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Porn Troll Panics, Dismisses Pending Lawsuits
JayRott writes "According to Ars, 'The embattled copyright trolling firm Prenda Law is seeking to contain the fallout from a looming identity theft scandal by voluntarily dismissing lawsuits filed by the shell company AF Holdings. A Minnesota man named Alan Cooper has charged that Prenda fraudulantly used his name as the CEO of AF Holdings, allegations that have attracted the attention of a California judge. Ken at the legal blog Popehat broke the news that Prenda attorney Paul Duffy has sought dismissal of at least four pending infringement cases involving the Prenda-linked shell company AF Holdings. All four dismissals occurred in the Northern District of Illinois.' I don't see how Prenda thinks this is going to make one lick of difference to an already angry Judge."
Patent trolling is of interest to many a nerd. Don't like it, don't read the article. I rarely read a bitcoin article. If you really, really hate it you can go over to Reddit.
Silence is a state of mime.
Given what's happened so far, this will probably make the judge MORE angry than he already is, and he will still expect the lawyers in question to show up on April 2nd and explain their actions so far even if they don't have a single other case pending in the country. Also, if they're madly filling requests for dismissals in other jurisdictions, it's going to be awfully difficult to offer the usual suite of lame excuses for not complying with the order (i.e. if you had the time to file these other requests for dismissal, then you certainly had the time to respond to a judge's order).
I think the only options left for these guys are either to rat each other out first and hope for leniency (standard prisoner's dilemma), flee the country, or pick a new career. And some of those aren't mutually-exclusive options.
If you think porn has nothing to do with nerds, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
I've been watching this story unfold at Techdirt.com. It's the most farcical slow motion train wreck I've seen in quite a while. It speaks volumes about USA's litigious culture, the Imaginary Property regime, and the miniscule amount of value added to an individual through managing to graduate from law school and be accepted to practice law. To think that these guys spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for their educations, and this is what the idiots end up doing with them. Astonishing.
Kudos to the judge. I've seen a few posts from guys wishing they could have a womb implanted so they could have his children.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Lawyers are a protected privileged class in the USA. Everyone from the President to members of Congress to Supreme Court justices are all lawyers. If you were to shoot all lawyers, you would no longer have a United States.
(what you'd have is a nice place to live)
Lawyers are a protected privileged class in the USA. Everyone from the President to members of Congress to Supreme Court justices are all lawyers.
Well, kinda. They're not practicing lawyers. They've evolved into LAWYER's next form, POLITICIAN. As lawyers they learn how the law can be twisted and screwed into new shapes to benefit the wealthy, and to win at any cost and on any viable basis. As politicians, they are wealthy, and in a position to make laws.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"