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Rogue Lawyers Made $6 Million Shaking Down Porn Pirates, Feds Say (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The copyright violation notice is every pirate's worst nightmare, a clear legal sign that a major copyright holder knows what you've been torrenting and is ready to make you pay for your crimes. But according to an indictment filed today in Minnesota federal court, that system has also opened the door to some very creative forms of fraud. The indictment alleges that two lawyers -- Paul R. Hansmeier and John L. Steele -- used the copyright system to extort roughly $6 million out of porn pirates over the course of three years. Prosecutors say the lawyers uploaded their own pornographic videos to torrent services -- including the embattled Pirate Bay -- then aggressively targeted users who downloaded the content, discovering names through the standard copyright violation process and then threatening pirates with damages up to $150,000 unless they agreed to a settlement. The typical cost of a settlement was $4,000, far less than the cost of challenging the order in open court. Throughout the process, Feds allege that Hansmeier and Steele concealed their role in uploading the videos, although the underlying copyright claim was often legitimate. The duo typically obtained copyright to the videos through shell companies, although in some cases they actually filmed and produced their own pornography as part of the scheme.
Could someone provide a link to the porn so I can better evaluate the case and comment appropriately?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Hansmeier is a serious douche, who also has a penchant for suing companies for supposed lack of ADA compliance.
http://www.citypages.com/news/...
It's pretty sad that attorneys are able to do this shit for so long and for so much damage before the hammer gets dropped on them.
There wouldn't have been any copyright infringement if the downloaders were only downloading, but the bittorrent protocol is specifically designed to upload while it downloads, and uploading infringes copyright.
Bittorrent is flawed. Stop using bittorrent.
although in some cases they actually filmed and produced their own pornography as part of the scheme.
Next step up from fucking your clients over... record it and use it to fuck over others too!
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
That means they made a choice to distrubute it. No one illegal obtained it, they flat out shared it. They were the source of the content.
That means each person they did this too they owe the money back to the person who torrented the file, and if the lawyers violated the copyright holders copyright, they have to pay for each time the file was uploaded to another user through their torrent.
Same penalties.
Its called entrapment.
It's not illegal if the owner of the content distributes it, quite different.
Linking to Popehat. Read about this on Popehat long before it was even clear what they were doing.
https://popehat.com/2016/12/16/the-prenda-saga-goes-criminal-steele-and-hansmeier-indicted-on-federal-charges/
Read the indictment, it spells it out pretty clearly. They fraudulently obtained search orders by lying to the courts and concealing their involvement in the scheme. Popehat has been following their adventures for years.
You could do some kinky stuff with The Force, amirite?
Yup.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
> For example, I could purposefully bend over and place a $100 bill on the floor of a busy mall and walk away and if someone came up and took it they are still, as far as the law is concerned, guilty of theft
If some of the facts were a bit different, it would be theft. Your exact example wouldn't be, for a couple of reasons.
California Penal Code 485 is the same as common law in this regard:
--
One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.
--
The finder possibly has no "knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner", so it's not theft. (Reporting it to the mall security guard is arguable, they would present evidence that with *cash*, the security guard is as likely to pocket it as protect it.) Also, the property doesn't met the definition of "lost property" since you intentionally discarded it. Lastly, there would need to be evidence that the person who picked it up planned to keep it for themselves, rather than attempt to find the owner in some way.
They do when you copy it into memory to execute a program though!
As I recall, the legal status of the copying of a program into memory to execute it is explicitly NOT a copyright violation (though improperly obtaining a copy to copy FROM is a violation).
(IANAL. Where's New York Country Lawyer?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
since I read that our schools have been graduating lawyers in record numbers. Law degrees are highly desirable to schools. They're cheap as hell for the school (a book and a bunch of teachers to read it and grade papers) and expensive as hell for the student. Pure profit really. I haven't looked but I bet if I did I'd find law departments expanding while more useful departments (medicine, education, Comp sci) contracting.
All these lawyers mean we've got a glut of the damn things. Thousands of highly educated people with no scruples (they're taught out of them so they can focus on their clients interests) and with no job prospects? Yeah, that's some bad ju-ju right there...
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Hot grits.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
When the copyright owner puts it up for torrenting, it's granting (implied) consent for others to download. It would be legally equivalent to putting your collection of star wars action figures in a blue box by the curb, and then charging anyone who took them with theft.
The fed apparently think it really is fraud. Their indictment is apparently very thorough and comes at them from several angles. The popehat link referred to in previous comments is very insightful and gives a good overview of the indictment.
The fraud was in how they represented themselves to the court when they sought the orders to force the ISPs to turn over identifying information. They did not disclose that they themselves had uploaded the material, so the court would never have even wondered about whether that uploading carries implied permission to download or not.
It's fraud because they created shell companies, claimed to be independent lawyers when in fact they were the owners and they induced people to download it and then lied about the whole thing in court (lied on the stand or in writing around a dozen times to several federal judges). Doing that gets you two charges, Fraud and Perjury and because there were two of them, you get a conspiracy charge for each. This happens for every single case they file so the number of counts can get rather astronomical after a while. Pretty soon you are looking at 100 years in federal prison.
Lying to a federal judge is bad, m'kay. Don't do it unless you want to spend lots of time in prison.
Have gnu, will travel.
Troll or just a dummy? E.G If I released an e-book and advertised you can download it from X-site for free, I can't turn around and sue you for copyright infringement.
If it's content they have the legal rights to, then it's not illegal to download the content they released. "Torrenting" on it's own isn't illegal and is used by many programs legit, like game updaters etc.
If the lawyers did not have the rights to it, then they were encouraging other people to commit illegal actions, in which case themselves did so, and like they charge a pirate in general saying 'The song you downloaded, you uploaded to 1300 people, you have to pay $ x 13000 now" then I say since they uploaded it, they can pay for each person that it was uploaded to themselves. Should be a nice fine for them.
It's not entrapment. It's fraud.
PIRATING IS NOT THEFT
On first glance my presumption was that the threats to sue for copyright infringement were barely disguised shakedowns to avoid public embarrassment. Actually going to court for a questionable infringement claim would be expensive and time-consuming for the bandits.
They would be exposed as well but they don't seem to have any shame.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
that's theft, right? I'm just saying that once this hits the courtroom it's not so cut and dry anymore.
Ultimately it'll come down to who the jury likes best. I'm guessing the law firm will lose, but if they picked their targets carefully enough (say a stereotypical basement dwelling neck beard) it could play out differently. Remember that woman who lost to the RIAA because they claimed (with nothing but an IP address) that she downloaded MP3s? She's still paying on the multi million dollar settlement (single mom and all) and will till her dying day. When interviewed the Jurors didn't talk about law, they talked about how she gave them a bad feeling and how they didn't like or sympathize with her.
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Star Wars and bait porn should never be in the same sentence
Namaste
Actually, posting the material up to a file for sharing implicitly indicates that you are granting permission for it to be shared AND that you are claiming that it is within your legal power to do so.