Judge Refers Prenda Copyright Trolls To Criminal Investigators

SternisheFan tipped us to news that the infamous copyright trolls Prenda Law are in a bit of trouble with the law. Today, U.S. District Court judge Otis Wright issued sanctions against Prenda. He recommends that the lawyers involved be disbarred and fined, granted court and lawyer fees to the defendants (doubled for punishment), and has referred them for criminal prosecution. Among the findings of fact are that they set up dozens of shell companies to disguise the true owners, actually committed identity theft, dodged taxes on settlement money, lied to the court, and abused the court by setting settlements on flimsy charges just below the cost of a defense.

Comments

Good

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Everywhere needs more judges like this. All too often people involved with the legal process or shielded by large beaurocracies feel they can act with impunity and are somehow above the law. Criminal prosecutions are just the thing to remedy that attitude.

Re:Good

[bloodhawk]

like most professions it is the few bad eggs you hear about that really do tarnish everyone. There really are quite a lot of good judges that really are only interested in doing what's right (within the confines of the law) and though it feels untasteful for me to say even most lawyers are for the most part honest.

Re:Good

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, (at least in cases analogous to this one), it isn't so much about bad judges; but about not enough good ones.

Prenda's undoing came about, in no small part, because a Serious Judge(Federal District Judge, lifetime-appointment-by-the-president-confirmed-by-the-senate, etc.) became very, very, very displeased with how they were messing with the court and refused to either rubber-stamp them or let them drop the case and quietly run away to a safer venue.

Wright appears to have put nontrivial time and effort into familiarizing himself with the case, asking the requisite hard questions, calling parties in for serious beatdowns, and so on. Given the (relatively) small scale of Prenda's scamming business, compared to some of the other shenanigans that end up in federal court, they probably got substantially more attention than they could have expected going in, or that most of their slimy little peers get(though hopefully this case will serve to raise the profile of such piracy-extortion operations).

The trouble isn't that other judges are cackling evilly and conspiring with Prenda types, it's just that Prenda's "push hard against the weak, quietly drop the case and walk away if resistance is met" strategy merely requires a judge with a full docket to not follow up on them too closely. In this case, they were screwed because the judge didn't accept their surrender, and chose to take a significant personal role in chasing them down.

Re:Good

[Mikkeles]

If it were just a few bad eggs, you might be right. However, it always seems that when they are discovered, (most of) the rest of the group closes ranks and attempts to shield them from facing the music. This applies to lawyers, doctors, police, military, the church, government bureaucracy, corporations, etc.

In my view, this makes (most of) them all equally culpable.

Re:Good

[Rich0]

I think this points to there needing to be a LOT more money spent on the courts.

Courts should have the time/money to give real attention to each case, and lawyers should almost be unnecessary. If your lawyer doesn't bring up a defense it should be the duty of the court to do so for you, and so on. Courts should also have a duty to obtain all the evidence they can, even if not brought forward by either party. By all means dump those costs on the loser in the end. Trails should be about finding the truth and dispensing justice and equity. They should not be a debate club where you reward the person with the best argument and data presentation.

Sure, it would cost more money to run the courts, but it can't be more expensive than bombers. And every trial would get down to root cause. If the root cause is that some sociopath has a job in some industry then the solution is to bar them from working in that industry, or putting them in jail, even if the only matter brought to the court was a lawsuit over some file sharing or whatever. When you go to the court, you'll get justice, and not necessarily the justice you're looking for. That will make people think twice about wasting the court's time.

Re:Good

[interkin3tic]

I agree, it applies to pretty much everyone who identifies with a profession. They see the rules they have in place, or at least a process to regulate whatever problem arose, and see no need for other oversight, as that's just (in their opinion) going to make life difficult for them, the innocent ones, and do nothing to stop the ones who are guilty who already avoided the process.

For example, me, scientist. When I hear about scientific misconduct, I grit my teeth when I see suggestions for changes in oversight. We have peer review which is experts reviewing their peers. It's not 100% effective. Obviously. Obviously no system is going to be 100% effective at catching greed or misconduct. From my perspective, peer review is the best way to catch misconduct though. And we already do it. I can't think of a better system, so any change is probably going to be for the worse, both for science and for me. Witness Lamar Smith and the terrible cabal of assholes (I'm guessing the Koch bros) who are attempting to control scientific funding to attempt to silence studies they don't like. If there were a big scientific misconduct case in the news right now, that would be the best shot at such people getting control of science: they'd argue changes needed to be made to scientific oversight, that the system wasn't working and they could do it better.

Even if there weren't a conspiracy to neuter science, changes imposed on us from non-scientists are unlikely to be any good from my perspective (and probably from any perspective.) I'm biased of course, but I don't think I'm wrong. Other professions obviously feel the same way, and they might not be wrong either. The financial sector, for example, we have good reason to distrust everything they say, but they might be accurate that ending too-big-to-fail in the ways that are being discussed could cause major economic problems. I certainly know less about the economy than most of them do.

Bottom line, it's not simple to make positive changes to fix professional misconduct. There are good reasons to not trust insiders: they are biased in favor of nothing changing. And there are good reasons to not trust outsiders: they are generally less informed than insiders and might mess things up.

"Wriiiiiiighhht!"

[Namarrgon]

For even more geek appeal, Judge Wright also peppered his order with Star Trek references, beginning with this quote:

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
  —Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

and hammering it home towards the end:

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 strongly suspect he deliberately designed this order to get maximum publicity with the tech media.

Get him on some other cases

[Big Hairy Ian]

Do you think we can get him involved with some other cases like Apple/Google/Samsung etal it would be nice if someone stopped them from behaving like juvenile pricks.

The sane judge

[onyxruby]

The system needs a judge like this who can plainly see what the public at large has been complaining about for well over a decade. Astronomical awards are used as nothing more than a hammer to force people to pay thousands of dollars per infraction and avoid going to court. The entire thing is a sham on the public and the court system and never intended to represent anything resembling justice.

Unfortunately the Supreme Court refused to take up the absurd statutory award that was put forward in the Jamie Thomas case despite overturning the much (smaller proportionally speaking) Exxon Valdez award. We're going to need a series of court cases like this one to bring some sanity back in the system.

Re:Fundraiser for statue/artwork

[SplatMan_DK]

A statue for doing one's job? Where's the fundraiser for my statue?

Not quite. He went well beyond his duties (in the best possible sense). He could have simply shut the case down at an earlier point, collected his regular pay, and proceed to the next case. Instead this judge decided to use extra time and resources to do "the right thing" - as opposed to just his job.

:-)