8 ms·

Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order

350 points by faithful_droog 13y ago

Fando 13y ago
Reading this article gave me great pleasure.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Holy smokes. That is some serious smack down. One hopes it causes the entire judiciary to awaken to this dark scourge of extortion through the courts.
- rhizome 13y ago
  You can bet there are a lot of plaintiff lawyers paying attention as well.
- dmoy 13y ago
  My first reaction was "daaaammmnnnn". Second reaction was to call a lawyer friend to confirm my first reaction.
dmix 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law > Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law Group,[1] is a Chicago, Illinois-based law firm that claims it battles copyright piracy, but is also strongly identified with copyright trolling
betterunix 13y ago
I have not read many court orders/rulings/etc. in my life (IANAL), but of those that I have read, this is by far the angriest and most vicious.
noonespecial 13y ago
Righteous indignation, distilled and aged to a fine vintage... and then served up in Ten Forward by a United States district judge. So this is the other side of the looking glass... when do I meet the disappearing cat?
ajtaylor 13y ago
I've enjoyed following the ongoing saga of this case. Many thanks for the detailed followups of each court session. It would be safe to say that the judge has gone with the "nuke them from orbit" option, as it's the only way to be sure these predators won't continue their dirty actions.
- emeraldd 13y ago
  If you remember, the Xenomorphs survived being nuked ...
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I wouldn't say they survived being nuked. One hitched a ride off the planet, infected a dog/cow, and was later killed; and apparently another hitched a ride inside of Ellen. Since neither were present for the nuclear blast I wouldn't say they survived it. Ellen/It were later cloned to recreate xenomorphs, but I don't think there is anything in the canon to say that the xenomorphs which were nuked were able to survive. Nuking xenomorphs from orbit does seem to be a very good way to be sure.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
not_that_noob 13y ago
It's the end of the road for this brand of copyright shakedown. This is an amazing good-guys-win outcome for sure, but much more than that, it signals the end of of the random copyright troll lawsuit.
patio11 13y ago
Footnote number 5 is so acidic I feel burned just by reading it. (Context: read paragraph #1 in the introduction first, summarizing the conspiracy's business model.) http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanctionsOrder.pdf http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanct...
- rurounijones 13y ago
  It is not often I derive huge amounts of amusement from legal proceedings but this case (and especially this judge) has been very fun to watch in a slow-motion train-wreck kind of way. We all knew this judgement would be good and the judge delivered.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - billybob255 13y ago
    In the introduction the judge stated that the settlement costs were calculated to be just below a bare bones defense, ie it'd be more expensive for people to fight the lawsuit as opposed to settling; so the judge says that his punitive measures were calculated to be just below the cost of an appeal, ie reap what you sow Prenda.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Steko 13y ago
No sympathy for Prenda but damn if this line didn't remind me of Aaron Swartz: "Federal grand jury investigations are very slow, but represent experienced practitioners bringing almost unlimited resources to bear against their targets."
- ghshephard 13y ago
  I wonder if there was ever a movie in which the Cavalry came calling to the rescue, but went after the wrong target? I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode (or maybe it was a Stephen King Short Story) in which an infantry platoon razed a village, only to discover that it was actually their own hometown, somehow masqueraded as some foreign land. I willing to wager that if we looked at it with objective perspective, 95% of the time the Federal Grand Juries are doing work for good, it's only 5% of the time that they are misguided - but it's that 5% that we all seem to remember.
  - aidenn0 13y ago
    If you give someone a basket of grenades and 5% of the time they hit friendlies, you'll probably take the basket away...
  - shabble 13y ago
    You might be thinking of 'The Outer Limits' episode 'The Light Brigade'[1] va juvpu jr yrnea nobhg gur vzcbegnapr bs vapyhqvat orggre snvyfnsrf va bhe cynarg-ohfgref. [rotted for spoilers] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Brigade_%28The_Outer_Limits%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Brigade_%28The_Outer...
lettergram 13y ago
I am grateful that judges can bring down the hammer from time to time.
jopof 13y ago
Confused -- Why all the rigamarole, instead of going RIAA-style after the thousands-to-millions of actual porn copyright-infringers?
- adventured 13y ago
