Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Trolls Order Wordpress To Disclose Critics' IP Addresses
TrueSatan writes "Notorious copyright troll Prenda Law has sent a subpoena to WordPress attempting to force the disclosure of all IP addresses related to two WordPress-hosted sites that specialize in monitoring and encouraging action against copyright trolling. The sites in question are fightcopyrighttrolls.com and dietrolldie.com. These sites state their aims as: 'To keep the public and fellow victims informed and to ensure that through activism, trolls make as little money as possible.' These are goals which almost anyone (bar a copyright troll, or lawyer acting for one) might well applaud. Prenda Law's demand is not for a subset of addresses that might have posted in a manner that could be construed as legally defamatory but for all IP addresses that have accessed these sites, irrespective of the use made of them. Prenda Law has filed three defamation lawsuits already against the individuals who run Fightcopyrighttrolls, and one has been dismissed (PDF). Dietrolldie released the following warning: 'As there is a possibility that a release could occur, the public IP address (date/time stamp) could fall into the hands of Prenda. I would expect that they would then try to cross-reference the IP address with their list of alleged BitTorrent infringement IP addresses ... If you have ever gone to this site or Fightcopyrighttrolls.com since 1 January 2011, you may want to contact WordPress. Tell them you want them to refuse this overly broad request and at least wait until the issue of the case being moved to the Federal court is answered before releasing any information.'"
...even if you've never visited those sites, contact WordPress and tell them you want them to refuse.
They're mutant vampire aliens sent from Xenu to do the Devil's bidding.
We can do this forever Brett!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_to_quash
If you refuse the subpoena, the judge may decide that Wordpress is committing contempt of court. A better alternative would be to have their own lawyer request a motion to quash the subpoena.
Of course, the best thing Wordpress can do is to listen to corporate counsel and pay attention, but I'm no lawyer, so don't listen to me. :)
... could you force them to sue themselves?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Does that include the IP addresses of the 20 million visitors they will get over the next 48 hours for appearing on the Slashdot FP?
And here's my IPv6 address: take:your:copyright:and:go:fuck:your:self
I wonder what they think they gain with that sort of stance. Gather up all IP addresses (which are NOT personal identification) and sue everyone remotely associatable? Including, say, google for indexing those sites? What?
If wordpress somehow cannot refuse (or just doesn't have any balls; this is a possibility) the least they can do is heap all the IP addresses together without specification. It seems that mounting a legal attack on such a broad range of hosts is sure to flounder.
And you'd think even copyright trolls ought to be smarter than that. But since they're entirely made up of sueball, perhaps not.
So it raises the question, and this is a useful thought experiment: What're they hoping to gain? Given such a heap of unspecified IP addresses, what would you be able to figure out from that? What if they are subspecified, what'd you be able to figure out then?
This won't help people who have already given out their identifying information, but you can now pay for Wordpress with bitcoins. Bitcoin isn't anonymous by default, but if you cover your tracks and use a coin mixing service it can be.
Hey, where did all of those people who say anonymity on the Internet isn't necessary run off to?
Enjoy some afternoon reading, and piss in Prenda's sought-after goods:
FightCopyrightTrolls.com
Dietrolldie.com
OK I'm an old timer who was on the internet when everyone used their real names and an employer email address. Shoot what did you want to say?
I didn't find a good email addy with a quick scan, but Wordpress is at least on twitter, @WordPressDotCom. Let them know they give up their users privacy at their own peril. Plenty of alternative sites to host a blog.
...Prenda just wants proof that lots and lots of unique visitors have viewed the allegedly-defaming content as justification for seeking a giant-size judgement.
Popehat (a great legal blog - I have no affiliation, just a fan) has a great and hilarious summary of the case including why Prenda's lawyers could be facing jail on March 11:
http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/05/prenda-law-researches-streisand-effect-says-i-gotta-get-me-some-of-that/
and
http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-los-angeles/
It'd be nice if the sheep had a leader that was willing to comment on wordpress' site, something like, "I'll give $10 for every IP address on that list, to the IP owner's client that used the IP at log time, if the heads of all of the patent trolls are displayed in public on the streets of $TOWN.
