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Judge Grants Defendant's Motion To Explore Alleged Fraud By Prenda Law
An anonymous reader writes "Prenda Law — one of the most notorious copyright trolls — has sued hundreds of thousands of John Doe defendants, often receiving settlements of thousands of dollars from each. Prenda Law principal John Steele has reportedly made a few million dollars suing BitTorrent file-sharers. Prenda Law has been accused in federal court of creating sham offshore corporations using the identity of his gardener. In other words, it is alleged that the law firm and their client are the same entity, and that Prenda law has committed identity theft and fraud. Now, a judge in California has granted a John Doe defendant's motion to further explore the connection between the offshore entity and the law firm."
For John Steele. LOL.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If you promote the quality of selfishness, you'll end up with a world of selfish people.
Time to promote long-term altruism, the natural and uniquely human quality, and the reason we're not still living in caves.
If a defendant agrees to a settlement that might rule out fraud. And if a court has found in favor of a suit the notion of fraud becomes a bit shaky as well.
I also have to wonder that when we see lawyers walk a way from a conflict with huge sums while the client receives very little is the client is not normally an inconvenient stooge that lawyers use on their way to pay day.
I decline to acquiesce to your request. My Schwager received one of these extortion notices, and now, thanks to this timely submission by the prolific Herr Anonymous, I'll have a conversation starter for the family New Year celebration that should get me through until the whiskey kicks in.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The strategies Steele is using are the same as those used by all large corporations. Only if his lawyers were stupid in setting it up will there be a problem.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
maybe they're getting ready to change names from "Prenda Law" to "Pretenda Law"?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Law firms aren't allowed to invent fictitious plaintiffs (or commit identity theft) in order to initiate lawsuits. (And there are very strict rules on recruiting named plaintiffs for class actions.) It may not be a fraud against the defendants (though probably is), but it can still be a fraud against the courts; that's completely separate from the actual merits (or lack thereof) of the case. Fraud against the court is something a lawyer does; normal fraud is something defendants get accused of doing.
The penalty for fraud against the court starts with monetary sanctions (in addition to getting your case dismissed), and can end with a recommendation for disbarment. (I don't know if a judge can impose jail time without a DA involved (like with contempt of court)... I doubt it.)
I have worked for the porn industry and seen this guy preaching at industry conventions, once supposedly on a forum that was to discuss how to approach copyright infringement as a porn company/copyright holder. (there are other approaches the best working focusing on having your customers become loyal fans of your brand, so they want to pay, beg you to pay)
It wasn't a discussion really, as I sat by as 3rd party (I do servers for whatever reason you might have and I make the same amount whether those servers are payed for by copyright owners, commercial pirates, amateurs or cat pictures) and was amazed to see him preach to the converted... well... up until the point you start asking for numbers. There are a LOT of porn producers, a shit load more content and a near infinite amount of downloaders. The internet may consist of cat pictures but torrents are for porn. Yet he has done at the time only a few thousand cases. That is NOTHING! It ain't even a drop in the bucket. The RIAA was doing fastly more cases.
While the audience was agreeing with him, you could see most didn't have a clue as to the real issues and the developments with regards to copyrights and enforcing them. The porn industry likes to pride itself on being cutting edge, VHS, online payments but really that is just a tiny segment, the rest are slobs who figured out sex sells. The moment the forum was over, I talked to some porn producers and asked what they though considering judgements like the then current claim of movie copyright infringenment costing several times more then the entire world economy.
Or the cases of sueing children, veterans and other people who might get the sympathy of the public. If the public chooses the side of dirty pirates against wholesome music executives... what chance does a porn peddler stand? Most porn producers are well aware that they are skirting the edge of public acceptance, they know they can only accept credit cards if they meet the decency requirements of the processing company, can only host with parties that accept adult content. They didn't like it one bit when I linked them on my tablet to some John Steele publicity stunts, no porn company wants attention from Fox News about harrasing some grandma who left her wifi open as it was installed by her grandson who died in Afghanistan. No thank you sirree, that is NOT worth gathering a few bucks, especially when all the lawyer fees have been payed you end up owing the lawyer for bad publicity.
That I wasn't the only doom spreader for dealing with John Steele is proven by the fact only a handful of companies deal with him. When you talk to him, he does his name justice google his picture, say his name and what you think he will be like is how he is. A boisterous overconfidant man who speaks so loud that he doesn't hear anyone asking him to explain some details about cases thrown out of court and how does not QUITE work on a contingency basis (he gets more if he wins but he ALWAYS get payed), how a settlement doesn't include paying lawyer fees. If you lose in court and are ordered to pay 5000 in damages you often ALSO have to pay lawyer fees. If you settle for 1000, that is it, the lawyer still wants paying. John Steele certainly does.
It is no secret that copyright infringement happens, on a MASSIVE scale. And porn has an issue the mainstream media does not have. I once came up with a nice way to put but we are all males here so here it is "You can cum on a trailer".
Some Hollywood movies have trailers that tell you the entire movie and a few where the trailer is better then the movie but on the whole, the trailer make you hungry for more.
In porn, the trailer is enough for most and just makes you sleepy. Watching a full movie on youtube is a hassle (well it was until they removed the ten minute limit) but for porn tubes... how many minutes do you need? Oh wait, I forgot my audience. Seconds?
Sharing the entire movie on a torrent is far less of an issue to the industry then all those porn tube sites that contain
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Prenda Law (aka Steele Hansmeier aka Anti-Piracy Law Group) is not really a law firm as such, but a sophisticated scam. For those of you who came in late, here's how it works: Prenda's stooges, who are ostensibly copyright holders, upload a porno clip to BitTorrent. They they record the IP addresses of everyone who downloads the torrent. Then Prenda Law sues all the IP address holders as John Does in a federal copyright lawsuit, for example Hard Drive Productions vs. John Does 1 through 1495. They aren't really interested in suing, just in issuing subpoenas to ISPs to get the names and addresses of the downloaders. They then send demand letters requesting thousands of dollars. People pay up, because the amount is just below what it would cost to hire a lawyer, because the porno downloaders are afraid their wives will find out, and because they are afraid of being on the receiving end of massive Jammie Thomas -type civil judgments.
For the last couple of years, Prenda and its associates have made millions of dollars this way, as federal judges from coast to coast have (up to now) rubberstamped their extortionate business model.
Recently, however, the greed, stupidity, incompetence and unethical conduct of Prenda has finally caught up to it.
Read all about it at sites such as fightcopyrighttrolls.com, dietrollsdie.com, etc.
You've gotta read the transcript from November 27, 2012 in Sunlust Pictures v. Nguyen. It is the funniest federal court hearing transcript, ever, as federal judge Mary S. Scriven puts one participant after another under oath... it is as funny as an Abbott and Costello routine....
. Who gives billions in aid to the world? Capitalist countries. Meanwhile, the communist and extreme socialist governments are comprised of the most selfish bastards on the planet.
While I generally agree with your your comment, I disagree with the following part:
Animals show altruistic behaviours. Even more interesting, I've read about examples like the vampire bats that share blood who will remember and punish other bats that don't share in return.
True. And yet if you promote short term consumption, and deny compound interest from investments, you'll end up with a world of poor people. Time to balance the discussion and see where it's working, balance abuses, without one-word-sentence conclusions. The only people still living in caves, ironically, are in communist countries.
Gently reply
"Mr. Steele? He doesn't exist. I invented him. Follow. I always loved excitement, so I studied, and apprenticed, and put my name on an office. But absolutely nobody knocked down my door. A female private investigator seemed so... feminine. So I invented a superior. A decidedly MASCULINE superior. Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm... until the day HE walked in, with his blue eyes and mysterious past. And before I knew it, he assumed Mr. Steele's identity. Now I do the work, and he takes the bows. It's a dangerous way to live, but as long as people buy it, I can get the job done. We never mix business with pleasure. Well, almost never. I don't even know his real name! "
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Can guarantee his punishment is gonna cost less than what me made.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
" I suspect Prenda Law will fight tooth-and-nail to avoid answering any questions, which in my opinion, further suggests that their “ethically challenged” attorneys are guilty as alleged."
So the writer suspects Prenda Law might do something in the future, and therefore immediately assumes they are already guilty.
While the alleged facts would be damning if proven true, and I hold no love for copyright (or patent) trolls, let's not rush to judgement until the facts are on the table.
I would have prefered that Slashdot use some discretion before allowing this post.
For a lawyer, John Steele both as a speaker in public and in normal conversation is more the bully coach/preacher type, he talks so loudly and without pause nobody gets a chance to say anything in return. He tries to win customers in the porn industry and knows that there are a LOT of geeks in the porn industry advising the porn producers who know his record, just see above. He has been losing cases for years but he doesn't tell you that and the porn peddlers don't know to ask. It is only when they come home to their IT guy they get the links to all his failed cases.
As I pointed out above, most in the industry leave him well alone. His clients are a handful in an industry where there are thousands in the US alone. His number of cases are tiny while finding large scale commercial copyright infringement for porn is trivial.
If he was a GOOD lawyer, he wouldn't bother with tiny settlements for a handful of clients, he would have gone after the porn tube business before the porn industry itself sorted it out (most are now hosting ad content) and gone after the hundreds of millions in that form of copyright infringement.
He hasn't. John Steele sells lawsuits at the bottom end to those who don't have someone to advice them not to deal with rats.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now, now. Dead alleged criminals can't pay Victim Restitution from their future burger-flip earnings.
I dislike the whole mechanism of the stock market as much as the next guy; but theoretically, at least, it DOES serve a social purpose: The shareholder invests in a company, giving it the capital to expand its business. This is presumably good for the economy, and society as a whole.
double-sided tape, packing tape, masking tape,