A group of notorious copyright trolls from the pornography industry are the defendants in a new class action suit that alleges that they have violated the RICO Act (the law regarding organized crime syndicates), as well as "fraud, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and unjust enrichment."
The trolls are pornography companies that accuse people of having downloaded movies with titles like "Blumpkin Blowjobs, "Teen Anal Sluts," "Jeff cums in Colby's mouth," etc, and threaten lawsuits that will forever join the victims' names with these films, unless the victims cough up a quick settlement payout. The victims are chosen on the basis of very sloppy Internet sleuthing that is meant to produce a list of IP addresses that correspond to illegal downloaders.
Historically, the trolls have faced no penalty for getting their detective work wrong — if they finger an innocent bystander, either the bystander pays up anyway (just to avoid the hassle), or s/he pays her own lawyers enough money to mount a spirited defense, at which point the trolls withdraw their threat and walk away.
With this class action suit, it's possible that the trolls will finally see a real penalty for tossing around sloppy accusations — and with any luck, it'll be a penalty that will wipe them off the face of the earth, to the whole planet's betterment.
Henry and Associates, PLLC, a lawfirm from Louisville, Kentucky, filed a class action lawsuit against five porno purveyors — well-known copyright trolls. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of Jennifer Baker, one of the victims who did not want to forgive an unprovoked assault by a copyright troll M. Keith Lipscomb. Lipscomb is one of the most cynical and productive trolls, whose "portfolio" comprises hundreds, if not thousands of trolling lawsuits. He is also one of the few trolls who abuse the Florida's Pure Bill of Discovery to unjustly enrich himself and his crime partners.
This event was bound to happen. Two things never come together: greed and the art of quitting when it is not too late. All it takes to damage an extortionist's "business" severely is to mess with a wrong person, and with every day, the likelihood of such an event increases. Fortunately, all the "wrong persons" to date have responded civilly, within the law. Nonetheless, the risk to mess with a wrong type of a "wrong person" is still there.
Copyright trolls attempt to extort a wrong person, invite a class action lawsuit
