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Prenda Law “copyright trolls” Steele and Hansmeier arrested
- faster 10y agoPopehat has had the best commentary on the Prenda debacle. They don't have this part yet, but stay tuned, they will and it will be hilarious. Well, as hilarious as a law blog can be. https://popehat.com/?s=prenda https://popehat.com/?s=prenda
- LeifCarrotson 10y agohttps://popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/ https://popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/
- shostack 10y agoThis Prenda stuff was what turned me on to Popehat. Amazing writing.
- simcop2387 10y agoRelated popehat article about the arrests. He's been following the whole case for years. https://popehat.com/2016/12/16/the-prenda-saga-goes-criminal-steele-and-hansmeier-indicted-on-federal-charges/ https://popehat.com/2016/12/16/the-prenda-saga-goes-criminal...
- Zhenya 10y ago" Not only are Steele and Hansmeier wanton crooks, they're spiteful, entitled, arrogant douches. That led to their downfall. " Ouch.
- cmdrfred 10y agoMy friend got hit by these guys a few years back. Paid out a few grand I think.
- cr0sh 10y agoWas there more to it, than what it says in the article? I mean, if these guys wrote me a letter saying "pay up, or we'll let everyone know you like pr0n!" - I would write back "Eh - they already know that." ...so there has to have been more to it? I mean - provided one was honest to those in their lives about their pr0n...
- jandrese 10y agoI never got one of the letters, but from what I understand the threat was more about garnished wages and jail time.
- cmdrfred 10y agoHe lives with his dad and it's his dad's name on the internet connection. The lawsuit named his father so he just paid out to avoid any problems for him. It was several thousand if I recall to make it go away and he hired a lawyer to navigate the process for him.
- jaclaz 10y agoAs a side note the scheme - broadly speaking - isn't really "original", anyone read Roald Dahl's "The Bookseller"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bookseller_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bookseller_(short_story)
- wyldfire 10y agoGems from the judicial order to pay damages [1]: >“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” > —Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). ... > they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle—for a sum ... just below the cost of a bare-bones defense. For these individuals, resistance is futile; most reluctantly pay rather than have their names associated with illegally downloading porn. So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry. [1] https://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanctionsOrder.pdf https://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanction...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoshut up, jew. there are more of us than you.
- tajen 10y agoOther gem found in the article: > Our courts are halls of justice where fairness and the rule of law triumph > — US Attorney Andrew Luger
- zdean 10y agoCopyright law was originally created as a mechanism of censoring speech and (later) for the benefit of guilds...and eventually became a tool of corporations (see Mickey Mouse). It has never really been a matter of benefiting/compensating original artists or authors...that's just been the justification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
- ChuckMcM 10y agoPopehat comment: "Based on my observations throughout this case, it couldn't happen to more deserving criminals." Which I totally agree with. When this situation started unrolling it really offended my sense of justice. Here were criminals using the judicial system as the tool for their crimes. It really showed how the US judicial systems costs and processes have created a mechanism for abuse. I wish sometimes there were some criminal law around abuse of a public institution which would capture this sort of thing more quickly and effectively.
- wmf 10y agoHas anyone started talking about what a sane process for handling online copyright infringement would look like, or are we just going to continue this trolls vs. pirates thing forever?
- eikenberry 10y agoIt will be hard for change to happen with the copyright trolls being entrenched/moneyed vs. the pirates grass roots/technical. Each will continue to go with their strengths, which mostly don't interact except in their attempts to work around the other.
- rhizome 10y agoHas anyone started talking about what a sane process for handling online copyright infringement would look like Yes: reduce the term of copyright and expand fair use. However, while Prenda used copyright infringement as a cudgel in these cases, there was no infringement in any of the suits that they brought.
- pessimizer 10y agoAt the very least, reduce the bizarre, surrealistic damage amounts.
- tomjen3 10y agoEventually we will have something like tor with enough bandwidth to handle large files and then there will be nothing for the trolls to do. I believe this way more likely than a complete change of U.S. copyright law.
