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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 22 2013 @ 05:36 PM EDT |
I'm ecstatic that Judge Wright has lowered the gavel so to
speak on Prenda Law, essentially putting them out of
business - at least for now and in this form.
However the real problem is that the business model Prenda
Law was using is, for the most part, legal. As I understand
it, they got in trouble for misrepresenting themselves. They
failed to disclose (and actively obfuscated) to the court
that there were actually both counsel and plaintiff and some
additional nasty business about using some poor guys
identity as a corporate officer.
Their business model involves:
1. Obtain copyright to pornographic movies that are
essentially worthless because
they are widely downloaded and shared.
2. Do nothing to prevent the movies from being downloaded.
3. Identify IP addresses of down loaders, knowing that in
most cases the IP address
can not be reliably traced to an individual downloader.
4. Send threatening extortion letters to the person or
business to whom that IP
address was issued. Letters threaten law suit and
embarrassing public exposure. Damages sought are at the
threashold where it is probably cheaper to pay than to
defend yourself in court.
5. If extortion target chooses not to comply, and knowing
that the courts will
require more than just an IP Address to identify the alleged
downloader, use the
pretrial discovery process as a fishing expedition to
further identify the end user
who allegedly downloaded the content. In some cases, the
defendant is just a
business or residential complex with an open WiFi hot spot.
6. Judgements won and extortion fees paid all go to Prenda
Law in the form of legal
fees. The shell holding corporations have no earnings.
The only part of the whole strategy that necessitated the
misrepresentation is #5.
IANAL, but as I understand it, court are not likely to give
much leeway in discovery
if the plaintiff is their own legal counsel.
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