[LINK] Prenda Law

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Firm accused of uploading porn, shaking down people who download it

By Andrea Peterson and Timothy B. Lee, Published: August 16 at 9:42 am
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/16/firm-accused-
of-uploading-porn-shaking-down-people-who-download-it


Prenda Law is one of the Internet’s most prolific copyright trolls .. firms 
that catch users downloading content from peer-to-peer networks, threaten 
them with lawsuits and then offer to “settle” for less than the cost of 
defending a lawsuit. 

The tactic is particularly effective for pornographic works because many 
users are afraid to have their name associated with titles like “In Love 
with Jynx Maze”, “Sexual Obsessions” and “Look What I Found in the Street 
5″ in public court documents.

But Prenda has repeatedly been accused of cutting legal and ethical 
corners. In one case last year, a Minnesota man sued Prenda for alleged 
identity theft after the man’s name was listed as the CEO of a Prenda shell 
company without his permission. The allegations have led to tens of 
thousands of dollars in fines against the company.

This week Prenda faces fresh allegations of unethical conduct. 

TorrentFreak says it obtained documents that appear to show that someone 
associated with Prenda uploaded some of the copyrighted pornographic films 
that it subsequently threatened users for downloading.

Earlier this summer, an expert report filed by a Bittorrent monitoring 
company associated with a suit involving Prenda suggested that one user who 
allegedly uploaded many of the videos, sharkmp4, may have been associated 
with Prenda itself. 

The file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, then jumped in and identified several 
IP addresses that it said were used by sharkmp4.

Now Comcast says it has confirmed the association. In response to a 
subpoena, Comcast said that one of the IP addresses revealed by the Pirate 
Bay was registered by Steele Hansmeier, a defunct law firm whose principals 
are the masterminds behind Prenda’s litigation campaign.

That means that someone associated with Prenda would have uploaded 
pornographic films, waited for users to download them and then threatened 
to sue those users for copyright infringement if they didn’t pay Prenda 
several thousand dollars.

Obviously, this could complicate Prenda’s litigation campaign. 

A copyright lawsuit is based on the assumption that content distribution is 
unauthorized, but that may not be so clear if the video was uploaded to the 
network in the first place by the legitimate copyright holder. 

Even worse for Prenda, judges may not look kindly on the firm’s failure to 
disclose the fact that it uploaded the videos. The firm has already faced 
scathing criticism from judges for its “lack of candor.”

An attorney for the Prenda-linked plaintiff in the case didn’t return our 
call seeking comment.
--

Cheers,
Stephen


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