It'd be nice only because it's not going to happen like that, at all. In fact, this is what's going to happen:
This fake idea of what should be is going to be designed into the fabric of our thinking, and our children's thinking until it is no longer "weird". It's happened so many time before with so many things, why not this too? Eventually things like taxing gas to pay for fixing roads will become such an expected part of that society, that even if everyone starts riding bikes, and no longer damaging the roads as much (yeah, big trucks still need the road) it will not be expected for that system to explain why, but they'll find a way to use it as a reason to tax the folks that aren't driving cars anymore. Fuck man, it seems to me that if we continue this line of thinking, we will end up *having* to farm on our own, and all these taxes and shit will still be in place.
At what point do we begin DEMANDING that our politicians (our selected leaders? ...really?) put laws into place to avoid such apparent contradictions of nature itself, or all fully fucking admit that our system requires large amounts of money move this way, and succumb to it in a more direct, easier way, like another fucking tax, or like, maybe every 30 weeks, each of us spend a weekend at our local "richest guy's" house, doing chores for him directly, so he can sit out in his fucking yard, planning our children's future?
The sites that you need to go to in order to help form a large mass that cannot be denied is included in this story. Go to those sites, despite the attempt to sway you from doing so, and look into ways that you can be an active part of a solution. Don't just post your opinion on sites like this and feel good about what you said, fucking. do. something. about. what. sucks!
my .02
Seems like it's a good time to think about plugging the cable modem into a persistent Tor connection or something. If the courts can't protect 1st amendment rights, Tor would at least make it harder for the Trolls to drag you through legal mire over a basic right that's supposed to be protected under the constitution.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Wordpress replied that "the blog owner has already informed us that the subpoena will be challenged. Per our policies, we will not turn over any information (including on commentors) until that challenge has been decided by the courts."
davecb@spamcop.net
That's not a valid IPv6 address. Remember, an address does have to be hex.
But here are my IP addresses - 192.168.10.106 for IPv4, or fe80::1c98:3703:3f57:f595%16 for IPv6. Have fun!
Once a teacher I had asked a student each class to write down the names of the onces who disturbed class. Students on the list had to stay after class.
When I was the one who had to write the names down, I could not get myself to write down just some names. So I wrote down all the names.
I then challenged here that she could either let everybody stay, let nobody stay or let just me stay. In any case the list would be useless from now on. (The next step would be that we would write down random names.)
So if they want all the IP addresses, why not write a small script that puts out all those addresses and mail them all at once from all over the planet.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm surprised they can't get these cases moved to SLAPP status... The same corp filing 3 cases in 3 courts over "defamation" sounds like they are using the courts to shut up people they don't want to hear from. These sites are naming names and events, so they might get them on technicalities... But then FOX news got a pass that FABRICATIONS were still not defamation... So the only possible purpose of the suits is to collect information to harass the readers later.
Part of the problem revolves around court culture. Lawyers are used to going to court and calling defendants, plaintiffs all kinds of names, making grand requests for judgements that are hundreds of thousands of dollars... Then packing their briefcases and going out to lunch with the other lawyers.
Judges don't like reporters going after the LAWYERS in a case because "it's just business". Except in these cases, the lawyers ARE the ones causing the problems .. Courts don't really censor what lawyers say in court... But then what they say HAS to be taken as intent to keep these threats...
It takes time for the judges to pick up that these guys are running the same thing in every town... The legal PROCESS can't keep up rules to prevent this stuff.
The idea of online anonymity dates back to the days when September was not the only month online. The Penet remailer was created in 1993 just to prove the point that people could send and receive email without using their real names if they wanted to do so. Many of the designs concepts in modern systems like Tor can be traced back to Penet.
Palm trees and 8
That's not a valid IPv6 address. Remember, an address does have to be hex.
But here are my IP addresses - 192.168.10.106 for IPv4, or fe80::1c98:3703:3f57:f595%16 for IPv6. Have fun!
