The Iranian delegation carried the shoes of dead children into the Serena Hotel because they needed something to carry home. The American delegation offered them nothing.

Topics covered: • The physical picture at the Serena and the Minab children's shoes • What Operation Epic Fury accomplished and why Vance thought it was a surrender negotiation • The three diagnostic failures: compressed timeline, reduced flexibility, public humiliation • The Budapest rhetoric in the days before the summit • Why leverage is a function of what's left to lose, not what's been taken • The 21 hours: proximity diplomacy, the face-to-face, the technical night shift • The three impasses — nuclear, Hormuz, Lebanon • The Iranian cryptocurrency toll proposal and why it could never be accepted • Close-reading Vance's walkout press conference • What a working negotiator would have done differently • The ceasefire clock, the War Powers clock, and the constitutional collision course

This is not a partisan analysis. It is a practitioner's analysis. The same diagnostic tools apply whether you are mediating a copyright dispute or ending a regional war. The party who needs the deal more is the party watching the clock. Watch who's watching the clock.

If you found this useful, subscribe for more long-form legal analysis. Comments open — I particularly want to hear from other practitioners in dispute resolution.

#IranWar #Diplomacy #Negotiation #StraitOfHormuz #LawfulMasses #InternationalLaw

Duration: 14:33

The Supreme Court just rewrote the rules of secondary copyright liability — and almost nobody is talking about what it means for YOU, the creator.

On March 25, 2026, in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court unanimously held that simply knowing your users might infringe copyright is NOT enough to make you liable. The Court killed a 50-year-old legal theory called "knowledge plus material contribution" that had been the foundation of nearly every secondary copyright lawsuit against internet service providers, cloud services, and platforms.

So here's the question I can't stop thinking about: If the legal pressure that built YouTube's three-strike policy just got dramatically reduced... could YouTube finally drop the three-strike system? Could we be standing at the doorway of a creator renaissance — a moment where remixing, fair use, criticism, commentary, and transformative work can flourish without the constant fear of channel termination?

In this video, I break down:

→ What the Supreme Court actually held in Cox v. Sony (and why Justice Thomas's two-track framework changes everything)

→ Justice Sotomayor's blistering concurrence warning that the DMCA safe harbor is now "obsolete"

→ Why YouTube's three-strike policy exists in the first place (spoiler: it's 17 U.S.C. § 512(i))

→ The Viacom v. YouTube origin story that built the modern Content ID empire

→ Whether YouTube can legally relax its repeat infringer policy now (yes) and whether they actually will (...maybe not)

→ The case for a fair-use renaissance — and the very real reasons it might never happen

→ What this ruling means for AI platforms, cloud services, social media, and the entire internet ecosystem

This is one of those rare moments where one Supreme Court decision could ripple outward and reshape how we all create on the internet. Or it could change nothing. I'll walk you through both possibilities.

📺 REQUIRED VIEWING: Before (or after) watching this, do yourself a favor and watch Tom Scott's brilliant "YouTube's copyright system isn't broken. The world's is." → https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU?si=icKg7_C15nPzJClQ

Tom made this video years ago and it remains the single best explanation of WHY YouTube built the system it did. My video picks up where his leaves off — what happens now that the legal ground underneath that system has shifted?

⚖️ I'm Leonard French, a copyright attorney with 15 years of experience defending creators and breaking down the law that shapes the internet. If you want more deep dives into the cases that actually matter for creators, hit subscribe.

💬 Drop a comment: Do you think YouTube will actually change its policy? Or are the contractual and business pressures too strong? I read everything.

👍 If this video helped you understand a topic that almost no other channel is covering, a like genuinely helps the algorithm show it to more creators who need to see it.

🔔 Subscribe for more legal analysis: [channel link]

#Copyright #YouTube #SupremeCourt #FairUse #CreatorEconomy #DMCA #LawfulMasses #CoxVSony #ContentID #LegalAnalysis

00:00 - The Supreme Court Just Gave YouTube Permission to Rethink Everything About Copyright Strikes

01:30 - Why YouTube’s three-strike policy exists — and why the reason just evaporated

03:47 - The Human Cost of Three Strike Policies

05:27 - If Content ID can handle Claims, it can handle Fair Uses

06:06 - What YouTube could do

06:25 - Raise the Strike Threshold

07:12 - Reduce the Strike Window

07:35 - Require Fair Use Screening

08:23 - Separate Strikes and Content ID

08:45 - Adopt Dispute Resolution Procedures

09:46 - What this could mean for content creation

11:08 - Counter-arguments

11:50 - The Time is Now

Duration: 1:21:04

Every Trump lawsuit, in one calm place. Fifteen months, six hundred cases, thirty-five Supreme Court emergency orders, and one legal analyst trying to make sense of it without raising his voice.

This is a long-form legal treatise covering every significant lawsuit involving Donald Trump and the second Trump administration from Inauguration Day 2025 through April 2026. Personal and official. Plaintiff and defendant. Criminal and civil. The Carroll verdicts, the Manhattan appeal, the dismissed Georgia RICO case, the $75 billion Trump has sought as a plaintiff, the birthright citizenship fight now before the Supreme Court, the IEEPA tariff ruling that cost the government $160 billion, the Alien Enemies Act deportations, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the four law firm executive orders, Harvard's win, Columbia's surrender, the looming death of Humphrey's Executor, and the judges whose names will still be in the footnotes a hundred years from now.

No hot takes. No doom-scrolling. Just fifteen years of copyright-defense habits applied to the biggest docket in American legal history, delivered at a pace you can actually listen to. Put it on while you fold laundry. Pour something. We'll be boring together.

