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

[XaXXon]

You know this is a common misinterpretation, right?

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/17/nyregion/l-kill-the-lawyers-a-line-misinterpreted-599990.html

Basically the rebellion knows that lawyers maintain order in society and in order to throw it into chaos they need to get rid of the lawyers.

Also,

"The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers." Contrary to popular belief, the proposal was not designed to restore sanity to commercial life. Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution -- thus underscoring the important role that lawyers can play in society.

http://www.spectacle.org/797/finkel.html

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.

Judge has a great sense of humour/justice

[Aaron B Lingwood]

From TFA:

"... they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense."

Judge Wright then awards costs plus punitive damages totalling $81,319.72 to the victims, saying that the sum

"is calculated to be just below the cost of an effective appeal"

Re:Judge has a great sense of humour/justice

[Angeret]

Yeah, really! An honest judge with a liking for sci-fi and a sense of humour. America is done for, done for I tell you!!!

Re:Judge has a great sense of humour/justice

[v.dog]

Popehat's write up on this is even better:

Referring to the U.S. Attorney's Office and the IRS's CID is like siccing both the Klingons and the Romulans on Prenda, except that the Romulans have a somewhat better grasp of due process than IRS CID.

Prenda Law certainly won't live long and prosper

"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.

Re:The fact that..

[mabhatter654]

It took this ONE judge basically collecting 5-10 other Fedral cases after putting out an order to consolidate Prenda's cases to fewer jurisdictions. It was only after getting a half dozen other circuit courts to agree, he could even read that they had been using different names and such in different courts. He broke down a lot of the corporate veil judges normally don't get to do.

It took special permissions from other courts and over a year of sorting paperwork to get ONE SET of troll lawyers. Effectively all this does its chase the trolls out of HIS court, and into courts where the judges won't catch them.

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.