The verdict was a big win for the porn studio and its controversial law firm Prenda, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. The ruling would allow copyright holders to sue large groups of alleged pirates who may have never interacted, or even lived near the district they were being sued in.

The ISPs were not happy with Howell’s ruling and Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox filed an appeal. The providers hoped to reverse the earlier ruling and stop copyright trolls from targeting hundreds of defendants in a single lawsuit.

The ISPs were joined in their efforts by several citizen rights groups including EFF, American Civil Liberties Union and Public Knowledge, who all argued that the mass-lawsuits should be struck down.

Yesterday, nearly two years after the original ruling, Court of Appeals Judge David Tatel finally came to a decision. The verdict is a clear win for the providers and concludes that AF Holdings and Prenda’s mass-lawsuits are an abuse of the judicial process.

“Sometimes individuals seek to manipulate judicial procedures to serve their own improper ends. This case calls upon us to evaluate—and put a stop to—one litigant’s attempt to do just that,” the Judge begins.

One of the issues at stake was that of personal jurisdiction. According to Judge Tatel the evidence made it clear that the porn company had no real intention of pursuing cases again all these defendants, not least because many do not live in the District of Columbia.

“We think it quite obvious that AF Holdings could not possibly have had a good faith belief that it could successfully sue the overwhelming majority of the 1,058 John Doe defendants in this district,” Judge Tatel writes.

“In seeking such information, AF Holdings clearly abused the discovery process,” he adds.

The same reasoning also applies to the issue of venue, with the Judge noting that it’s improper to lump together hundreds of IP-addresses from people scattered all over the country.

Finally, Judge Tatel looked at the joinder issue. While he doesn’t define any clear rules, the verdict makes it clear that adding hundreds of BitTorrent users in one suit because they downloaded the same file is not sufficient. Especially when there’s no indication that they ever exchanged files with each other.

“AF Holdings has provided no reason to think that the Doe defendants it named in this lawsuit were ever participating in the same swarm at the same time. Instead, it has simply set forth snapshots of a precise moment in which each of these 1,058 Does allegedly shared the copyrighted work—snapshots that span a period of nearly five months.”

To illustrate the issue, Judge Tatel uses a blackjack analogy that was brought up by one of the citizens’ rights group counsels.

“To paraphrase an analogy offered by amicus counsel at oral argument, two BitTorrent users who download the same file months apart are like two individuals who play at the same blackjack table at different times. They may have won the same amount of money, employed the same strategy, and perhaps even played with the same dealer, but they have still engaged in entirely separate transactions.”

All in all the ruling makes it clear that the copyright troll tactic of suing hundreds of individuals without showing that they are connected and living in the district they are being sued in, is a no go. While it doesn’t sent any strict rules on when a case is appropriate, and when not, it can be seen as a “crushing blow” for copyright trolls.

Most importantly is that the Internet providers, and the various groups that joined the case, have prevented worse. If the previous ruling would have held up copyright trolling would have been made much easier and more lucrative than it is today.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It’s a system that first started in Europe with

The aim for copyright holders is to avoid litigation while generating revenue. Their evidence is often questionable and as a result those that fight back often have their cases dropped – trolls tend to prefer the escape option over the consequences of an adverse verdict.

After moving to the U.S., settlement programs gained prominence through the actions of entities including Prenda and X-Art. These schemes have come under increasing fire in U.S. courts, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a new country is now on the agenda.

Citizens of Finland are now being subjecting to pay-up-or-else letters, but the decision to target this Nordic country isn’t the most obvious one, thanks to less favorable laws than those in the US.

Letters that have recently gone out to some Finnish Internet subscribers (translated example below, from a DNA customer)  accuse them of downloading porn using BitTorrent and include an offer to settle for ‘only 600 euros’ (about US$825). A vague reference to the police is also included,  ratcheting up the pressure to comply.

According to Ville Oksanen, vice chair of the EFFi and Post-doc researcher at Aalto University, under Finnish law the account holder is presumed to be the infringer by the courts, unless the or she can show that someone may have used the account.

In addition, the loser of a case pays the costs, unlike in the U.S. where each side pays its own costs with a few exceptions (such as a baseless case). More and more courts around the world are starting to look closely into these kinds of cases, and in some instances throwing them out. That’s not so good if you’re liable for the substantial cost of defense.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that the letters relate to content from the Hustler stable, who committed to “turning piracy into profit”, presumably through these troll tactics, as far back as 2009.

Why this scheme is starting in Finland now is unknown, although the crowdsourced copyright law may make it less profitable in the future. According to Oksanen, the law as written would remove some sections of copyright law, making account-holder identification much harder.

The lawfirm behind this letter, Hedman Partners, did not respond to requests at the time of publication.

