
Prenda Law porn-troll saga ends with prison for founder - _JamesA_
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/prenda-law-porn-troll-saga-ends-with-prison-for-founder/
======
daenz
Summary (found at the end of the article) of what the founders were doing:

>Prenda made its money by suing people who allegedly downloaded pornographic
films online. Its targets frequently agreed to settlements worth a few
thousand dollars rather than facing a courtroom process. These copyright
trolling tactics netted the company more than $6 million between 2010 and
2013.

>But eventual criminal investigations revealed that rather than representing
real companies who had a real product that was being traded in violation of
copyright law, Prenda was filming its own porn, inventing fraudulent shell
companies, and uploading those supposed companies' content to torrent sites
itself. Then the settlement money went directly into the Prenda attorneys'
pockets.

~~~
ticmasta
The defendant's name is "John Steele" \- I assume they were able to crack this
case when they realized the copyright lawyer was also the star of all the
allegedly infringed upon porno films

~~~
devoply
While doing this thing he must have thought of himself as a real stud, making
money off copyright trolling and then shovelling that money into making more
porn so he could get his rocks off.

------
dmckeon
The judge's order makes the sequence of the case and the methods of the
defendants much clearer:

[https://www.scribd.com/document/139843902/Prenda-
Sanctions-O...](https://www.scribd.com/document/139843902/Prenda-Sanctions-
Order)

edit: and has numerous easter eggs for Star Trek fans.

~~~
btown
Wow, this is one of the most hilarious court opinions I've ever seen.

"As for Van Den Hemel, Lutz, and Hansemeier, they are not without fault even
though they acted under orders from the Principals. They were not merely
assimilated; they knowingly participated in this scheme, reaping the benefits
when the going was good."

"Third, though Plaintiffs boldly probe the outskirts of law, the only
enterprise they resemble is RICO. The federal agency eleven decks up is
familiar with their prime directive and will gladly refit them for their next
voyage. The Court will refer this matter to the United States Attorney for the
Central District of California."

:)

------
injb
The story is really well documented on Popehat for anyone who's interested:
[https://www.popehat.com/?s=prenda](https://www.popehat.com/?s=prenda)

------
Doubl
This guy got fewer years than the other guy because he helped get the other
guy convicted. It just seems wrong, in principle, that the law rewards that
sort of behaviour. That's apart from the problems with trusting such self
serving testimony.

~~~
pessimizer
> It just seems wrong, in principle, that the law rewards that sort of
> behaviour

I'm not sure what sort of behavior you're referring to here. Snitching?
Authorities should always reward snitching (unless it's snitching on the
authorities.)

edit: probably the concept of a don being rewarded for snitching on his capos?
I wholeheartedly support this. It prevents Eichmanns from giving up their
agency. If you're a capo, you had better fully trust in the loyalty of your
don, because a good law isn't going to enforce your criminal contract. If it
did, it's basically legitimizing the relationship between criminal co-
conspirators.

~~~
jimhefferon
> Authorities should always reward snitching

Often authorities have not way of knowing if the tale told is true.

------
kstrauser
That's amazing and awesome. Pro-tip: do _not_ get caught deliberately lying to
judges. It makes them twitchy.

The article was short, but the TL;DR is that Prenda made porn videos, uploaded
them to torrent sites, then sued everyone who downloaded them. $6M worth of
defendants settled quickly because they didn't want to have "lost lawsuit from
porn producer" on their records.

They set up byzantine shell companies to obfuscate that they actually owned
the videos, and flat-out lied saying that they represented people other than
themselves. When that came out, it also followed that it's not really possible
to infringe copyright from someone who is seeding the torrent themselves, as
they're literally publishing that content for anyone who asks for it.

I literally LOLed when I saw this headline. It took a while, but wow, the
karma hammer hit hard today.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Seeding your own torrents doesn't nullify your copyright on the content.
Absent a license, nobody else can legally redistribute them.

~~~
kstrauser
Can you prove that the client wasn't a leech? I mean, yeah, it _is_ possible
to do that, but I bet that this law firm specifically, using the tech of ten
years ago, could not.

~~~
jandrese
They could run their own clients and collect a list of people seeding the
video. It wouldn't be hard. A slightly smarter client could download one chunk
from every client that ever connects to the torrent and log it.

I don't know if they bothered, and it seems a bit of a moot point since they
just lost bigtime on the whole case.

This case is really incredible because you so rarely see copyright holders
lose these cases. It might matter that they were a tiny asshole law firm and
not a giant media cartel. The DMCA usually lets copyright holders get away
with murder.

------
ChuckMcM
Nearly 10 years later, the lawyers go to jail. I would like to believe it
means other lawyers would be less inclined to pursue these sort of extortion
based models but I don't expect it will change their inclination.

------
jmpman
If Disney had been found to be doing this with their own films, would the CEO
of Disney be in jail? This case always felt extremely punitive due to the
content and the size of the company.

~~~
save_ferris
It seems pretty agreed upon that the legal system bends towards wealthy and
powerful in the US. The current Jeff Epstein scandal highlights this double
standard pretty well.

That said, we should absolutely be going after the rich and powerful more than
we currently do. These guys committed fraud and money laundering, significant
financial crimes and potentially ruined other people's lives in the process by
forcing victims into settlements of thousands of dollars. That's incredibly
disgusting behavior and absolutely worthy of a significant prison sentence.

What specifically about this case makes you think they were punished too
harshly?

~~~
jmpman
Were they the legal owners of the copyright? Yes. Did they post the material
themselves, yes. Have other companies posted their own works in slightly
corrupt form to thwart pirates? I expect yes. Do other companies sue pirates
for downloading their material? Yes. Do those companies typically sue for an
amount less than a value which would cause the pirate to go to trial? Yes. The
only difference I see is that Prenda uploaded “good” copies and sued. Had they
uploaded corrupt copies, with a link to their website where you could download
the files for $1, and a third party then uploaded the non-corrupt file to
BitTorrent, it seems very close to what the large corporations are doing.

~~~
save_ferris
Again, I'm not saying that large corporations don't do stuff like this, I
entirely believe that they do. What I don't understand is how that's a valid
argument for why these guys got too harsh of a punishment. Just because big,
powerful people get away with this stuff doesn't mean that it shouldn't be
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Should laypeople not be prosecuted for the same crimes that big corporations
also commit but fail to be held accountable for? Just because someone does it
and gets away with it doesn't make it right. And if we excuse everyone who
does what big corporations do, then what's the point of having a legal system?
Sure, big corps absolutely need to be reigned in. But arguing that these guys
were punished too harshly for committing crimes simply because other, more
powerful people commit crimes too is illogical. If every layperson were let
off on something that a rich, powerful person got away with, then there'd be
no one to punish, because all behavior would be acceptable.

~~~
jmpman
I agree they broke the law. I’m just trying to understand what small change
needed to happen so they wouldn’t have broken the law. Paying their taxes -
after Al Capone, you’d think any one skirting the law would at least cover
that base. What else would they need to change?