What you'll get:

A complete case-by-case walkthrough of every major second-term lawsuit

Plain-language explanations of the constitutional doctrines at stake

The actual judicial reasoning, paraphrased carefully and attributed by judge

Aggregate numbers on the shadow docket, the loss rates, and the defiance rate

An honest accounting of what's been declared illegal versus what's actually been stopped

Resources and trackers mentioned in this video:

Just Security Litigation Tracker: https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

Brennan Center Shadow Docket Tracker: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/supreme-court-shadow-docket-tracker-challenges-trump-administration

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (Michigan Law): https://clearinghouse.net/

SCOTUSblog interim docket coverage: https://www.scotusblog.com/

Lawfare: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/

If this helped you think a little more clearly today, hit subscribe. New long-form legal explainers every week, plus shorter breakdowns when the docket breaks fast. I read the comments and I answer the interesting ones.

Support the channel:

https://patreon.com/ljfrench

https://postcardstocongress.org

#LawfulMasses #SupremeCourt #TrumpLawsuits #ConstitutionalLaw #LegalAnalysis

00:00:00 - Introduction: Calming Signals

00:02:41 - Part 1: Cases where Trump is personally a party

00:04:04 - The Manhattan Hush-Money Case

00:06:39 - The Jan 6th, 2021 Prosecution

00:07:12 - The Classified Documents Charges

00:07:45 - The Georgia State Racketeering Case

00:09:10 - The E. Jean Carrol Verdicts

00:09:27 - Carrol 2

00:10:15 - Carrol 1

00:10:49 - $500 Million Fraud Judgement

00:12:21 - Trump as a Plaintiff

00:13:02 - ABC News, CBS/Paramount

00:14:00 - Wall Street Journal / Rupert Murdouche

00:14:37 - BBC

00:14:58 - JP Morgan / Jamie Diamon / Cap One / IRS / Treasury

00:16:36 - Part 2: Birthright Citizenship

00:19:24 - Trump v. CASA

00:21:47 - Part 3: Trans Ban & DEI Bad

00:22:13 - Talbot v. Trump

00:22:35 - Shilling v. Trump

00:23:51 - DEI

00:24:07 - Nadohe v. Trump

00:24:47 - Dept. of Education

00:25:06 - Part 4: National Guard Deployment

00:26:45 - Part 5: DOGE

00:27:24 - Treasury Payment System

00:28:26 - Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent

00:28:55 - AFSCME v. SSA

00:29:27 - Part $: The Federal Advisory Committee Cases

00:30:26 - The Mass Firing of Probabtionary Employees

00:31:24 - AFGE v. Trump

00:33:22 - USAID and the Wood Chipper

00:34:01 - Doe v. Musk

00:35:18 - The CFPB

00:37:09 - The Dept of Education

00:38:39 - The Federal Employees Union

00:39:15 - AFGE v. Noem

00:39:50 - Part 6: Immigration & Deportation

00:40:18 - Alien Enemies Act

00:41:42 - JGG v. Trump

00:44:24 - Kilmar Abrego Garcia

00:48:51 - Temporary Protected Status

00:49:22 - NAACP v. Trump

00:49:50 - Miot v. Trump

00:50:26 - Sanctuary Cities & International Students

00:51:32 - Part 7: Tariffs

00:55:17 - Refunds

00:57:04 - Part 8: First Amendment Cases. Law Firms, Universities, Press

01:00:56 - Harvard and Colombia

01:02:57 - NPR and PBS

01:04:31 - Part 9: Indepedent Agencies & The Death of Humphrey's Executor

01:06:01 - Wilcox v. Trump

01:07:13 - Trump v. Slaughter

01:08:29 - Trump v. Cook

01:09:32 - Boyle v. Trump

01:09:43 - Samuels v. Trump

01:09:49 - Perlmutter v. Blanche

01:10:18 - Part 10: Impoundment Cases

01:11:26 - New York v. Trump

01:13:11 - Inspectors General

01:14:29 - Part 11: Supreme Court - Midterm

01:16:20 - Calvinball Jurisprudence

01:17:00 - Part 12: Final Inventory

01:18:43 - Leonard Thoughts

01:20:20 - Lawful Masses Needs Your Support

Duration: 12:53

In an 8-to-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that Conversion Therapy is Free Speech, so long as the therapist uses talk therapy. Jackson, the lone dissent, points out the BIG DEAL the majority forgot, that orientation is not a 'viewpoint'.

00:00 - Chiles v. Salazar (2026)

00:34 - Background

02:00 - Basics of the Majority Opinion

03:24 - Is Orientation a 'Viewpoint'?

05:03 - The Majority Never Explains This

05:58 - This Requires Ignoring Science and Medicine

06:46 - Is Conversion Therapy Legal Now?

07:30 - The Holding is Narrow

08:09 - Isn't this a Medical Regulation?

09:12 - Consequences

10:09 - So Where Are We, Then?

11:35 - The Medical Consensus is Not a Close Call

12:25 - Lawful Masses is Community Supported

Duration: 11:13

Many believe the SAVE plan for student loans is terminated due to a court order, with news outlets reporting its demise and loan servicers advising new repayment plans. However, a serious legal analysis suggests the SAVE plan was never lawfully terminated. This video explores the argument that despite official statements and news, the process used to end these government loans may not be legally sound, impacting millions of student loans borrowers.

Duration: 10:21

In November 2024, the developers of Palworld — a scrappy indie survival game that had sold 15 million copies in its first month — confirmed something that should trouble every game developer on the planet. Nintendo was suing them over three patents. Not over character designs. Not over stolen code. Over *throwing a ball to catch a creature*, *summoning a captured creature to fight*, and *riding a flying mount*. Mechanics that have existed in dozens of games for decades. And every single one of those patents was filed *after* Palworld was already on the market.