All in all the Court sees no other option than to deny the request for expedited discovery. This is good news for the people who were targeted by these lawsuits, as they won’t be identified. At the same time, it means that Strike 3 can’t continue these cases, as it can’t name a defendant.
Source: US Court Shields Internet Subscribers From Futile Piracy Complaints – TorrentFreak
YouTube first sued Brady in August after learning that he targeted a couple of Minecraft and gaming creators — “Kenzo” and “ObbyRaidz” — by using false copyright claim takedowns. The company removed the videos, as the company is required to do when a claim is submitted. YouTube only pursued legal action after it was informed that Brady was allegedly using copyright strikes as a way to pressure creators into paying a lump sum of cash. Brady would allegedly strike two videos on a channel and then demand cash; three strikes on a channel result in it being terminated.
Source: YouTube gets alleged copyright troll to agree to stop trolling YouTubers – The Verge
According to a slashdot comment this could be criminal.
Editorial Note: This is the first time I had to deal with something like this. Linking to a site is not against the law nor can anyone demand it be removed. Here are two emails supposedly from www.digitaltrends.com. The email lists three urls from bucktownbell.com, this site, but none of them reference the link he complained about. Thus, this could be a bot email and Rob Wolfe at dtlinkoutreach@gmail.com could be spam or some kind of spear phishing attack on me.
So I took the post that linked to https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/china-floating-solar-power-plant/ down. No big deal. After the emails are links to other sites about China’s new solar power plant. I found the story interesting. This site is about articles I find interesting.
Now bugger off Rob Wolfe whoever you are!
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 18:55:53 +0000 From: Rob Wolfe <dtlinkoutreach@gmail.com> To: Mark Anderson <mea@brandylion.com> Subject: quick question Parts/Attachments: 1 OK 25 lines Text 2 Shown 26 lines Text ---------------------------------------- Just a quick question Mark - did you get my last e-mail? I really need you to remove the link on http://bucktownbell.com/ http://bucktownbell.com/?%C2%A0 http://bucktownbell.com/?%C2%A0&paged=2 http://bucktownbell.com/?author http://bucktownbell.com/?author=2 going to my site at https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/china-floating-solar-power-plant/ Can you please remove it ASAP? If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know --- Rob Wolfe ------------- latest email -----------------
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:26:58 +0000 From: rob Wolfe <dtlinkoutreach2@gmail.com> To: Mark Anderson <mea@brandylion.com> Subject: Mark please respond Parts/Attachments: 1 OK 29 lines Text 2 Shown 33 lines Text ---------------------------------------- Hey Mark I really really need you to act on this. You are linking to my site at https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/china-floating-solar-power-plant/ from here http://bucktownbell.com/ http://bucktownbell.com/?%C2%A0 http://bucktownbell.com/?%C2%A0&paged=2 http://bucktownbell.com/?author http://bucktownbell.com/?author=2 I am very sure that this link is hurting my site in Google! This means, retaining that link would hurt the reputation of your site as well, if we need to include it in our link disavow request to Google. So please remove that link ASAP and I'll make sure to not bother you again! Thanks in advance! --- Rob Wolfe
So why build solar plants on top of lakes and reservoirs? Fiona Harvey at The Guardian explains that building on bodies of water, especially manmade lakes that are not ecologically sensitive, helps protect agricultural land and terrestrial ecosystems from being developed for energy use. The water also cools the electronics in the solar panels, helping them to work more efficiently, reports Alistair Boyle for The Telegraph. For similar reasons Britain built a 23,000-panel floating solar farm on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near Heathrow airport in 2016 to help power the Thames Water treatment plant.
When I wrote about China and India being years ahead of their climate pledges, some commenters expressed skepticism. But whatever your views on how well we can trust official government statistics, one thing is pretty much undeniable at this point:
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.
Source: Prenda Saga Update: John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme | Popehat
The wheels grind slowly, my friends, but they do grind.
While Rightscorp was expected to make the most of BMG’s victory in its future dealings with ISPs, the level of aggression in its announcement still comes as a surprise. Essentially putting every provider in the country on notice, Rightscorp warns that ISPs will now have to cooperate or face the wrath of litigious rightsholders.
Source: Rightscorp Threatens Every ISP in the United States – TorrentFreak
Whether this week’s developments will help to pull Rightscorp out of the financial doldrums will remain to be seen. The company has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for a couple of years now, and its shares on Wednesday were worth just $0.038 each. Following the BMG news, they peaked at $0.044.
The CCIA proposes to change this by introducing statutory damage awards for abusive takedown requests. This means that the senders would face the same consequences as the copyright infringers.
Source: Tech Giants Want to Punish DMCA Takedown Abusers – TorrentFreak
This same coalition has fought for years in courts around the country to explain how the trolls were abusing the legal process to extort settlements from unsuspecting John Does. While several district courts have agreed, this is the first time a federal appeals court has weighed in.
“Once a troll gets the names it’s looking for, then it already has what it needs to put its shakedown scheme in motion,” EFF Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz said.
“The agreements are noticeably devoid of any provision for the disposition of any revenues that could be obtained from verdicts or court orders of fees or costs upon success in court, suggesting a business model of using the information obtained from early discovery into the identities of individual defendants to negotiate quick settlements under the threat of embarrassing and expensive litigation without actually litigating claims on their merits,” the Judge explains.
via 2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart | TorrentFreak.
The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files.
The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs.
via The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot | TorrentFreak.
Of course, lawyers and litigants use the court system every day as a way to make money; entire business models like patent trolling remain legal, and the lawyers involved aren’t so much as sanctioned. But with Prenda, the difference in Wright’s mind was apparently the target—not companies but individuals, many without much money or court experience. Prenda’s plan, Wright said, was nothing less than a scheme “to plunder the citizenry.”
via Why weren’t the Prenda porn trolls stopped years ago? | Ars Technica.
As for the porn trolling business model, well, it’s not dead yet. But at least it can’t be done this way.
This case has been terribly confusing for me to follow. The following comment from the comment section sums up the issue with Prenda nicely.
One issue is that lawyers aren’t supposed to misrepresent who their clients are. In this case the lawyers *are* the clients, via numerous shell corporations and offshore trusts designed to obscure that fact. The Prenda attorneys allegedly bought the IP of little-known porn movies for very little money and then set up various bogus organizations to obscure the fact that the attorneys were also the plaintiffs who would benefit from favorable judgments. IANAL but apparently that behavior is frowned upon by law-talking guys.
Last mention of it here was last March. A lot of work from sites like DieTrollDie and FightCopyrightTrolls went into helping the victims of this extortion. Here’s a snippet from the latter:
We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Congratulations to everyone involved, especially Morgan and Nick.