  Because the porn industry doesn't have the representation in DC; it doesn't have the centralized power to pursue highly expensive legal warfare; it doesn't have any sympathy vote; it has very little power; it has relatively little money compared to Hollywood or the recording industry (to attract K Street lobbyists). There is no porn industry equivalent of the RIAA.
- wmf 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you're asking, but Prenda's lawsuits sound very RIAA-style to me (although it's not clear that any of the settlement money ever went back to the porn makers). I assume Prenda didn't just make up the IP addresses they were suing, although that doesn't mean their defendants actually torrented the porn in question either.
- bjustin 13y ago
  Because they (the lawyers) didn't care about copyright infringement, they just wanted settlements. Copyright trolling is typically lawyer-, not rightsholder-, driven, with no intent to take cases to court.
- DanBC 13y ago
  They did go after very many people. They did these cases one at a time because it's easier to do that for them. People either paid up, or they didn't pay up in which case PrendaLaw dropped the case. This case is awesome because they tried to do exactly that, but an alert Judge thought something not just unpleasant but actually fraudulent was going on. What that says about all the other cases (where Prenda got millions, apparently) is open for discussion.
- smackfu 13y ago
  I think they had some trouble keeping their real porn-producer clients. Since the real clients were real parties to the suit, they could be countersued directly, which happened a couple of times. I think they ended up settling and paying out, rather than risking it. http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/01/31/defendant-strikes-back-sues-hard-drive-productions-and-steeles-extortion-outfit/ http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/01/31/defendant-strikes...
downandout 13y ago
While I sympathize with the disdain everyone has for these guys, this judgement is the result of some lawyers that took several possibly illegal shortcuts. This case sets no precedents about the viability of copyright trolling going forward, and in fact the judge's obvious bias may serve as grounds for a successful appeal in this case. So, while this makes for amusing reading, at the end of the day it won't mean much. Everyone should still CYA when downloading torrents.
- bickfordb 13y ago
  What is the judge's bias?
  - ewoodrich 13y ago
    Against deceitful lawyers/plaintiffs. (I agree with you). When a federal judge allows it to visibly boil over into obviousness, as in this case, should indicate how lopsided of a case it really is. Ignoring the Star Trek references, the judge established a large number of "findings of fact", where specific factual elements and legal repercussions were identified or quantified. This is a very compelling approach for appellate/higher courts, and should suggest the intent of resiliency in the language by the judge.
  - downandout 13y ago
    A good appellate lawyer would likely argue that the judge's over-the-top reaction, along with his written commentary showing clear disdain for the business model of the plaintiffs and the attorneys, shows that the judge was unfairly biased against them from the outset of the case. I don't know if they would ultimately prevail on appeal, but the judge certainly opened the door for it.
    - pdovy 13y ago
      I'm curious, what can they really appeal here? It seems like the biggest impact of the ruling is the circulation of the ruling to other jurisdictions and the referral of the matter to local / federal authorities. Is that something that is immediate and an appeal can only reduce the monetary finding, or is the whole order in stasis if they appeal?
rdl 13y ago
I hope all the people who paid to settle get their money back with extra damages.
sudhirj 13y ago
Is there now any way that Judge Wright might turn his eye (and hopefully his hammer) on patent trolling? The arguments he makes against Prenda's process in general - not the illegal parts, but the intent and procedure - is pretty much what the patent trolling industry does. If he sees something that he pass commentary on in a legal capacity, then I'm sure courts can and should take note that they're being played in the patent game too.
- sudhirj 13y ago
  > I. INTRODUCTION > Plaintiffs1 have outmaneuvered the legal system. They’ve discovered the > nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable > defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally > downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be > > 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. > Plaintiffs do have a right to assert their intellectual-property rights, so long as > they do it right. But Plaintiffs’ filing of cases using the same boilerplate complaint > against dozens of defendants raised the Court’s alert. It was when the Court realized > Plaintiffs engaged their cloak of shell companies and fraud that the Court went to > battlestations. Right at the top. Looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except for the porn part.
  - chc 13y ago
    It looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except it doesn't have anything at all to do with patents.
- rst 13y ago
