Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I got sued for being a Tech YouTuber”.
A portion of this video is sponsored by the OnePlus 10t. This could have altered the future of of tech channels uh as a whole as a whole. It almost killed my business uh. It left me pretty much broke scared kind of unsure what the next steps were, and it’s a story, though, that I think I really want to tell. But I told the story about Apple blacklisting me. It was felt very cathartic to share that story and you guys seem to enjoy it um, but there’s another story that goes back to 2011. uh that almost changed not only sort of text, sites uh but also almost ended. My career almost bankrupt me um and made me terrified of what would be in store the next day. So, if you guys will indulge me, I like to tell the story uh of how I got sued. This is the most unforgettable phone for me. It’S a drug bionic most people probably have no idea even what it was or even cared about it, but it came close to ending me before I ever had a chance to build.
What I wanted to YouTube at the time was a very different place. The iPhone 4S was gon na come out that year, Tech YouTube wasn’t as crowded as it is. For me, I was only about five years into my Online Career or thereabouts, and I was writing a website talking about tech, uh called techno Buffalo that I that I owned and was taking most of my time and on Technic Buffalo website. We had like a tips thing where it said. You know, email us, your tips.
We had some crazy wording. We shouldn’t have had out there send us your tips and I got an email from that. Essentially was hey.
I’Ve got pictures of the packaging for the Droid Bionic. This is a phone that hadn’t come out, yet I’m not even sure it was even announcing at that point, but it listed all the specs had pictures of the device it essentially was like here is the entire phone and if somebody running a tech website that is Like striking gold uh, so I did with any better than a tech website would do uh. I got somebody inside of Motorola to confirm it and we ran the story and I was pretty proud of myself naive, um, but but pretty proud of myself very quickly, uh. After that article went up, I got a phone call from the printing company and their Printing House is based in Chicago that part matters called John Burns.
I believe they’re still out um and they wanted to know who my source was and right on their website. We had verbage up there, it says like We’ll Fight to protect your Source um. I fancied myself, a untrained journalist and I felt very strongly about defending the identity. Now I can say now the source ultimately ended up being. I won’t mention names, but the son of an employee that was there on the weekends saw these things being printed, took pictures and sent them to me because he liked the website and they wanted me to reveal my source.
I very politely told them not a chance. Uh and I believe about 40 hours later, I had a knock at my door at home on a weekend and I had an officer of the court and a police officer. There served me papers that I was getting sued to reveal my source.
I have never been sued before. I’Ve certainly been threatened many times, but I have never been sued before um and it was a terrifying experience. My wife answered the door police officer standing there asking to speak to Jonathan rhettinger handed the paperwork telling me I’d been served. It was really a scary time. My perspective back then was. I was barely Treading Water, keeping techno Buffalo running and trying to make videos. I was having a hard time making payroll each month. I certainly did not have the resources to fight a lawsuit, so it was just on that aspect.
It was really scary, uh experience to to go through, but they also, in addition to me, were suing Google and suing a t. Uh, Google, because they thought Google could have access to my emails and emails, tell them the source and ATT, because that was my cell phone provider at the time uh. They thought they could get into my cell phone and give them the source. Those were both shot down very quickly and I was the one left in the Crosshair.
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If you want to check out the OnePlus 10t order, one pick it up for yourself all that good stuff, we’ll put a link to it down below a phone call. A couple. Weird things happen. So we had writers on the site that started getting emails from people that were like hey, I’m a fan of the site.
Can you tell us what you do to protect sources and it seems like very like leading trying to figure out what we’re doing to make sure we follow intergnostic procedures. It was obviously either their attorneys or their printing house or Motorola, and I’m like something weird’s going on here. Fortunately, the the writers. Let me know that, like this seems odd, I again never fought a lawsuit before I didn’t know.
What to do. I didn’t have an attorney uh, so I just Googled like attorneys nearby and found out that if the lawsuit was filed out of state, I had a higher an attorney out of state. So I took what money that I would have paid myself that month and hired an attorney based in Chicago and essentially the whole gist was a very polite, two middle fingers.
