Wednesday’s filing of a joint case management statement and proposed order in the on-going lawsuit between Regan Benson’s Helping Hands for Dignity organization and Anthony “BlackHartKnight” Gurka brought a second showdown in two weeks between attorneys Randall S. “The Unhinged Attorney” Newman, Esq., and Steve Vondran.
This is the second lawsuit where both attorneys represent high profile individuals in the first amendment auditing community, as attorney Vondran is currently representing YouTuber Jonathan “Frauditor Troll” Huneault in a lawsuit brought against him by attorney Newman’s client Christopher “Denver Metro Audits” Cordova.
Both cases have similar premises, as they both involve, among other issues, the alleged misrepresentation of copyright claims made in the DCMA counter notification process.
Benson is the owner of the Helping Hands for Dignity 501(c)(3) organization and contends that in May and September of 2023, defendant Gurka used portions of two of her videos without authorization.
According to Benson, one of the videos uses her footage for roughly 75% of the of its runtime with large uninterrupted blocks of her material lasting up to 3 minutes and 45 seconds. The second video’s runtime is made up of 89% of Benson’s video, with six minutes and 27 seconds of unaltered footage.
Benson submitted two DMCA takedown notices in August of 2025 with Gurka allegedly replying with two identical “boilerplate” responses that claimed that his usage of the videos were completely transformative.
Additionally, Gurka submitted his mailing address as a location where he had previously lived until the house partially burnt down over a year before his filing.
Gurka countered that he significantly transformed Benson’s video as he “became immediately disturbed by the conduct of the channel owner as she was screaming at the law enforcement officers in the video for ignoring her. Defendant edited the video replacing the vulgar language with censor bleeps to make it more watchable for his audience. He placed commentary in two sections of the video questioning her motivations and inquiring as to her mental stability, reacting to her bizarre conduct. He also made other substantial transformative edits to his video, creating an entirely new genre of content.”
While he does not address why he gave a false address during his filing, he does state that he was fearful that YouTube would remove his channel and that he did not act in bad faith in his response to the DMCA takedown notices.
The outstanding legal matters are listed as:
- Whether Defendant’s use of Plaintiff’s copyrighted video content constitutes fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
- Whether Defendant’s DMCA counter-notifications contained material misrepresentations in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).
- Whether Plaintiff is entitled to damages, injunctive relief, or attorneys’ fees under the Copyright Act or the DMCA.
- Whether Defendant can be held liable for bad faith counternotice when the fair use factors are in his favor?
- Whether Defendant should be declared the prevailing party to this lawsuit and entitled to recover their costs and attorney fees.
If the case survives until trial, the proposed one-day bench trial will be held in March of 2027.
The next update in this lawsuit will come on November 18, 2025, when both sides appear via videoconference with Judge William H. Orrick.