  A judge is not a free agent; they can only rule on the cases they're assigned. Moreover, what got this judge's goat was specifically "the illegal parts" of what Prenda was doing, most notably repeatedly lying in court. It wasn't the tangled ownership structure (a feature they share with some of the trolls in the news, like, say, Lodsys), but specific lies they told about it. (The reason the ownership mattered in the Prenda case is that the lawyers and the owners were one and the same, which is against some court rules. Whoever owns Lodsys, it's pretty clearly not the attorneys representing them in court. And the lies about the ownership structure were not necessarily the most extravagant or significant --- Judge Wright also has a lot to say about misrepresentations of evidence, etc.)
lvxn0va 13y ago
Now for the patent trolls.
rdl 13y ago
What confuses me is that the only stuff they got smacked for was deficiency in how they operated, not anything fundamental to the business of copyright trolling. Another group of lawyers could easily do exactly this, while maintaining more arms-length relationships with the copyright owners, and not taking shortcuts on the cases, and be completely within the law.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  That was the only thing they could be smacked for, so the judge smacked hard. It is possible to conduct this extortion within the law and that is a problem, but judges can't change law. Notice has now been sent however that if you're going to flaunt the law's deficiencies for personal gain at the expense of the legal commons, you damn well better bring your A game.
  - belorn 13y ago
    Beyond that, they also showed that such actions now has risk involved. Hopefully this will lead to the lawyers getting jail time, and that will in turn discourage more legit lawyers from trying a similar scheme even with a A game performance.
- smackfu 13y ago
  This part is relevant to that: But Plaintiffs did not conduct a sufficient investigation to determine whether that person actually downloaded enough data (or even anything at all) to produce a viewable video. Further, Plaintiffs cannot conclude whether that person spoofed the IP address, is the subscriber of that IP address, or is someone else using that subscriber’s Internet access. The first part, proving that they downloaded a complete copy, seems to be a bit more difficult than just grabbing a snapshot of all the IPs at a point-in-time as they had been doing.
ultimoo 13y ago
popehat is great, and in spite this being one of their smaller articles, I fail to follow what it boils down to. Can someone please summarize what Prenda has to now do -- Do they serve time? Do they pay millions? Are they not allowed to practice again?
- wyck 13y ago
  1. They have to pay for the attorney fees with a punitive multiplier, basically double. So instead of paying 40k they have to pay 80k for this case. Other cases will likely follow suite. 2. Judge Wright says he is referring Steele, Duffy, Hansmeier, and Gibbs to their respective state bars and federal bars. They can very well be debarred from practicing law, there will be a very thorough bar investigation. This is what lawyer's nightmare are made of. 3. He is referring the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for RICO (Racketeer act) and the IRS. This is what Hells Angels/Mafia nightmares are made of. 4. All judges that have pending cases with these lawyers will be notified of the above (and most likely more). Worse case scenario: More attorney fee x2 (how many cases did they prosecute?) , debarred, send to jail for racketeering. tl;dr the Judge fined them 2x and then set 3 organizations you don't want to mess with on their asses, and told everyone about it.
- Sanddancer 13y ago
  They have to pay attorney fees of about 40 grand, and another 40 grand of punitive damages. At this point, that's about it, but with a ruling like this, there's no doubt that there are going to be many more problems for the Prenda gang in the future. Don't worry though, given the gravity of the recommendations Wright's sending to the DA and to the IRS, you can be certain there will be much more popcorn to be had from this case.
  - TylerE 13y ago
    Actually, the biggest bit in the judgement might be the "referral" (and not the _good_ kind of referral) to their state bar(s).
    - protomyth 13y ago
grellas 13y ago
Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders of pornographic material via the filing of lawsuits ostensibly asserting copyright violations; (4) yet, the people asserting the claims did not have any good evidence actually proving any form of violation in any given case; (5) and, when someone offered any real resistance, the case was dropped; (6) and when the ostensible holders of the claims needed to be real holders of the copyrights in question, shell entities were set up (controlled and dominated by the lawyers) in order to create a false appearance that this requirement was met; (7) and when the federal court's procedural rules specifically required the lawyer bringing the case to identify all known related cases so that the court can understand the true party relationships, the lawyer suppresses all the known facts about the relationships in order to deceive the court; (8) and when a formal assignment of copyright is needed to meet the legal requirement of standing, the lawyers set up a dummy name and forge the person's signature in order to meet