Patreon Refuses to Remove YouTuber's Viral Lego Investigation
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
The TRO applies to "co-Defendants (including DOES 1-15), their affiliates, co-conspirators, employees, contractors, agents and representatives, and anyone acting in concert with them, directly or indirectly, in person, remotely or online".
It includes several items, most of them about doxxing or threats, going to the store.
One thing that intrigues me is items I and K:
I: Destroying, deleting, altering or failing to preserve videos, raw footage, outtakes, communications, texts, emails, Discord/Patreon posts, YouTube comments, analytics, phone records, call logs, police communications and documents relating to Bricks & Minifigs, the LEGO collection dispute, threats and the creation/promotion of the videos;
K: Maintaining the current Publications (as such term is defined in the Verified Complaint) and any other video, audio or other form of publication posted on any online streaming platform by Co-Defendants, directly or indirectly, and requiring that the Publications and any such other communications published by co- Defendants be immediately removed and/or taken down from any online streaming platform or otherwise published that in any way relate to the private legal dispute underlying this matter between Bryan and Chrystal and the assertions of wrongdoing as described in this Verified Complaint.
So they have to preserve the content but also must remove it.
I suspect Patreon's lawyers' stance is that the TRO does not apply to them (they're not acting in concert with the defendant, they're just running their service), and that item K instructs the defendants to remove the content, it doesn't require Patreon to remove it. So the remedy would be for the plantiff to go back to court and say "the plantiffs didn't take the content down" and either have the judge enforce some further penalty or issue an order specifically instructing Patreon to remove the content.
Soft delete is really only a viable option if you're the provider. If you're Patreon and you get a court order with your name on it mandating that you take some content offline but preserve it for the legal proceedings, you soft delete it and you're all set.
But if you're a user of Patreon, you can't know for sure that if you hit the delete button, it's actually a soft delete on Patreon's end, or how long it will stay soft before it actually gets permanently deleted. You also don't generally have a way to access it down the road other than reaching out to the vendor's support staff.