We were asked to adhere on the website to journalistic standards, so we had to make sure we were quoting sources properly. We were verifying sources, uh to make sure anything anything that went published, but we weren’t getting any of the Constitutional protections that journalists get to not reveal sources. Now this company, John Burton essentially, was like you ain’t a joke journalist. This is not. This is a website. This doesn’t count as the blog you’re, not a newspaper.
You are not the New York Times Wall Street Journal anything else. You do not get those protections and it seems crazy now, because obviously websites are protected, but back then it wasn’t a thing that could that could happen. So I hired an attorney told them.
I’M a journalist, I’m protected um. You can politely F off. We use national language in that and the judge judge Panter always remember his name essentially came back and said: nope uh, you are not protected. You are not a journalist. You have to reveal your Source uh and at this point I had to make a decision. Did I want to reveal a source, and now there was a court case that was out that established precedence, so other websites would have had two repeal sources as well. In fact, pocket now got a cease and desist letter from, I believe, Motorola as well, citing this court case’s precedence for them having to reveal their Source. This would have been a real blow to now the burgeoning online industry.
At the time I was devastated, I remember sitting um on a bench outside of my parents house, and I was just crying like I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. Um I was running out of money. First of all, this lawsuit was going to end my business.
I wasn’t being able to pay myself my employees. I felt really strongly about this, and I had asked myself if I was prepared to be in contempt of court and go to jail for it. I was asking questions like how long I would have to be in jail for um. That’S a crazy scenario for running a story on like a cell phone. That was forgotten. You know a few months later, so my first line that I had before I got to that point was: I could file an appeal, but before I can do an appeal, you have to do something called the motion free consideration, which, as a legal talk for essentially Asking the judge like come on bro um, so we did that and we cited a bunch of other court cases for why we should be protected.
And then we just had to wait for the judge and, to my surprise, the judge actually granted us um. The motion, and after I think it took about six months this lawsuit was over now I had to agree to not Sue the printing company for reimbursement of legal costs, and this whole thing was done um and it wrapped up. It’S a very scary time and I was I was left Victorious and I felt Vindicated and I felt good about what I was doing um, but I was also left pretty much broke and it was just I remember thinking like nobody would ever know like. If I reveal the source or not, the guy probably would have gone fire that would have really affected his family. I’M not saying this. Try like Pat myself on the back.
I remember having these like ethical questions myself like. Could I would I be okay with myself? If I did this, nobody would know I’d be able to. You know, still keep my business running and hopefully forget about it down the road um. It was one of the hardest decisions that I ever had to make professionally um, as as we got there now, I made a lot of mistakes along the way the verbiage on the website that was encouraging people to send tips, it was was probably not appropriate, but I learned a lot about the legal system.
I learned a little bit about myself during this, but I I’m getting to the point where I love to tell some of the stories of things that I’ve seen and things that I’ve been through. Or maybe things that you guys don’t know because the tech world that you see right now is not a tech world that it’s always been, and there are a lot of things that came before to get us to where we are now. You know to get Tech YouTube to where it is. You had to have the you know the mkbhds, John Morrison’s and Austin Evans to get to that point that Mark Watson’s of the world and to get websites to be protected and to be able to run as journalistic entities.
We have to go through these hurdles in the early stages we had to go through these lawsuits and I feel very proud that I was on the early edge of this um. I feel proud that I fought it if I had kids – and I was going through this – I don’t think I could have made the same decisions that I was able to make at the time. So I guess the blessing and disguise there and I’ve got a lot of these stories that I want to share over the next months and years, and this is one of the larger ones that really impacted me, my life and ultimately my career. So I’m not gon na lie.
There is a little bit of Pride that comes into knowing that we outlasted Motorola and I can’t verify this, but I have my suspicions that uh Motorola this is old, Motorola like when they were independent. I was the one that was pushing the printing company to find out uh who the source was but pink Point. John .