A Prenda Copyright Troll Finally Pleaded Guilty (popehat.com)

"One of the attorneys behind the Prenda Law 'copyright trolling' scheme has pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and money laundering," reports Ars Technica. Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed shares this article from the law blog Popehat: The factual basis section -- which Steele admits is true (as to facts he knows) or that the government can prove (as to facts he doesn't know directly) -- is a startling 16 pages long [PDF] and lavishly documents the entire scheme, complete with many details that accusers have been pointing out for years. In short, Steele admits that he and Hansmeier used sham entities to obtain the copyright to (or in some cases film) porn, uploaded it to file-sharing websites, and then filed "false and deceptive" copyright suits against downloaders designed to conceal their role in distributing the films and their stake in the outcomes. They lied to courts themselves, sent others to court to lie, lied at depositions, lied in sworn affidavits, created sham entities as plaintiffs, created fraudulent hacking allegations to try to obtain discovery into the identity of downloaders, used "ruse defendants" (strawmen, in effect) to get courts to approve broad discovery into IP addresses.
Facing a maximum of 40 years in prison, Steele could get his sentence reduced if he testifies against Hansmeier, according to the article, and "Steele appears to have pinned all of his hopes on that option... I've seen a lot of plea agreements in a lot of federal cases, and I don't recall another one that so clearly conveyed the defendant utterly surrendering and accepting everything the government demanded, all in hopes of talking his sentence down later."

Comments

Common

[Mikkeles]

So, pretty much like most DMCA filers and copyright trolls.

Re: Common

[rmdingler]

I don't mind bashing the USian system, and certainly, you're more likely to achieve a positive outcome in court if your skin is fair; but let's be honest about our appraisal of where the advantage truly lies... regardless of your propensity to develop melanoma, wealth is now the key factor.

If everything else is equal, are you statistically less likely to achieve career success if you are an American of non-European descent? Of course. Yet, the margins are much thinner here than nearly everywhere else, and though a childhood vision of fair should exist in a human civilization as advanced as ours; sadly, it does not.

There's a reason the proposed immigration restrictions to the US is big news. People are still efforting to come here.

Re: Common

[PRMan]

You mean upload. Since these were all P2P users uploading small bits. Nobody in the US has been prosecuted for downloading.

Re: Common

[MightyMartian]

Sociopaths should be barred from going to law school or getting MBAs. I, might, just might trust a sociopath to pick up trash or clean washrooms, but that's about as much of a career they should be permitted.

Re: Common

[bmo]

This is what gets me

Unless your ratio is >=1, the amount of "true share" of a movie, song, or software is ZERO if you want to account for "damages" - because you have not given out a "functional" copy. You have given out garbage.

Whether someone else is able to get the other pieces and stick it to your garbage to make it functional is irrelevant. You, personally, have not passed along a functional copy.

This "making available" bullshit is just that - bullshit. If I open my entire media directory to the internet, and nobody downloads from me, I still haven't damaged the precious profits of the publishers.

The only math worse than Republican, DEA, and Cop math is Hollywood math.

--
BMO

Re: Common

[rtb61]

The problem is they were doing the initial uploading to temp others to share ie download and upload. As the legal copyright holders or the representative it means their upload means that content went public domain and they could make no legal claim anymore, they did give permission to share that content by making it available to share.

The real legal problem, their really, really dangerous action they took, was an attack upon the legal systems, to purposefully defraud and abuse it. Every time they went into court, they were attacking the court, attacking the integrity of the judge and the judges court, as a purposeful extended scam.

So fucked, just so fucked. I could not imagine them getting anything less than maximum sentences on repeated counts, again and again and again and etc etc etc. The next judge is not just going to throw the book at them but every single possible volume. Oh wow, turning courts into scams, this is a real attack on the justice system, a real threat to justice, for what they gained mind a bogglingly stupid idea.

Re: Common

[Type44Q]

The 'everyone else was doing it' excuse is only for 5 year olds.

So is the notion that the gov't should enforce "monopolies on ideas."

