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Great 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

Great 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 ago
Well, 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 ago
  But 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 ago
    there you had a provable loss and you weren't purposefully entrapping people.
uxp 10y ago
I really hate throwing out analogies, but the closest I could think of is the "unlocked front door". If FTV, the producer of the video, shared themselves or allowed someone to share in their behalf a video that they produced in order to bait people to download that, then I would agree that they did nothing illegal. Leaving my door unlocked is not illegal. But they went further, by allowing people to download the video they then exploited the legal system by not charging the people who walked through that front door looking for things to take with robbery, but merely blackmailed those people into paying them money to remain silent, or else they would "publicly" press charges. That is what they are being accused and apparently charged for. Sure, don't download illegally shared porn, music, movies or tv shows. But if you do download that content illegally, you also have a right not not be blackmailed for the action. Two wrongs do not make a right.
- joering2 10y ago
  Generally I agree with you but what's the definition of "blackmail" in terms of court of law? Basically everyone that settled a case in or out of the court was blackmailed? Doubt that. I think if someone is breaking the law and you tell them stop or I sue you, then its even offensive to call it a blackmail. Again, I don't look at this case from right-or-wrong point of view, as it seems it is a scam what they did. I'm rather interested whether the lady of justice will be blindfolded and find no crime was committed, or judge will hate them because its related to pornography and blackmailing.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > I think if someone is breaking the law and you tell them stop or I sue you, then its even offensive to call it a blackmail. They didn't tell them "stop or I'll sue you" - they said "Give me $3,000 or I'll sue you, and by the way, it'll likely cost you more than $3,000 to defend yourself."
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Generally I agree with you but what's the definition of "blackmail" in terms of court of law The grandparent post used "blackmail" informally; they aren't charged with that, so it's definition in a court of law is tangential. They are charged with perjury, subornation of perjury, conspiracy to commit both perjury and subornation of perjury, and also charged with mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. None of which would be an issue with fact-based copyright claims against people the person suing (and offering to settle) believed reasonably were (or even might be) guilty.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Even if all those things together weren't wrong, all the perjury and subornation of perjury would still be criminal. But I don't think you can make a good case that uploading content you own to a public BitTorrent tracker does not create an implied license to download them content from the tracker.
Meekro 10y ago
If you're going to play devil's advocate, you should read the indictment first and see what the devil is being accused of. Here are some damning allegations: 1. They lied to the courts to cover up the fact that they were, in fact, advocating for their own shell companies. Doing this is not a crime, lying about it is. 2. When the courts started limiting them to 1 defendant per lawsuit, they lied again and invented fake allegations of hacking. They had not been hacked, they just needed false pretenses to send more ISP subpoenas. 3. When judges started catching on to the above and asked them to explain themselves, they lied still more to cover up their previous lies. 4. One of them forged the signature of his housekeeper, setting the housekeeper up as the owner of a shell company. 5. They uploaded files to ThePirateBay themselves, then lied and said they didn't.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If you're going to play devil's advocate, you should read the indictment first and see what the devil is being accused of. If nothing else, to note that included on that list is perjury in the course of a bar association complaint against their own attorney. So, maybe, it's not a good idea to be the advocate for these devils...
Sacho 10y ago
I upvoted you because I think we need discussions like these! I just think you're not aware of the facts of the case. Meekro points out some of them, but it's worth reading the Popehat saga about it(I've been following it since its launch). The kind of activity Prenda engaged in probably still happens quite often, and people are forced to settle and everyone moves on. What Prenda did(quite exceptionally) was their aggressiveness in pursuing their "victims", the complex shell company structure they set up, then subsequently lied about, their contempt for court proceedings, their perjuries in many cases, etc, etc...basically, they pushed the system to its brink with no consideration, and after 3-ish years, the system bounced back with all the built-up inertia and squished them. To address your specific points: - If they were creating "art" in form of porn they had copyright to said work. No law broken here. - yep - No law broken if you upload your own work to the cloud. You have right to do it. - yep - Finally, no law broken if you try to pursue those who illegally download your copyrighted work. - yep. Except the only question is, are they "illegally" downloading your work if you put it up yourself for free download? This was one of the earliest things that courts grappled with vs Prenda, before the whole thing turned to crazyland. It's useful to check out the early posts on the subject, for example https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-los-angeles/ https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-... Notice how even "early" in this case, things were already shifting away from your devil's advocate position and into allegations of fraud against Prenda and fights with the judges themselves(if you want to take a dive into the crazy, https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/deposition-reveals-prenda-law-business-model-monetizing-squalid-douchebaggery/ https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/deposition-reveals-prenda-law... is a good start..) Here's also a comment from one of the people that were following Prenda closely before Ken got involved, "Die Trolls Die": > Going after porn pirates requires a real investigation which requires much time, effort, and money. One recent case in IN had a Prenda local attorney only doing 5 hours of work – only one hour for the investigation. These outfits were not designed to do this. IMO it is a business model more than any effort to protect the content owners. As none of these porn copyright infringement cases have gone to full trial – judged on the merits (since 2010), it speaks volumes. Dismissals and default judgements only. Saying that, copyright infringement does happen and the content owners do have a right to take action. I just happen to disagree on how they are doing it.
- 10y ago
gyc 10y ago
> No law broken if you upload your own work to the cloud. You have right to do it. The issue is that they didn't just upload their porn "to the cloud". They seeded their porn via bittorrent, which is a tool used specifically to share files to others. Seeding your own work via bit torrent is at the very least giving implied consent to others to download said work. If you give consent to others to download your work, you can hardly sue them later and claim the downloading was unauthorized.
elastic_church 10y ago
You were close in your conclusion that someone else could do the same thing by properly disclosing their role in the distribution. You just didn't read the case that the only problem was the lying under oath. The consequences are that the defense will see through it very fast and won't settle so quickly, making the whole business model fail by a war of attrition.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

