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

[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.

We're going to need to review the evidence here

[Anonymous Coward]

many, many times

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.

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...

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?