
Prenda Lawyer Pleads Guilty in Pirate Bay Honeypot Case - newman8r
https://torrentfreak.com/prenda-lawyer-pleads-guilty-in-pirate-bay-honeypot-case-180818/
======
davidu
The Prenda case has been amazing to watch. For years.... If you're interested,
this is some of the most amazing jaw-dropping legal coverage of how stupid
these lawyers were... and obviously, they are also criminals.
[https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/](https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-
law/)

-David

~~~
thaumasiotes
What bothers me about the Prenda coverage is that what got them in trouble was
that they [the legal team, doing the suing] owned the copyright. As far as
I've read (basically just the Popehat posts), there was no legal issue with
what they were doing, but they hid from the court the fact that they directly
earned the penalties imposed on victims.

Everyone treats this as if it were a victory against the practice of copyright
trolling, but I don't see how. You can still do copyright trolling, as long as
you're a law firm that doesn't own the copyright on behalf of which you're
suing outright. A 100% ownership stake, undisclosed, is fraud on the court. A
60% contingency fee would be... normal?

The problem with copyright trolling isn't that copyright owners (!) might
start suing over it without having to engage third-party law firms. The
problem is the suing. If I were going to choose one group as the most entitled
to file lawsuits over copyrights, I'd choose the owners _before_ third-party
law firms. How does Prenda reflect that?

~~~
lozenge
Well, there was also their identity theft for legal paperwork, shell companies
owned by unborn children, and other false statements to courts about just
about anything.

~~~
thaumasiotes
And none of that represents a legal sanction for copyright trolling. Nobody
hates them for their identity theft, shell companies, and lies to the court.
Everyone hates them for copyright trolling! And copyright trolling is the only
thing they did that the court says is fine! But all the coverage headlines how
the court is smacking down "copyright trolls". No it isn't. What is the cause
to celebrate?

~~~
gumby
> Nobody hates them for their identity theft, shell companies, and lies to the
> court.

Actually that's not true. If you followed the case through Techdirt's coverage
you'd see plenty of people, and the courts, outraged by all sorts of their
behavior _including_ before they extended their activities to trolling with
video they owned.

Yes, that's right: _while_ they were in legal trouble for their earlier frauds
they launched this particular effort.

Basically scumbags top to bottom.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Ok, if I stipulate that, I still have my original question.

Suppose I'm against copyright trolling and wish it would go away. Does the
Prenda case help with that? How?

------
emilfihlman
This is superb. Copyright trolling is a thing that among other technological
trolling holds digital advancement back and brings some hope and justice to
the system.

------
travmatt
I remember reading the earliest posts on the Prenda case, when Steele was full
of blister and thrwatenening to sue everyone who criticized him. How times
have changed.

------
mirimir
> After extracting IP-addresses of account holders who allegedly shared the
> files Prenda created and uploaded, they asked courts for subpoenas to obtain
> the personal info of their targets from ISPs. This contact information was
> then used to coerce victims to pay settlements of thousands of dollars.

One would think that people would know to use VPN services when torrenting
pirated stuff.

~~~
Waterluvian
You're assuming that people who can torrent also understand what a VPN is and
how to properly use it. I'm pretty confident that that's _broadly false_.

~~~
mirimir
ISPs do warn people about copyright infringement.

And in some countries, VPN usage is quite common. Indeed, I've heard that
NordVPN runs TV ads in the US. So arguably they're no longer fringe.