Well, 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 ago
But 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 ago
  there you had a provable loss and you weren't purposefully entrapping people.

uxp 10y ago

I really hate throwing out analogies, but the closest I could think of is the "unlocked front door". If FTV, the producer of the video, shared themselves or allowed someone to share in their behalf a video that they produced in order to bait people to download that, then I would agree that they did nothing illegal. Leaving my door unlocked is not illegal. But they went further, by allowing people to download the video they then exploited the legal system by not charging the people who walked through that front door looking for things to take with robbery, but merely blackmailed those people into paying them money to remain silent, or else they would "publicly" press charges. That is what they are being accused and apparently charged for. Sure, don't download illegally shared porn, music, movies or tv shows. But if you do download that content illegally, you also have a right not not be blackmailed for the action. Two wrongs do not make a right.

joering2 10y ago
Generally I agree with you but what's the definition of "blackmail" in terms of court of law? Basically everyone that settled a case in or out of the court was blackmailed? Doubt that. I think if someone is breaking the law and you tell them stop or I sue you, then its even offensive to call it a blackmail. Again, I don't look at this case from right-or-wrong point of view, as it seems it is a scam what they did. I'm rather interested whether the lady of justice will be blindfolded and find no crime was committed, or judge will hate them because its related to pornography and blackmailing.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > I think if someone is breaking the law and you tell them stop or I sue you, then its even offensive to call it a blackmail. They didn't tell them "stop or I'll sue you" - they said "Give me $3,000 or I'll sue you, and by the way, it'll likely cost you more than $3,000 to defend yourself."
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Generally I agree with you but what's the definition of "blackmail" in terms of court of law The grandparent post used "blackmail" informally; they aren't charged with that, so it's definition in a court of law is tangential. They are charged with perjury, subornation of perjury, conspiracy to commit both perjury and subornation of perjury, and also charged with mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. None of which would be an issue with fact-based copyright claims against people the person suing (and offering to settle) believed reasonably were (or even might be) guilty.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Even if all those things together weren't wrong, all the perjury and subornation of perjury would still be criminal. But I don't think you can make a good case that uploading content you own to a public BitTorrent tracker does not create an implied license to download them content from the tracker.