the requirement; (9) and when the scheme turns on a fishing expedition by which the lawyers hunt out a list of IP addresses and then ask the court for the right to subpoena the ISP to get the names associated with those addresses, and the judge issues a discovery order saying, in effect, "hold on, you can't do this here," and yet the lawyers still proceed to serve the subpoenas on the ISPs in order to keep generating opportunities to extort settlements from even more victims; (10) and when the court finds out that the lawyers are deliberately flouting the court's orders and authority, the lawyers refuse to appear until forced to and, when they do appear, refuse to account honestly for their conduct. Summing up and paraphrasing what the judge concluded based on these findings: This is not lawyering. It is naked extortion covered by a thin veneer of lawyering. Rules don't matter. Honesty doesn't matter. Decency doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to keep the scheme going, right or wrong, fair or foul, justified or not. The result: not a severe money sanction, which would have been but a slap on the wrist when many millions had been gathered under the lawyers' scheme, and apparently gathered tax free to boot. Instead, something much worse, to wit, a clear conclusion that the lawyers had engaged in acts of moral turpitude, justifying referral to the state bar of every jurisdiction in which they are authorized to practice, and likely eventual disbarment; a criminal referral to the U.S. attorneys' office for possible RICO violations; a referral to the tax authorities; and an order that this devastating order be served and filed in every single legal action that has been filed by these attorneys anywhere in the nation. This, to put it mildly, amounts to evisceration. This judge got mad. This judge had guts. This judge is smart. And that, for these lawyers, is a lethal combination.
smutticus 13y ago
I think this is my favorite Star Trek reference in the decision. page 10 line 21: "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." I have never had more fun reading a decision from a judge. It is heartening as well as entertaining.
zarify 13y ago
"Without better technology, prosecuting illegal BitTorrent activity requires substantial effort in order to make a case. It is simply not economically viable to properly prosecute the illegal download of a single copyrighted video." Is this likely to have any implications for a wider range of copyright-by-IP address cases? Since I've only given a cursory glance past the details of other (let's say music and video) cases, this level of 'proof' sounds quite similar to what is being offered elsewhere.
DanBC 13y ago
Reading this I'm kind of optimistic. Star Trek quotes? Firefox screenshot? Amazing. I read a lot of negative stuff about US law. I hope that's because people are interested in the negative stuff and there's biases operating to not publicise that good stuff.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kislayverma 13y ago
Smackdown!!!
andyjohnson0 13y ago
The Star Trek references in the judgement are rather strange and (to me) diminish the judge's credibility. Is it normal practice for judges in the US to use popular culture references in their written judgements? Anyone care to explain the reasoning behind this?
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  Presumably he knows the internet is watching. Perhaps he's playing to the gallery a bit.
- justinlink 13y ago
  It's not uncommon, for example here's a recent double-entendre ruling about a strip club: http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a783-cc15b6c19cc0/Itsy_Bitsy_Teeny_Weeny_Bikini_Top_Order.pdf http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a7... The lawyers out there speculated he did it as yet another smack down to Prenda law. This will always be known in law circles as the "Star Trek Order". It'll be more widely read, and the shame will always follow them. His findings of law are correct, a little toying with them outside of his findings is quite enjoyable.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Lawyer friend told me its not uncommon so the ruling is remembered and talked about. Here are some other examples of "creative writing" http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/30/texas-where-decisions-are-decisions-and-lawyers-are-nervous.aspx http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/30/texas-where-decision...
HNLogInShit 13y ago
Would've been nice to explain WTF "Prenda Law" is beforehand.
mindslight 13y ago
Hooray! for an occasion when the system worked. It's of course quite heartwarming to see someone in a position of authority coming to a sane opinion, getting incensed at the ridiculousness, and even going on the offensive. But what of all the others that have been mired in endless litigation with no such happy ending? And while fitting, is it really desirable for Prenda's punishment to mainly consist of being ground down by the bureaucracy? Wouldn't we rather an efficient system where ridiculous cases were dismissed outright, unenforceable laws were retired quickly, the lawyer protection racket was unnecessary, and the innocent could be reasonably confident of ultimately prevailing instead of simply settling to avoid years of stress?