- joering2 10y agoGreat case to play devil's advocate no? If they were creating "art" in form of porn they had copyright to said work. No law broken here. No law broken if you upload your own work to the cloud. You have right to do it. Finally, no law broken if you try to pursue those who illegally download your copyrighted work. I guess if you combine all of those together then you doing something wrong. But isn't it ironic that the GOV is allowed to run illegal sting operations even if they lose big time like in Fast and Furious and that's fine, but if few lawyers figure out the way to make extra money, then we need to indict them. If anything -- were they actually a fish who happen to clean the ocean? I mean it comes to be as simple as this: do not download illegal porn. Period. I can bet after being charged by those lawyers many settled and never downloaded porn again. There - finished playing devils advocate.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoWell, there's the whole issue of harm. If I upload porn to a place where I intend for people to download it, and they do, how does that harm me? (Especially if my stuff wasn't paying me anything for legal downloads.) If I am harmed, didn't I contribute to my own harm by uploading it there myself? Then there's the issue of misrepresenting/lying to the court. The court doesn't like this kind of game (trying to entrap people into a situation where you can sue them), so they repeatedly lied to the court in order to make it look like "not this kind of game". The court really doesn't like being lied to. You're not a horrible advocate. But the devil is still the devil.
- joering2 10y agoBut this is all based on very shaky grounds. What if I have genuine porn website (I don't) with self made movies and people go and purchase them online. If later on I find my sales went to $0 and everything can be find on torrents, then I might be afraid of suing copyrights thefts because maybe after Prenda case judge will see it as a blackmail!
- sharemywin 10y agothere you had a provable loss and you weren't purposefully entrapping people.
- user837387 10y ago>>[1]John Steele gleefully threatened opponents and Paul Hansmeier famously sneered at the defamation defendants "welcome to the big leagues." It was those actions that drew much more attention to their cases. Character is destiny. Not only are Steele and Hansmeier wanton crooks, they're spiteful, entitled, arrogant douches. That led to their downfall.<< But the part that I really find interesting is this: >>Character is destiny. ....they're spiteful, entitled, arrogant douches. That led to their downfall I say bullshit. Just look at Trump. The guy has fucked over so many people and sexually assaulted many woman by his own words and we still elected him. It let to their downfall because they were not powerful enough. [1]https://popehat.com/2016/12/16/the-prenda-saga-goes-criminal-steele-and-hansmeier-indicted-on-federal-charges/ https://popehat.com/2016/12/16/the-prenda-saga-goes-criminal...
- CPLX 10y agoOf course it may be premature to say that Trump has avoided eventual downfall.
- mistercow 10y agoYou are right that not everyone gets their "comeuppance". Maybe a better way of saying this is "society has an immune system to deal with habitual bad actors, and in this case that immune system worked".
- rhlhkr 10y ago@user837387 --- you're clearly a cuck who drinks the MSM koolaid. If a subcontractor doesn't do good work, he doesn't get paid and he has a right to sue.
- cookiecaper 10y agoWhile I accept the thesis that being what some random author estimates to be a bad person is not really tightly linked to either long-term success or failure, I'd advise against using such divisive, sensitive topics as contemporary presidential politics to illustrate your point. It's just baiting that is going to make the conversation devolve quickly. Suffice it to say, enough Americans reject that narrative about Trump for him to have won the election. There are much better examples out there.
- joering2 10y agoBy reading the PDF I was able to find said piratebay videos (no I didn't download). It looks like all been uploaded by user sharkmp4 https://thepiratebay.org/user/sharkmp4/ https://thepiratebay.org/user/sharkmp4/ Update: Camcast confirms account is owned by Steele. https://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-troll-honesypot.png https://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-troll-honesypot.pn...
- paapicholoo 10y agoTime to get A VPN, i had been using PureVPN since 2 years and now its time to renew it
- rubberstamp 10y agoor use a sock5 anonymous proxy for torrent client. Many free anonymous sock5 proxies are available.
- monochromatic 10y agoIf a woman lets a man kiss her and gives no sign that his advances are unwanted, I have zero patience with later (usually much later) claims about sexual assault.
- mjburgess 10y agoHow much "patience" do you have with people who are mugged, freeze and don't say anything about it to the police? Did the mugging not happen? It's not the victims obligation to, after they have been assaulted, do anything in particular. Anything which will satisfy your "patience". They have been assaulted, and nothing the victim fails to do changes that fact.
- monochromatic 10y agoIf you have to compare an apparently-consensual sexual encounter to an obviously-nonconsensual mugging, you should think of a different way of making your point.
- mjburgess 10y agoYou're begging the question by assuming it was consensual. You have no evidence whatsoever of that, while there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. all the people who said it wasnt
- monochromatic 10y agoI didn't assume it was consensual, just that it could have been apparently consensual.
- dang 10y agoWhoa. There's no reading by which this comment is civil, which means you can't post like this here. Please don't do it again, and please don't engage in flamewars about sexual assault, of all things, on HN. Or any other flamewars. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13197152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13197152 and marked it off-topic.