Meekro 10y ago

If you're going to play devil's advocate, you should read the indictment first and see what the devil is being accused of. Here are some damning allegations: 1. They lied to the courts to cover up the fact that they were, in fact, advocating for their own shell companies. Doing this is not a crime, lying about it is. 2. When the courts started limiting them to 1 defendant per lawsuit, they lied again and invented fake allegations of hacking. They had not been hacked, they just needed false pretenses to send more ISP subpoenas. 3. When judges started catching on to the above and asked them to explain themselves, they lied still more to cover up their previous lies. 4. One of them forged the signature of his housekeeper, setting the housekeeper up as the owner of a shell company. 5. They uploaded files to ThePirateBay themselves, then lied and said they didn't.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> If you're going to play devil's advocate, you should read the indictment first and see what the devil is being accused of. If nothing else, to note that included on that list is perjury in the course of a bar association complaint against their own attorney. So, maybe, it's not a good idea to be the advocate for these devils...

Sacho 10y ago

I upvoted you because I think we need discussions like these! I just think you're not aware of the facts of the case. Meekro points out some of them, but it's worth reading the Popehat saga about it(I've been following it since its launch). The kind of activity Prenda engaged in probably still happens quite often, and people are forced to settle and everyone moves on. What Prenda did(quite exceptionally) was their aggressiveness in pursuing their "victims", the complex shell company structure they set up, then subsequently lied about, their contempt for court proceedings, their perjuries in many cases, etc, etc...basically, they pushed the system to its brink with no consideration, and after 3-ish years, the system bounced back with all the built-up inertia and squished them. To address your specific points: - If they were creating "art" in form of porn they had copyright to said work. No law broken here. - yep - No law broken if you upload your own work to the cloud. You have right to do it. - yep - Finally, no law broken if you try to pursue those who illegally download your copyrighted work. - yep. Except the only question is, are they "illegally" downloading your work if you put it up yourself for free download? This was one of the earliest things that courts grappled with vs Prenda, before the whole thing turned to crazyland. It's useful to check out the early posts on the subject, for example https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-los-angeles/ https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-... Notice how even "early" in this case, things were already shifting away from your devil's advocate position and into allegations of fraud against Prenda and fights with the judges themselves(if you want to take a dive into the crazy, https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/deposition-reveals-prenda-law-business-model-monetizing-squalid-douchebaggery/ https://popehat.com/2013/03/06/deposition-reveals-prenda-law... is a good start..) Here's also a comment from one of the people that were following Prenda closely before Ken got involved, "Die Trolls Die": > Going after porn pirates requires a real investigation which requires much time, effort, and money. One recent case in IN had a Prenda local attorney only doing 5 hours of work – only one hour for the investigation. These outfits were not designed to do this. IMO it is a business model more than any effort to protect the content owners. As none of these porn copyright infringement cases have gone to full trial – judged on the merits (since 2010), it speaks volumes. Dismissals and default judgements only. Saying that, copyright infringement does happen and the content owners do have a right to take action. I just happen to disagree on how they are doing it.

10y ago

gyc 10y ago

> No law broken if you upload your own work to the cloud. You have right to do it. The issue is that they didn't just upload their porn "to the cloud". They seeded their porn via bittorrent, which is a tool used specifically to share files to others. Seeding your own work via bit torrent is at the very least giving implied consent to others to download said work. If you give consent to others to download your work, you can hardly sue them later and claim the downloading was unauthorized.

elastic_church 10y ago

You were close in your conclusion that someone else could do the same thing by properly disclosing their role in the distribution. You just didn't read the case that the only problem was the lying under oath. The consequences are that the defense will see through it very fast and won't settle so quickly, making the whole business model fail by a war of attrition.