With thanks to rehanna, vhautaka and mikachu

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The past 15 years is littered with casualties. Dozens of file-sharing services have been shut down, with Napster, Kazaa, Grokster, LimeWire, Megaupload and isoHunt merely heading up an almost endless list of sharing tools subjected to destruction. Sadly they are just the tip of the iceberg, with much of the action this year going on under the surface.

During 2013 Hollywood and the music industry deliberately calmed down in the United States, putting citizens there at ease after the SOPA debacle. But while the United States sleeps they are doing their work overseas in countries such as the UK. Grabbing a domain is out of the question on home soil, but doing it through a foreign proxy is easy. It’s a depressing land grab with worldwide implications that no one is doing anything about.

Other miserable developments have their roots in the past. Last decade the RIAA decided it would be a good idea to sue its own customers and continued for years until finally realizing they were getting nowhere. The same cynical practice is today being carried out by dozens of bottom-feeding troll companies such as Prenda Law, Malibu Media and GoldenEye International, each looking to profit from piracy and doing so by the most damaging and cruel means possible.

So when an article gets published that states that Iron Maiden, a huge band with a massive following, has decided to look at piracy and do something positive with it, people get properly excited. And rightly so.

Learning that the band monitored BitTorrent networks and collected pirate location data not to sue their fans, but to find out where they are in order to play for them, was a wonderful juxtaposition to the snarly image Metallica cultured when crushing Napster at the turn of the century.

Here was a band being smart, using piracy data to intelligently develop their product and image, casting their lawyers aside and putting their energies into something positive. At the same time, to the delight of the crowds and quite clearly the majority of the tech press, pleasing and embracing fans in a way that the file-sharing scene has advised for more than a decade.

But sadly the story isn’t true and CiteWorld, the publishers of the original article, have printed a full apology and heavily edited their report to reflect the much less exciting reality.

How disappointing is that? That ray of light in a sea of bad news was not only welcome, but badly needed. Now it’s gone and we’re left with that sinking feeling because let’s face it, we’ve had a pretty depressing year.

Site closures, site blockades, six strikes, the specter of ISP filtering, not to mention intensive lobbying that threatens to further restrict freedom on the Internet in the name of protecting copyright.

The Iron Maiden story is just what we needed, a story that opened up new ways of thinking and gave us hope that things can be handled in a different way. It reinvigorated the belief that bands, artists and file-sharers really can come together in a way that not only makes sense but is productive for everyone concerned.

At this point we really want to believe, we want to have hope that someone, somewhere, will come along and take away the negativity. That’s why the Iron Maiden article was repeated so many times and that’s why people wanted to spread the news. It gave us a chance to share being positive and was cool – very cool indeed.

CiteWorld may have got it wrong but their story has the potential to spark good things, so here’s to a 2014 fueled by people who see potential and want to drive the good news train. There’s a big audience out there ready to ride it – and hand over their money to do so.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Depending on the severity of the offense, these damages can reach $150,000 per infringement.

In 2009 Jammie Thomas-Rasset learned about these massive fines the hard way when she was fined $1,920,000 for sharing 24 songs online, an amount that was eventually reduced to $220,000 after several appeals. In a similar case, Boston student Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $675,000 for sharing 30 songs.

Fines of this magnitude are often viewed by the public as disproportionate, but copyright holders argue that they are needed to deter the public from engaging in unauthorized file-sharing.

In court, the Obama administration sided with copyright holders earlier this year. However, in its recent Green Paper the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force suggests that the current limits may need an update.

“Much public attention has focused on the size of the awards in the two infringement cases against individual file sharers that have gone to trial,” the Task Force wrote.

“These cases have led to calls for further calibration of levels of statutory damages. The Task Force reiterates the importance of statutory damages in online copyright enforcement, but believes that there are certain areas where recalibration of their scope may be appropriate.”

The Internet Policy Task Force asked the public to share their thoughts on this, and several other copyright related issues that were addressed in the paper. The comments, which have now been made public, include several from copyright industry groups such as the MPAA and RIAA in which they advise the Government not to lower the maximum fines.

The MPAA argues that the current Internet landscape doesn’t warrant a policy change.

“While we understand the concerns giving rise to the discussion around statutory damages in the Green Paper, the MPAA does not believe the experience in practice supports altering the existing regime, which has fostered investment and innovation not just in the production of content but also with respect to applications, devices and other digital technologies.”

The movie group says that P2P file-sharing, cyberlockers and streaming sites remain a massive threat to the industry and since it’s not always possible to accurately calculate the losses that are generated by piracy, statutory damages are helpful to come to a sizable punishment.

“Statutory damages play an essential role in redressing the financial harm caused by such infringement and punishing the wrongdoers. But, perhaps most importantly, statutory damages deter others from engaging in similar misconduct, advancing the societal goal of promoting innovation and creativity,” MPAA writes.

The studios don’t fear disproportionate fines and are confident that juries will eventually decide on an amount that is fitting in each case.

“The MPAA is confident that juries will continue to award statutory damages only in appropriate cases, in appropriate amounts, taking into consideration all salient factors, to serve the public interest.”

The RIAA also submitted their comments in response to the Internet Policy Task Force paper. In line with the MPAA the music group sees no reason to change the current policy, and says that “proper consequences” are needed in response to copyright infringement.

“We do not believe that recalibration of statutory damages is appropriate,” RIAA writes.

“Statutory damages must be meaningful, serving as a deterrent beyond mere restitution. And the law recognizes the need for flexibility within this statutory damages construct, and provides juries with wide discretion to determine the appropriate award,” RIAA adds.

The RIAA adds that in the Thomas and Tenenbaum cases the Appeal courts held that the “damage awards were entirely appropriate, based on the facts of each case.”

The music group does say that it’s open to discussing alternatives to statutory damages, as long as the deterrent function of the punishments for copyright infringement remain a core issue.

Besides copyright holders, there were also many comments from civil rights groups, copyright experts and the public that argued against high penalties. Copyright lawyer Andrew Bridges, for example, highlights that a potential $150,000 fine per shared file is ammunition for “predatory” copyright trolls such as Prenda and Righthaven.

“The current structure of statutory damages gives Predatory Enforcers (PEs) the weapons they need to extract significant settlements from accused infringers without regard to the truth of their allegations or the harm of the alleged infringing, just as Righthaven and Prenda did,” Bridges writes.

“One need only allege that there was copying in order to seek a subpoena unmasking anonymous online defendants, at which point PEs can send letters threatening maximum damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work and extract settlements without proving infringement, much less any harm.”

According to Bridges the Government may want to follow the example of Canada, where statutory damages for non-commercial file-sharing were reduced to an amount of between $100 and $5,000 per offense.

All comments in response to the Green Paper have been published on the Internet Policy Task Force website. The issue of statutory damages, as well as many related subjects, will be discussed during a public meeting on December 12 and will be followed by another round of comments.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

NZBMatrix was a very popular site in the newsgroup community and for many was the go-to place for NZB files linking to the latest content. In December 2012 the site was forced to close due to increased pressure from Hollywood studios who were sending more takedown notices than the site could handle.

Over the past year several sites have popped up to try to bridge the gap but while of decent quality, most are inherently prone to the same sort of attacks. If a site’s servers can be located then there is always a risk of litigation (or the threat of it at least) later down the line.

However, this week TorrentFreak has been speaking with Tyrion, the administrator of a fairly new Newznab-based site, who hopes to avoid some of the external pitfalls of running a Usenet indexer.

As its name suggests NNPbeta is in beta and at the time of writing is close to backfilling 340 groups to a total of 6,077,496 releases. But unlike other indexers the site is being built on an unusually secure footing right from the start.

“When I look back on the last few years of file sharing, I see the various organizations such as RIAA, MPAA, FACT, and Prenda getting ever-more aggressive in their hunting down of file sharers and search indexers,” Tyrion explains.

“For the file sharers and users of the services, the environment is getting to be one of Guerilla Warfare. They have taken away our ability to use centralized services and instead made us use small-force tactics in order to get our content.”

NNPbeta has no conventional web presence and cannot be found using Google. The site itself can be accessed via http://nnpbetabzsneptym.onion, but this link only works for users of Tor. The site is situated in what has become known as the Deep Web.

Tyrion naturally won’t say where his servers are other than they could be anywhere in the world. All users need to know is that by jumping onto Tor they are able to find the site as easily as they could a regular webpage but with much better security.

“Tor, I believe, is part of our evolution. By using Tor as the base of operations, we have reduced the risk of our users being discovered as well as the risk of the site being discovered, therefore providing a more reliable, long-term solution for indexing,” Tyrion says.

“We don’t know who our users are (unless they chose to provide a valid email) and they don’t know who we are. We hold the user’s privacy above all else and feel that this is the only way to accomplish our goal of providing a service that is stable, reliable, and resistant to external pressure.”

In describing what Tor does for the site (which he acknowledges isn’t entirely bulletproof), Tyrion uses a nightclub security analogy.

“We like to think of Tor as that bouncer at the front of the club that only lets people into our club that we want to let in. Yes, he can be overpowered if someone sets their mind to getting into the club regardless of the design of the system but we have a really good bouncer and the bad guys need significant manpower in order to beat him down,” said.

Tyrion believes there is a balance to be considered. