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Pirate Bay outs porno copyright trolls: they're the ones pirating their own files

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:15:40 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote about an expert witness's report on Prenda Law (previously), the notorious porno copyright trolls (they send you letters accusing you of downloading porn and demand money on pain of being sued and forever having your name linked with embarrassing pornography). The witness said that he believed that Prenda -- and its principal, John Steele -- had been responsible for seeding and sharing the files they accused others of pirating.

After hearing about this, the administrators for The Pirate Bay dug through their logs and published a damning selection of log entries showing that many of the files that Steele and his firm accused others of pirating were uploaded by Steele himself, or someone with access to his home PC.

The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files.
The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs.
The logs provided by The Pirate Bay can be seen as the missing link in the evidence chain, undoubtedly linking Sharkmp4 to Prenda and John Steele. Needless to say, considering the stack of evidence above it’s not outrageous to conclude that the honeypot theory is viable.
While this is certainly not the first time that a copyright troll has been accused of operating a honeypot, the evidence compiled against Prenda and Steel is some of the most damning we’ve seen thus far.

The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Porno copyright trolls Prenda: expert says they pirated their own movies to get victims to download

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 03:00:30 +0000

The saga of porno-copyright-trolls Prenda Law (previously) just keeps getting more tawdry. Prenda is a mysterious extortionate lawsuit-threat-factory that claimed to represent pornographers when it sent thousands (and thousands!) of legal threats to people, telling them they'd get embroiled in ugly litigation that would forever tie their names to embarrassing pornography titles unless they paid hush money.

Their con has unraveled in a series of legal losses. Now, one of their victims has had an expert witness file an affidavit in First Time Videos vs. Paul Oppold, a case in Florida. The expert fields an astonishing accusation: Prenda Law's principle, John Steele, is the person who uploaded the infringing pornography in the first place, listing it on BitTorrent index sites with information inviting people to download it -- people whom he then sent legal threats to for downloading those selfsame movies.

Among other things, sharkmp4 seemed to be able to post these works on The Pirate Bay before the works were even mentioned anywhere else, and in at least one case, "sharkmp4" put a video up on The Pirate Bay three days before Prenda shell company Ingenuity 13 had even filed for the copyright. On top of that, the "forensics" company that Prenda uses -- which is supposedly run by Paul Hansmeier's brother Peter, but which had its domain registered and controlled by (you guessed it) John Steele -- apparently identified "infringements" almost immediately after the videos were placed on The Pirate Bay -- meaning they were likely looking for such infringement in conjunction with the upload.
At the end, however, Neville pulls together really damning evidence, tying together a website set up to distribute Ingenuity 13 porn films with the same exact IP address that was confirmed as being used by John Steele to log into his own GoDaddy account, highlighting how Steele -- or someone with access to his logins -- clearly has full access and control over Ingenuity 13 works. As you read through all of the evidence it appears highly likely that Steele is in control of Ingenuity 13, despite all his protests to the contrary.
As the filing notes:
Prenda Law's business structure is such that it is pirate, forensic pirate hunter, and attorney. It also appears that Prenda Law also wants to/has formed/is forming a corporate structure where it is: pornography producer, copyright holder, pornography pirate, forensic investigator, attorney firm, and debt collector. Other than the omission of appearing in the pornography themselves, this would represent an entire in-house copyright trolling monopoly- not designed to promote their own works for distribution and sale, but to induce infringement of their works and reap profits seen from mass anti-piracy litigation.

New Filing Presents Evidence That John Steele Uploaded Videos To BitTorrent Himself

Porno copyright troll to Georgia judge: "Ignore California judge! They have gay marriage!"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:00:27 +0000

When US Federal Judge Otis Wright ruled against Prenda Law (a gang that used sloppy accusations of illegal downloads of pornographic movies to extort millions from people who didn't want the embarrassment of being publicly sued), he ordered Prenda's lawyers to give copies of his ruling to judges in all the other places where they were suing their victims. Judge Wright's ruling called Prenda a "fraud" and said its lawyers engaged in "moral turpitude."

One of Prenda's most colorful lawyers is Jacques Nazaire. He's asked a judge in Georgia to ignore the Judge Wright's order, because Judge Wright is a California judge, and California has gay marriage.

It doesn't stop there. It notes that California courts have different immigration rules and (randomly) that NY has different gun rights. Basically, it throws out every hot button issue that stereotypical conservatives might disagree with stereotypical liberals on.
Of course, all of that is meaningless. While it's true that Judge Wright's ruling is in no way a precedential ruling for the Georgia court, it's still a ruling about federal law, not any specific state law. And the ruling itself is about flat out misconduct (including potential racketeering and tax evasion claims) by the plaintiff in this case, because of actions in a nearly identical case. That's not about California having a "mandate" over Georgia. It's about very relevant additional information that the court should know about.
Nazaire then goes on to list out a ridiculous parade of horribles that he claims would happen if the Georgia court "followed the aforesaid California Order" including that law firms wouldn't be able to use boilerplate text any more. This makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, the inclusion of Judge Wright's order is not about having the Georgia court "follow" the order, but adding additional important information about the parties in this particular case. Separately, the idea that adding a California ruling into the docket suddenly means lawyers wouldn't be able to cut and paste any more... just doesn't make any sense at all.

Prenda Lawyer Says Judge Wright's Order Is Inapplicable In Georgia Because California Recognizes Gay Marriage [Mike Masnick/TechDirt]

Welcome to the century of the copyright troll: Prenda Law was just the beginning

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:20:36 +0000

As the saga of the porno copyright trolls Prenda Law moves into its end-game (likely to involve disbarments and jail time for the fraudsters behind the multimillion-dollar scheme that relied on bogus legal threats and sloppy accusations of copyright infringement), it's worth asking, how, exactly, this scam was able to go on for so long, and what can be done to prevent it in the future.

A pair of articles -- one by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mitch Stoltz, the other by Ars Technica's Nate Anderson -- delve into this in depth.

First, Anderson explains how Prenda hit on a cunning legal strategy that allowed it to try out variations on its scam, looking for the right combination of tactics to extract maximum revenue from its victims, without risking its own finances. This strategy cost the public a fortune in court costs and cost the victims another fortune in their legal costs, but Prenda didn't bear any of that. In effect, the public subsidized its brute-force attack on the American legal system:

How could the scheme go on for so long even as federal judges complained about fraud, as "John Doe" defendants complained repeatedly that they had no idea what the cases were about, and as critics complained about the injustice of the entire business model? The answer is that federal judges aren't generally investigators. Prenda had gone to great lengths to obscure what was really going on, who was doing what, and where the money went. Judges want to clear cases off their dockets and in rare cases will entertain sanctions motions, but to unravel something as complex as Prenda's behavior required a real investigation. Yet without more details, actual criminal investigators had very little to go on; most of the judicial complaints dealt with behavior in court, not public crimes.
So Prenda could essentially turn the entire US judiciary into a laboratory for incrementally refining its porn trolling techniques, testing venues, judges, corporate structures, collection procedures, and legal arguments, looking for perfection. And what it arrived at in the end had a certain devious logic to it. Even Otis Wright, the federal judge in Los Angeles who brought down Prenda's principals and referred them all for criminal and tax prosecution this week, had to concede the conceptual beauty of the system.

But as EFF's Stoltz explains, this isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. Modern copyright law has been bought, paid for, and designed by the entertainment industry, and they demanded as system with as few safeguards and checks and balances as possible. Every element of copyright law that might enable an innocent person to easily defend herself meant added expense and burden for the entertainment industry's lawsuits against its customers and against technological innovators:

Consider this: U.S. copyright law provides statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work - without the copyright owner having to show actual harm. Individuals have been hit with damages in the six figures, and companies with bankrupting judgments in the tens of millions. Threats of damages like this are one of the main ways that copyright trolls convince their victims to pay $2,000 to $4,000 in "settlements." But statutory damages are also wielded as a club by entertainment, media, software, and technology companies. They can destroy competitors and dry up investment with mere threats of litigation, giving them veto power over new technologies and emerging artists.
And consider "secondary liability," the judge-made rules for when one person can be held responsible for copyright infringement by another. The rules are vague and their application often uncertain. Copyright trolls use this uncertainty to make plausible-sounding threats against Internet subscribers. You may not have been the one who downloaded our movie, say the trolls, but your name is on the cable bill and the law will hold you responsible. It's not always true - in many cases, an ISP subscriber is protected from liability for others' downloading - but the rules are vague and complex enough to make the threat sound real.
Looking beyond trolls, the same vague legal principles create legal nightmares - and sometimes financial ruin - for people that try to play by the rules. Companies like ReplayTV and Veoh went bankrupt trying to convince courts that they shouldn't be held responsible when customers copy TV and movies. Dish Networks/ReplayTV, YouTube, and many less prominent technology companies face lawsuits where the toolmaker must answer for the tool user. Only lawyers benefit, as vagueness means long fights and lots of legal fees.

As Stoltz writes, Prenda is just the beginning. The US copyright system is an attractive nuisance, a moral hazard on steroids, and the entertainment industry's own much-publicized efforts are the tip of the iceberg. Prenda's masterminds weren't all that clever -- there are smarter con artists out there who've learned a lot from Prenda's efforts, and they're licking their chops and getting ready to prey on you and your neighbors. And as with Prenda, we'll all foot the bill for their cons, thanks to Big Content's depraved indifference to the fallout from its legal projects.

Prenda law judge says porno copyright trolls are frauds, identity thieves; $80K in fines and disbarment pending

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:02:29 +0000

Judge Wright has issued his long-awaited ruling in the case of Prenda Law, the notorious porno copyright trolls who used fraud and bullying to extort millions from Internet users by threatening to sue them for downloading pornography videos with embarrassing titles. Prenda used a combination of offshore shell companies, obfuscation, and even identity theft to disguise the ownership of their con, and when they landed before Judge Wright, it all started to unravel.

The judge has fined Prenda $80,000 ($40K in fees, doubled for punitive measure) and asked the FBI to investigate them for racketeering. He held that their operation was a fraud, that they had committed identity theft, and, importantly, identified Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy as the "de facto owners" of Prenda. He's asked the lawyers' bar associations to have them disbarred. And he made a lot of Star Trek references!

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Principals’ enterprise relies on deception. Part of that ploy requires cooperation from the courts, which could only be achieved through deception. In other words, if the Principals assigned the copyright to themselves, brought suit in their own names, and disclosed that they had the sole financial interest in the suit, a court would scrutinize their conduct from the outset. But by being less than forthcoming, they defrauded the Court. They anticipated that the Court would blindly approve their early-discovery requests, thereby opening the door to more settlement proceeds.
As for penalties, they begin with attorneys' fees. Prenda will have to pay these to the two defense lawyers who have been instrumental in this case: Morgan Pietz and Nicholas Ranallo. Wright awards $36,150 in fees to Pietz, $1,950 in fees to Ranallo, as well as legal costs (copying and filing fees, for example) to both. He then doubles the amount "as a punitive measure," arriving at $81,319.72. In a footnote, Wright says that the sum "is calculated to be just below the cost of an effective appeal"—a final dig at the Prenda business model of settlement offers just below the cost of defense. The Prenda folks have 14 days to pay up.
The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice...
Third, though Plaintiffs boldly probe the outskirts of law, the only enterprise they resemble is RICO. The federal agency eleven decks up is familiar with their prime directive and will gladly refit them for their next voyage. The Court will refer this matter to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. The [court] will also refer this matter to the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and will notify all judges before whom these attorneys have pending cases.

Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators [Joe Mullin/Ars Technica]

What happened to Waxy was terrible, but fair use works better than he thinks it does

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:45:13 +0000

Earlier this week, I blogged Andy "Waxy" Baio's speech on fair use, called "The New Prohibition." Andy got hit with a legal threat for making a limited edition 8-bit remix of a famous photo and ended up paying $35,000 to settle the claim, even though he thought he had fair use on his side. As Andy explained, he thought that winning the court case would cost so much that it was cheaper to lose for a mere $35k.

But as Pat Aufderheide from American University's Center for Social Media writes, "Andy Baio's a brilliant geek, and an artist, but I'm afraid he's inadvertantly generating a chilling effect all his own, with fair use misinformation. Ouch! Here's why."

Andy warns ominously that “anyone can sue you for anything, always, and even without grounds.” Yup. That is true, and just as true for obscenity, libel, or treason charges, and in a million other places in life. If someone slips on the sidewalk in front of your house after a snowstorm, or chokes on an appetizer at your dinner party, or objects to your choice of lawn furniture, they can sue you. Copyright trolls like Prenda are suing people who have done nothing at all. But we somehow conduct our lives and even have dinner parties knowing this ugly reality.
He warns fellow remixers everywhere, “fair use will not save you,” and “nothing you have ever made is fair use.” Whoa. Neither of these statements is true.
Fair use is riding high in the courts. The fair uses of "Jersey Boys," who used clips from "The Ed Sullivan Show," were forcefully vindicated just a few weeks ago, and the litigious rightsholders were ordered to pay the defendants’ costs and fees. Georgia State University successfully defended a copyright lawsuit brought by greedy publishers, and got a court order for the publishers to pay over $3 million in attorneys’ fees and costs. Fair use even saved Luther Campbell, aka Luke Skywalker from 2Live Crew, when the Supreme Court held that Campbell could sample all of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” for use in a parody song.
But mostly fair use just gets used without a darn thing happening. Virtually everything you have ever made—including Andy’s own video presentation (check out the “Harlem Shake” clips!)--employs fair use. Fair use is practiced so routinely that it’s a nearly invisible part of our daily life. Every front-page newspaper article; every student paper with a footnote in it; every newscast is laced with fair use, and nobody is suing for the millions of fair uses every day of others’ copyrighted material. Fair use lawsuits in fact are extremely rare, and vanishingly rare in comparison with the ubiquitous practice of fair use. Even cease-and-desist letters are extraordinarily rare.

Pat's piece goes on to give a lot of chapter-and-verse on the ins and outs of the current fair use landscape.

Fair Use Fearmongering, from Friends? (Thanks, Pat!)

Notorious porno copyright trolls Prenda Law have a very bad day in court

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:46:05 +0000

Today marked the long-awaited courtroom showdown of notorious copyright porno trolls Prenda Law (previous posts) and United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, the judge who figured out that Prenda was running something that looked a blackmail racket that involved systematic fraud against courts around the country. After stalling and fum-fuhing, Prenda's lawyers and principals were dragged before Judge Wright, where they sat for a hearing that ran for 12 whole minutes before Wright furiously banished them from his courtroom. Ken "Popehat" White was there, and sent tantalizing tweets about the total trainwreck he'd witnessed, which he has now had a chance to write up in full.

In a nutshell, the Prendateers showed up and took the Fifth, refusing to speak. Their lawyer tried to enter some argument into the record, but the judge didn't allow it. Prenda had filed no briefs, and had been called to answer basic, factual questions about lawsuits. Wright wasn't happy about it. Ken has written up a list of likely consequences Prenda will now face. It's not pretty. At very least, the firm and its activities are at an end. At most (though not likely), this could end in prison for the principals here.

Judge Wright grew steadily and visibly more outraged. "I want to know if some of my conjecture is accurate — and the only way to know is to have the principals here and ask them questions. This is an opportunity for them to protect themselves," he said. But Steele's lawyer confirmed his client would exercise his right to remain silent. Attorneys for Paul Hansmeier, Paul Duffy, and Angela Van Den Hemel confirmed their clients, too, would invoke their rights to remain silent. Judge Wright did not — unless I missed it — confirm whether Peter Hansmeier or Mark Lutz would answer questions.

An Opportunity To Be Heard

Heather Rosing, appearing for Paul Duffy, Angela Van Den Hemel, and Prenda Law, rose and asked Judge Wright for an opportunity to present "about a half hour" of argument on the points in his Order to Show Cause. Look: when you are a lawyer, representing a client, you have to stand up. You have to hold your ground even in the face of a furious federal judge. When a judge is yelling at you, however unsettling it is, you have to hold fast and remember you are there to represent the interests of your client against the terrible power of the court. Heather Rosing stood up, and has my admiration, whatever I think of her clients.

Judge Wright was uninterested in hearing legal argument, as opposed to testimony or evidence. "My clients have a right to a reasonable opportunity to be heard," Ms. Rosing protested. "Excuse me?" thundered Judge Wright, probably thinking — not unreasonably — that Ms. Rosing's clients could have filed briefs in advance to address any legal arguments they had, and that Ms. Rosing's clients have been evading questions for months. Judge Wright began to count off the questions he wanted answered. "I'm looking for facts," he said. He wanted to know who directs Prenda Law's litigation efforts, who makes its decisions, whether there is another Alan Cooper, and what happens with the money Prenda Law makes from settlements. Ms. Rosing answered (wisely, and properly) that she could not personally testify to those things. Why, Judge Wright demanded, did Prenda Law conceal its attorneys' financial interest in the cases? "There's no evidence that they have an interest," Ms. Rosing protested. "Excuse me?" Judge Wright boomed even louder. Were there windows, they would have rattled. "Have you read Paul Hansmeier's deposition?" he demanded, referring to the bizarre deposition in which Paul Hansmeier failed to explain Prenda Law's shadowy owners or flow of funds. "I have," Ms. Rosing said, but stood her ground.

Prenda Law's Attorneys Take The Fifth Rather Than Answer Judge Wright's Questions

Attack of the copyright trolls

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:58:42 +0000

Online, torrents of failed movies linger mysteriously, waiting to net downloaders in shakedown settlements which seem to have little to do with preventing piracy. John Biggs covers the details of a copyright trolls' legal and wildly profitable scam. [TechCrunch] Previously.

Transcripts of bullying voicemails left by porno copyright troll to ex-caretaker and alleged identity theft victim

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:44:51 +0000

If you've been following the sad saga of the porno copyright trolls Prenda Law, you'll know that Alan Cooper is the former caretaker of John Steele, who is apparently the man behind a spiraling series of ever-scammier attempts to get people to pay money in order to keep their names out of embarrassing court filings over alleged illegal porn downloading. And you'll know that Alan Cooper has says that John Steele stole his identity and put his name down on various corporate and legal filings, identifying the former caretaker as the head honcho of the whole corrupt empire.

Now, a new filing in the court docket includes transcripts of threatening, bullying voicemails that Steele left for his alleged victim, trying to scare him into silence. Here's a taste, courtesy of TechDirt, which has more context:

From second voicemail:
It's like if you refuse to, you know, return my calls or -- or engage in mandatory conference, then I'm going to have to be forced to ask the judge to, you know, force you to do things and it just gets ugly from there.
So if you do decide to get an attorney in either of those matters or in the other cases which we're filing against you in the upcoming weeks, please let them -- have them give me a call. This number's fine. Otherwise, I expect to hear from you shortly.
From third voicemail
Alan, this is John Steele again.
You have not responded or contacted me regarding litigation you're involved in. I know you've been served with a third lawsuit. And there are more coming. Don't worry about that.
Well, obviously, if I don't hear from you, I'm going to start filing for certain default motions and start getting relief that way.
I can assure you that just ignoring legal matters, it's not going to go away. I can guarantee you, I'm not going away.
So I highly recommend you at least, you know, follow the rules.... otherwise your life is going to get really complicated.

I don't know what's more amazing -- the sheer gall of threatening this poor guy, or the sheer stupidity of doing so on a recorded voicemail system.

Transcripts Of John Steele's Phone Calls To Alan Cooper [Techdirt]

Porno-copyright trolls Prenda Law get hauled in front of a very angry judge

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:25:37 +0000

Popehat's Ken White attended a hearing in United States District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II's California courtroom. Judge Wright is the judge most likely to put a halt to the astounding shenanigans of the notorious porno-copyright trolls Prenda Law, who have been accused of lying to the court; blackmailing thousands of people with legal threats ("pay up or we'll file a lawsuit that will forever associate your name with pornography with an embarrassing title"); and, incredibly, stealing the identity of a humble caretaker and naming him the CEO of a semi-fictional company that allegedly hired the firm to make all those legal threats.

Judge Wright ordered all the parties to show up in his court yesterday -- the Prenda lawyers, the caretaker, defendants' lawyers, and more -- but not everyone obeyed his order. The main party in the courtroom was Brett Gibbs, a junior-seeming lawyer who appears to have been made bagman for a big con that he was only dimly aware of. White's writeup is somewhat sympathetic ("a young attorney out of his depth who fell in with the wrong crowd and made bad choices") but remember: he was a knowing part of a racket that terrorized thousands and thousands of people with what amounted to legal blackmail, where the demand came to "Guilty or innocent, you need to pay up or have your life ruined."

White is an excellent writer, and his account of the hearing is riveting. Now we're all waiting to hear what the judge's order will be. My guess is that it will go very badly for Prenda Law.

Brett Gibbs is in trouble. I buy him as a dupe here. Indeed, he admitted that "maybe" he felt duped. Yet though he pointed to Hansmeier and Steele as the decision-makers in this travesty, and disclaimed any knowledge of wrongdoing, he and his attorneys seemed oddly reluctant to throw Steele and Hansmeier all the way under the bus. It's more like he handed them a bus schedule and gave them a gentle shove in that general direction. Gibbs continued to argue that it wasn't clear until Cooper's testimony today that the Cooper signatures weren't genuine, a position that drew guffaws in the courtroom and an incredulous expression from Judge Wright. He and his attorneys seemed to want to suspend judgment about whether Prenda committed any misconduct at all -- a tactical error at this point, I think, and harmful to their credibility. The judge interrupted their closing arguing by asking pointedly whether a lawyer -- even if he is supervised by people out of state -- has an obligation to investigate facts himself. Ultimately, Judge Wright did not sound inclined to accept Gibbs' innocent stance.
Wright did not say, explicitly, what he would do about Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, or the rest of the Prenda Law team. But when Pietz began laboriously to explain the basis for jurisdiction over each of them, Wright cut him short, suggesting that he found the evidence clear. (So, for the record, did I, given the evidence of Steele's contacts with California, Steele's and Hansmeier's supervision of Gibbs in California, and Duffy's substitution into cases in California and membership in the California bar. Their lack-of-jurisdiction argument is borderline frivolous.) I suspect, based on his comments, that Judge Wright will not let the consequences of this situation rest entirely on Gibbs' shoulders. What could he do? He could probably sanction the Prenda Law parties under his inherent authority based on their supervision of Gibbs. But I suspect Judge Wright will go further than that, with criminal referrals and messages to various state bars. There could also be further orders to show cause, or even bench warrants. Judge Wright didn't seem inclined to give them warning. But every indication is that they are in real legal peril.
There's been a lot of anticipation of today's hearing. The hearing lived up to it. It was a disastrous day for Prenda Law.

Deep Dive Analysis: Brett Gibbs Gets His Day In Court -- But Prenda Law Is The Star

Mind-croggling deposition of a Prenda Law copyright troll

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:53:59 +0000

I've covered Prenda Law off and on here for quite some time; they're the sleazy "law firm"/copyright trolls who use the courts to get the names and addresses of people whom they allege have downloaded pornographic videos with embarrassing names, and whom they then threaten with public humiliation and a lawsuit unless the victims pay a quick cash settlement. One of the great mysteries about Prenda is who the firm actually is -- which individuals are behind it? In past, Prenda's representatives have claimed to be working for "Alan Cooper" -- a former caretaker for one of the Prenda reps who claims they have stolen his identity.

A recent deposition in the Northern District of California of ~~Morgan Prietz~~ Paul Hansmeier -- another Prenda rep, apparently -- sheds no light on the mystery. Indeed, Hansmeier's deposition is a wonder of obfuscation, coyness, and mind-boggling protestations of ignorance that will baffle and delight you. Ken from Popehat has teased out the juciest bits:

In reviewing this deposition, bear Pietz' theories in mind. he alleges that (1) Prenda Law is secretly both lawyer and client — that its principals are behind the entities purportedly owning the copyrights it is suing upon, and that Prenda Law is concealing its lawyers' interest; (2) that Prenda Law has concealed who is actually running and directing its cases; (3) that Prenda Law is not actually vindicating copyrights of valuable properties, but is using copyright to extort defendants, and (4) that Prenda Law has defrauded courts with fabricated executives by, for instance, stealing the identity of "Alan Cooper" and using the identity as a fictitious client representative.
Consider those theories as you review the deposition. I could re-read it a dozen times and still discover more things about it. I will confine myself to some high points.

Deposition Reveals Prenda Law Business Model: Monetizing Squalid Douchebaggery

Copyright trolls facing legal sanctions for in-court fraud file defamation suits against identity theft victim and online critics

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:02:16 +0000

Prenda Law is the notorious, scandal-haunted copyright trolling lawfirm that represents various pornography producers, sending extortionate letters to people allegedly detected illegally downloading videos, demanding money to go away -- the alternative being to have your name linked with embarrassing pornography titles in a public record forever.

Prenda made headlines lately for claiming that it was working for a man called Alan Cooper, allegedly the CEO of offshore companies that had hired Prenda to send legal threats on their behalf. Only one problem: Cooper says he has nothing to do with the companies or Prenda. When they were caught in this bit of alleged in-court identity theft, Prenda's lawyers complained that their judge was being mean to them and tried to get him taken off their case. When this gambit failed, they tried several others -- everything, in fact, except for admitting what seems obvious on its face: they'd misrepresented the facts to the court and stolen Cooper's identity.

In my opinion, Prenda is a shitshow from stem to stern. From absurd claims like the existence of an adolescent male in a household is proof that illegal porn downloading must be taking place to weird legal theories about BitTorrent users being in conspiracy with one another despite never having met, communicated, and not being aware of one another, every one of Prenda's actions smacks of utter desperation.

But Prenda's desperation has reached new depths with its latest gambit: filing three defamation lawsuits each against people who called them out for their bad behavior, including Alan Cooper (the man whose identity was allegedly stolen in Prenda's court filings) and his lawyer; and, apparently online news sites like Fight Copyright Trolls (who've tirelessly chronicled Prenda's misdeeds), and message-board commenters who expressed shock at the bad behavior on exhibit in Prenda's deeds.

This desperate move comes mere days before a California hearing on sanctions for Prenda's counsel. Hilariously, in para 104, the lawyers for Prenda (who have given numerous grandstanding interviews to the national and global press) claim that they are not public figures. They also characterize countless instances of obvious opinion and hyperbole as libelous. And they are clearly fuzzy on the liability for libel on message boards, and the limitations thereof, as set out in the Communications Decency Act.

This feels to me like a last attempt to punish Prenda's victims for daring to refuse to be victimized, a final shot before the inevitable court sanctions, bankruptcy, and potential jail time. It's the kind of wickedness that makes it hard to believe in humanity's essential morality. My goodness, it will be delightful to roast marshmallows over Prenda's funeral pyre when that glorious day comes.

Copyright trolls Prenda Law, Paul Duffy, and John Steele commence three lawsuits v. Paul Godfread, Alan Cooper and our community (Thanks, That Anonymous Coward!)

Copyright troll tries to use TorrentFreak to intimidate victims, TorrentFreak changes the site to empower them to resist trolling

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 21:59:21 +0000

Prena Law, a notorious porno copyright troll sent out a blackmail letter to victims that included the URL of a TorrentFreak article describing one of the rare cases in which someone stood up to a troll and lost. TorrentFreak felt that this was misleading, and resented being used as part of a sleazy scheme, so they replaced the article with a page explaining how copyright trolls work, and how to defend yourself against them.

Porno copyright trolls are companies that sends out legal threats to people, claiming they were downloading porn with embarrassing titles and demanding money not to permanently associate their names with porn by naming them in lawsuits. Thousands and thousands of people have been victimized by them.

We redirected the URL referenced by Prenda to a page with information about these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.
So, instead of being scared by an article about a $1.5 million judgment, Internet bill payers can inform themselves about the steps they can take to respond to the settlement letter.
The page in question explains that increasingly judges are condemning the practices of copyright trolls, and that many mass lawsuits have been thrown out. Just recently a judge designated Prenda’s ways as a “bad faith effort,” and dismissed one of their mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.
In addition to some much-needed balance we also included links to attorneys who are familiar with these lawsuits, plus links to other useful resources. Hopefully, this will enable a few of the victims to respond properly and resolve the matter without having to pay up.