350 points by faithful_droog 13y ago

Fando 13y ago

Reading this article gave me great pleasure.

Holy smokes. That is some serious smack down. One hopes it causes the entire judiciary to awaken to this dark scourge of extortion through the courts.

rhizome 13y ago
You can bet there are a lot of plaintiff lawyers paying attention as well.
dmoy 13y ago
My first reaction was "daaaammmnnnn". Second reaction was to call a lawyer friend to confirm my first reaction.

dmix 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law > Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law Group,[1] is a Chicago, Illinois-based law firm that claims it battles copyright piracy, but is also strongly identified with copyright trolling

betterunix 13y ago

I have not read many court orders/rulings/etc. in my life (IANAL), but of those that I have read, this is by far the angriest and most vicious.

noonespecial 13y ago

Righteous indignation, distilled and aged to a fine vintage... and then served up in Ten Forward by a United States district judge. So this is the other side of the looking glass... when do I meet the disappearing cat?

ajtaylor 13y ago

I've enjoyed following the ongoing saga of this case. Many thanks for the detailed followups of each court session. It would be safe to say that the judge has gone with the "nuke them from orbit" option, as it's the only way to be sure these predators won't continue their dirty actions.

emeraldd 13y ago
If you remember, the Xenomorphs survived being nuked ...
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I wouldn't say they survived being nuked. One hitched a ride off the planet, infected a dog/cow, and was later killed; and apparently another hitched a ride inside of Ellen. Since neither were present for the nuclear blast I wouldn't say they survived it. Ellen/It were later cloned to recreate xenomorphs, but I don't think there is anything in the canon to say that the xenomorphs which were nuked were able to survive. Nuking xenomorphs from orbit does seem to be a very good way to be sure.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

not_that_noob 13y ago

It's the end of the road for this brand of copyright shakedown. This is an amazing good-guys-win outcome for sure, but much more than that, it signals the end of of the random copyright troll lawsuit.

patio11 13y ago

Footnote number 5 is so acidic I feel burned just by reading it. (Context: read paragraph #1 in the introduction first, summarizing the conspiracy's business model.) http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanctionsOrder.pdf http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanct...

rurounijones 13y ago
It is not often I derive huge amounts of amusement from legal proceedings but this case (and especially this judge) has been very fun to watch in a slow-motion train-wreck kind of way. We all knew this judgement would be good and the judge delivered.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- billybob255 13y ago
  In the introduction the judge stated that the settlement costs were calculated to be just below a bare bones defense, ie it'd be more expensive for people to fight the lawsuit as opposed to settling; so the judge says that his punitive measures were calculated to be just below the cost of an appeal, ie reap what you sow Prenda.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Steko 13y ago

No sympathy for Prenda but damn if this line didn't remind me of Aaron Swartz: "Federal grand jury investigations are very slow, but represent experienced practitioners bringing almost unlimited resources to bear against their targets."

ghshephard 13y ago
I wonder if there was ever a movie in which the Cavalry came calling to the rescue, but went after the wrong target? I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode (or maybe it was a Stephen King Short Story) in which an infantry platoon razed a village, only to discover that it was actually their own hometown, somehow masqueraded as some foreign land. I willing to wager that if we looked at it with objective perspective, 95% of the time the Federal Grand Juries are doing work for good, it's only 5% of the time that they are misguided - but it's that 5% that we all seem to remember.
- aidenn0 13y ago
  If you give someone a basket of grenades and 5% of the time they hit friendlies, you'll probably take the basket away...
- shabble 13y ago
  You might be thinking of 'The Outer Limits' episode 'The Light Brigade'[1] va juvpu jr yrnea nobhg gur vzcbegnapr bs vapyhqvat orggre snvyfnsrf va bhe cynarg-ohfgref. [rotted for spoilers] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Brigade_%28The_Outer_Limits%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Brigade_%28The_Outer...

lettergram 13y ago

I am grateful that judges can bring down the hammer from time to time.

jopof 13y ago

Confused -- Why all the rigamarole, instead of going RIAA-style after the thousands-to-millions of actual porn copyright-infringers?