Re: Common

[The Relentless]

Could the powers that be not claim that you are therefore involved in some kind of illegal conspiracy?

We're going to need to review the evidence here

[Anonymous Coward]

many, many times

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[AmiMoJo]

"A Prenda Copyright Troll Finally Plead Guilty"

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[fibonacci8]

http://www.americanbar.org/con... If you're going to be pedantic, at least correct it to the more commonly used "pled".

Re:Schadenfreude

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I'm happy that this guy finally got nailed, there's still the bigger issue: The only reason that Prenda was able to make millions in the first place is because of a completely fucked legal system where it is impossible for a person to defend themself at a reasonable cost. In fact, this fuckery was the basis for their whole scam. "Pay me [some amount of money] or else I'll sue you, and even if you win, it will cost you more to defend yourself than it will to just settle."

And no, "loser pays" is not the answer because there are too many cases where the person who is right still loses.

snitching snitches snitch

[weedjams]

Enjoy your reduced sentence Mr. Steele.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[PRMan]

Muphry's Law at work.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[Aighearach]

Why is it usually the pedants that are aliterate these days?

Good. Hansmeier is a serious douche.

[Whatsisname]

In addition to the copyright stuff, Hansmeier also had a penchant for suing businesses for ADA violations.

http://kstp.com/news/ada-lawsu...

Recommendation

[StormReaver]

I recommend that his sentence be reduced from 40 years to 39 years in exchange for his complete cooperation.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[sconeu]

Pedants are alliterative because Pendants Point-out Problems.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[sconeu]

Crap. Pedants, not Pendants.

Stupid auto-correct.

Has anyone seen the movies?

[Required Snark]

If you have been watching this case, you know that Steele and Hansmeier made four pornos available on the Pirate Bay. With this guilty plea, it is now 100% legal to down load the movies because the court has declared that any copyright claim on the content is unenforcable.

So has anyone seen these things? Considering that the lawyers/crooks scammed over $6 million using them, what did the victims end up with that caused so much trouble? This stuff is out there somewhere and it is probably easy to find.

Maybe they should have just become porn producers in the first place. They might have been able to make similar money for the same amount of effort and not ended up having to go to jail. They did produced two of the movies themselves.

This represents a case of epic stupidity. How dumb do you have to be to make some smut and then end up doing time in a federal pen because of it?

Re:Prison Time

[Jiro]

Think about how many lives he ruined.

It's easy to gloss it over because he just took a little piece here and there. Just a few thousand dollars. But he made up for it in volume.

Let's estimate how much he ruined people's lives. The agreement describes 6 million dollars of fraudulent copyright charges. Just as an estimate, assume that the average person makes $20 after taxes (you have to pay the charges with after-tax money)--maybe I'm off by 50% but it'll at least be good as an estimate. That means that 300000 hours of people's lives went to pay for this. Assume that people can work 16 hours a day and you have over 50 years of human beings doing nothing but work 112 hour weeks, eating, and sleeping to pay fraudulent charges.

He's just doing it piecemeal, instead of pushing all the 300000 hours on a single person. But it still adds up. Of course I'm probably off by some factor here (the victims still need to pay for food and housing while working the 50 years, for instance--how do you account for that?) but it seems like 39 years in prison is reasonably close to the damage he caused.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[AmiMoJo]

In English it's plead, in American it can be spelt without the 'a'.

Re:Prison Time

[Anonymous Coward]

On one hand, I see your point. On the other hand, these guy's business model was to threaten to ruin other people's lives in order to get them to pay up, they wasted an enormous amount of court time in order to do it, and they profusely lied about it even though they were lawyers sworn to obey the law and to honestly represent their case. That should total up to a pretty harsh sentence. I'm no judge, but 40 years does seem like a bit much. I don't see anything wrong with 5 or 10.

Re:What would be a more fitting sentence?

[Aighearach]

The scourge of aliteracy is completely separate from the (also disturbing) scourge of alliteracy.

Or as a great leader once said, "Brain brain and brain, what is brain?!"

Re:Prison Time

[Tenebrousedge]

Prison is supposed to be correctional, not retributional.