Okay fine, I'll hex it. beef::cafe:fa65:1410:face
Directed at Prenda, not you, kind sir. :)
192.168.0.2
Now if every slashdotter clicked on those to links, and forwarded it to all their friends, or put those links in as auto loads in some of their blogs, ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... we have the Data Protection Act (the US doesn't have anything like this, unfortunately).
You could quite legitimately say that in accordance with your data protection policies, you will quite happily hand over the IP addresses and other information associated with them, no problem at all.
Just as long as you get written permission from the person who was using that IP address first.
to order a drone strike on Prenda Law and drop a couple of Hellfires. Do it when the owner and key lackeys are present.
I'm against drone strikes in general but I'll make an exception in this case.
127.0.0.1
Some of the PDF they linked at http://ia701508.us.archive.org/28/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.543744/gov.uscourts.cacd.543744.71.0.pdf has redacted parts. You can simply copy/paste the redacted part into a text file to see what was said. LOL.
"This site not compatible with your browser."
But I reloaded the page about a 100 times just to be sure it was correct.
Really, so what if a particular IP address accessed them? That proves nothing. Pointless. Non-story other than Prenda Law trying to scare people. "Oooooo we have your IP". Fuck Prenda Law. No, I'm not posting as an anonymous coward.
I am in the process of migrating from gmail.com and wordpress.com to chalisque.{net,org} and chalisque.com and related websites: that way you control what is and is not done, and have an actual binding legal contract with the hosting provider which clearly sets out who is responsible for what. Of course this costs money, but you do get what you pay for with free-as-in-beer services.
John_Chalisque
According to at least one judge, IP addresses are not sufficient to identify unique visitors.
http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt-identify-a-person-120503/
Apparantly Prenda Law has never heard of NAT.
But my address is encoded in base64.
Usually when a copyright or patent troll lawsuit appears on Slashdot, there's the very real possibility that the results will make no sense and be totally unfair, because of the courts' (EVERY courts') tendency to lose their collective minds and forget 100 years of jurisprudence when the phrase "on the internet" or "on a computer" appears in a proceeding.
This time, that won't be a problem. Why? Because it's not even going to get to that part of the lawsuit. Prenda was apparently so sloppy that they're going to get themselves into deep trouble over purely procedural questions from the court. The kind of things that judges live and breath for. These are questions of law, not questions of fact, so the judge is free to throw his considerable weight around, and it looks like Judge Otis Wright, at least, is sick and tired of lawyers who make other lawyers look bad.
More power to him. It's long past time for judges to start taking the attitude that Judge Wright has implicitly acknowledged in his orders, that the expense and difficulty of defending an improper suit in federal court constitutes a penalty in its own right.
I'll go further than the judge, and say it's long past time for judges to react this way to trolling lawyers, because trolling lawyers winning manifestly unfair judgements on technicalities undermines respect for the law with the general public. You do that enough, and eventually the entire system breaks down. If disrespect for courts and the law goes far enough, the result is civil turmoil that can be described most succinctly as anarchy. And anarchy, real anarchy across a substantial territory, is a Very Bad Thing. Judges who allow unfair and unjust suits to proceed to unfair and unjust conclusions are literally undermining civil society.
What I found was a referring site (http://www.wefightpiracy.org/ that has a link to Prenda Law).
When I followed this link I was greeted by the following message: "This Site is not Compatible With Your Browser".
That's odd ... in fact it's a first. Well ... since I'm using Mozilla they just might refuse to interact with any browser but true and trusted Microsoft IE. So I went to another machine and used IE on the website, only to be greeted with the exact same message.
Woops. A site that's incompatible with both Mozilla *and* MS Internet Explorer? Very very unlikely to be anywhere near truthful I'd say.
Might it perhaps mean that this particular website is temporarily incompatible with *any* browser? As in "Prenda wishes to keep its website from public scrutiny for the moment, and thought this message might be a good way to mask their taking it offline"? Who knows?
I really wonder who they thought would actually believe that.
This is all about Free Speech. After all the gov’t (and their corporate cronies) censor the media and ban books like "America Deceived II".
Last link of "America Deceived II" before it is completely censored:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437