adventured 13y ago
Because the porn industry doesn't have the representation in DC; it doesn't have the centralized power to pursue highly expensive legal warfare; it doesn't have any sympathy vote; it has very little power; it has relatively little money compared to Hollywood or the recording industry (to attract K Street lobbyists). There is no porn industry equivalent of the RIAA.
wmf 13y ago
I'm not sure what you're asking, but Prenda's lawsuits sound very RIAA-style to me (although it's not clear that any of the settlement money ever went back to the porn makers). I assume Prenda didn't just make up the IP addresses they were suing, although that doesn't mean their defendants actually torrented the porn in question either.
bjustin 13y ago
Because they (the lawyers) didn't care about copyright infringement, they just wanted settlements. Copyright trolling is typically lawyer-, not rightsholder-, driven, with no intent to take cases to court.
DanBC 13y ago
They did go after very many people. They did these cases one at a time because it's easier to do that for them. People either paid up, or they didn't pay up in which case PrendaLaw dropped the case. This case is awesome because they tried to do exactly that, but an alert Judge thought something not just unpleasant but actually fraudulent was going on. What that says about all the other cases (where Prenda got millions, apparently) is open for discussion.
smackfu 13y ago
I think they had some trouble keeping their real porn-producer clients. Since the real clients were real parties to the suit, they could be countersued directly, which happened a couple of times. I think they ended up settling and paying out, rather than risking it. http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/01/31/defendant-strikes-back-sues-hard-drive-productions-and-steeles-extortion-outfit/ http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/01/31/defendant-strikes...

downandout 13y ago

While I sympathize with the disdain everyone has for these guys, this judgement is the result of some lawyers that took several possibly illegal shortcuts. This case sets no precedents about the viability of copyright trolling going forward, and in fact the judge's obvious bias may serve as grounds for a successful appeal in this case. So, while this makes for amusing reading, at the end of the day it won't mean much. Everyone should still CYA when downloading torrents.

bickfordb 13y ago
What is the judge's bias?
- ewoodrich 13y ago
  Against deceitful lawyers/plaintiffs. (I agree with you). When a federal judge allows it to visibly boil over into obviousness, as in this case, should indicate how lopsided of a case it really is. Ignoring the Star Trek references, the judge established a large number of "findings of fact", where specific factual elements and legal repercussions were identified or quantified. This is a very compelling approach for appellate/higher courts, and should suggest the intent of resiliency in the language by the judge.
- downandout 13y ago
  A good appellate lawyer would likely argue that the judge's over-the-top reaction, along with his written commentary showing clear disdain for the business model of the plaintiffs and the attorneys, shows that the judge was unfairly biased against them from the outset of the case. I don't know if they would ultimately prevail on appeal, but the judge certainly opened the door for it.
  - pdovy 13y ago
    I'm curious, what can they really appeal here? It seems like the biggest impact of the ruling is the circulation of the ruling to other jurisdictions and the referral of the matter to local / federal authorities. Is that something that is immediate and an appeal can only reduce the monetary finding, or is the whole order in stasis if they appeal?

rdl 13y ago

I hope all the people who paid to settle get their money back with extra damages.

sudhirj 13y ago

Is there now any way that Judge Wright might turn his eye (and hopefully his hammer) on patent trolling? The arguments he makes against Prenda's process in general - not the illegal parts, but the intent and procedure - is pretty much what the patent trolling industry does. If he sees something that he pass commentary on in a legal capacity, then I'm sure courts can and should take note that they're being played in the patent game too.

sudhirj 13y ago
> I. INTRODUCTION > Plaintiffs1 have outmaneuvered the legal system. They’ve discovered the > nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable > defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally > downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be > > 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. > Plaintiffs do have a right to assert their intellectual-property rights, so long as > they do it right. But Plaintiffs’ filing of cases using the same boilerplate complaint > against dozens of defendants raised the Court’s alert. It was when the Court realized > Plaintiffs engaged their cloak of shell companies and fraud that the Court went to > battlestations. Right at the top. Looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except for the porn part.
- chc 13y ago
  It looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except it doesn't have anything at all to do with patents.
rst 13y ago
A judge is not a free agent; they can only rule on the cases they're assigned. Moreover, what got this judge's goat was specifically "the illegal parts" of what Prenda was doing, most notably repeatedly lying in court. It wasn't the tangled ownership structure (a feature they share with some of the trolls in the news, like, say, Lodsys), but specific lies they told about it. (The reason the ownership mattered in the Prenda case is that the lawyers and the owners were one and the same, which is against some court rules. Whoever owns Lodsys, it's pretty clearly not the attorneys representing them in court. And the lies about the ownership structure were not necessarily the most extravagant or significant --- Judge Wright also has a lot to say about misrepresentations of evidence, etc.)

lvxn0va 13y ago

Now for the patent trolls.

rdl 13y ago

What confuses me is that the only stuff they got smacked for was deficiency in how they operated, not anything fundamental to the business of copyright trolling. Another group of lawyers could easily do exactly this, while maintaining more arms-length relationships with the copyright owners, and not taking shortcuts on the cases, and be completely within the law.

noonespecial 13y ago
That was the only thing they could be smacked for, so the judge smacked hard. It is possible to conduct this extortion within the law and that is a problem, but judges can't change law. Notice has now been sent however that if you're going to flaunt the law's deficiencies for personal gain at the expense of the legal commons, you damn well better bring your A game.
- belorn 13y ago
  Beyond that, they also showed that such actions now has risk involved. Hopefully this will lead to the lawyers getting jail time, and that will in turn discourage more legit lawyers from trying a similar scheme even with a A game performance.
smackfu 13y ago
This part is relevant to that: But Plaintiffs did not conduct a sufficient investigation to determine whether that person actually downloaded enough data (or even anything at all) to produce a viewable video. Further, Plaintiffs cannot conclude whether that person spoofed the IP address, is the subscriber of that IP address, or is someone else using that subscriber’s Internet access. The first part, proving that they downloaded a complete copy, seems to be a bit more difficult than just grabbing a snapshot of all the IPs at a point-in-time as they had been doing.

ultimoo 13y ago

popehat is great, and in spite this being one of their smaller articles, I fail to follow what it boils down to. Can someone please summarize what Prenda has to now do -- Do they serve time? Do they pay millions? Are they not allowed to practice again?

wyck 13y ago
1. They have to pay for the attorney fees with a punitive multiplier, basically double. So instead of paying 40k they have to pay 80k for this case. Other cases will likely follow suite. 2. Judge Wright says he is referring Steele, Duffy, Hansmeier, and Gibbs to their respective state bars and federal bars. They can very well be debarred from practicing law, there will be a very thorough bar investigation. This is what lawyer's nightmare are made of. 3. He is referring the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for RICO (Racketeer act) and the IRS. This is what Hells Angels/Mafia nightmares are made of. 4. All judges that have pending cases with these lawyers will be notified of the above (and most likely more). Worse case scenario: More attorney fee x2 (how many cases did they prosecute?) , debarred, send to jail for racketeering. tl;dr the Judge fined them 2x and then set 3 organizations you don't want to mess with on their asses, and told everyone about it.
Sanddancer 13y ago
They have to pay attorney fees of about 40 grand, and another 40 grand of punitive damages. At this point, that's about it, but with a ruling like this, there's no doubt that there are going to be many more problems for the Prenda gang in the future. Don't worry though, given the gravity of the recommendations Wright's sending to the DA and to the IRS, you can be certain there will be much more popcorn to be had from this case.
- TylerE 13y ago
  Actually, the biggest bit in the judgement might be the "referral" (and not the _good_ kind of referral) to their state bar(s).
  - protomyth 13y ago

grellas 13y ago

Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders of pornographic material via the filing of lawsuits ostensibly asserting copyright violations; (4) yet, the people asserting the claims did not have any good evidence actually proving any form of violation in any given case; (5) and, when someone offered any real resistance, the case was dropped; (6) and when the ostensible holders of the claims needed to be real holders of the copyrights in question, shell entities were set up (controlled and dominated by the lawyers) in order to create a false appearance that this requirement was met; (7) and when the federal court's procedural rules specifically required the lawyer bringing the case to identify all known related cases so that the court can understand the true party relationships, the lawyer suppresses all the known facts about the relationships in order to deceive the court; (8) and when a formal assignment of copyright is needed to meet the legal requirement of standing, the lawyers set up a dummy name and forge the person's signature in order to meet the requirement; (9) and when the scheme turns on a fishing expedition by which the lawyers hunt out a list of IP addresses and then ask the court for the right to subpoena the ISP to get the names associated with those addresses, and the judge issues a discovery order saying, in effect, "hold on, you can't do this here," and yet the lawyers still proceed to serve the subpoenas on the ISPs in order to keep generating opportunities to extort settlements from even more victims; (10) and when the court finds out that the lawyers are deliberately flouting the court's orders and authority, the lawyers refuse to appear until forced to and, when they do appear, refuse to account honestly for their conduct. Summing up and paraphrasing what the judge concluded based on these findings: This is not lawyering. It is naked extortion covered by a thin veneer of lawyering. Rules don't matter. Honesty doesn't matter. Decency doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to keep the scheme going, right or wrong, fair or foul, justified or not. The result: not a severe money sanction, which would have been but a slap on the wrist when many millions had been gathered under the lawyers' scheme, and apparently gathered tax free to boot. Instead, something much worse, to wit, a clear conclusion that the lawyers had engaged in acts of moral turpitude, justifying referral to the state bar of every jurisdiction in which they are authorized to practice, and likely eventual disbarment; a criminal referral to the U.S. attorneys' office for possible RICO violations; a referral to the tax authorities; and an order that this devastating order be served and filed in every single legal action that has been filed by these attorneys anywhere in the nation. This, to put it mildly, amounts to evisceration. This judge got mad. This judge had guts. This judge is smart. And that, for these lawyers, is a lethal combination.

smutticus 13y ago

I think this is my favorite Star Trek reference in the decision. page 10 line 21: "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." I have never had more fun reading a decision from a judge. It is heartening as well as entertaining.

zarify 13y ago

"Without better technology, prosecuting illegal BitTorrent activity requires substantial effort in order to make a case. It is simply not economically viable to properly prosecute the illegal download of a single copyrighted video." Is this likely to have any implications for a wider range of copyright-by-IP address cases? Since I've only given a cursory glance past the details of other (let's say music and video) cases, this level of 'proof' sounds quite similar to what is being offered elsewhere.

DanBC 13y ago

Reading this I'm kind of optimistic. Star Trek quotes? Firefox screenshot? Amazing. I read a lot of negative stuff about US law. I hope that's because people are interested in the negative stuff and there's biases operating to not publicise that good stuff.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

kislayverma 13y ago

Smackdown!!!

andyjohnson0 13y ago

The Star Trek references in the judgement are rather strange and (to me) diminish the judge's credibility. Is it normal practice for judges in the US to use popular culture references in their written judgements? Anyone care to explain the reasoning behind this?

JonnieCache 13y ago
Presumably he knows the internet is watching. Perhaps he's playing to the gallery a bit.
justinlink 13y ago
It's not uncommon, for example here's a recent double-entendre ruling about a strip club: http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a783-cc15b6c19cc0/Itsy_Bitsy_Teeny_Weeny_Bikini_Top_Order.pdf http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a7... The lawyers out there speculated he did it as yet another smack down to Prenda law. This will always be known in law circles as the "Star Trek Order". It'll be more widely read, and the shame will always follow them. His findings of law are correct, a little toying with them outside of his findings is quite enjoyable.
protomyth 13y ago
Lawyer friend told me its not uncommon so the ruling is remembered and talked about. Here are some other examples of "creative writing" http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/30/texas-where-decisions-are-decisions-and-lawyers-are-nervous.aspx http://blog.simplejustice.us/2007/08/30/texas-where-decision...

HNLogInShit 13y ago

Would've been nice to explain WTF "Prenda Law" is beforehand.

mindslight 13y ago

Hooray! for an occasion when the system worked. It's of course quite heartwarming to see someone in a position of authority coming to a sane opinion, getting incensed at the ridiculousness, and even going on the offensive. But what of all the others that have been mired in endless litigation with no such happy ending? And while fitting, is it really desirable for Prenda's punishment to mainly consist of being ground down by the bureaucracy? Wouldn't we rather an efficient system where ridiculous cases were dismissed outright, unenforceable laws were retired quickly, the lawyer protection racket was unnecessary, and the innocent could be reasonably confident of ultimately prevailing instead of simply settling to avoid years of stress?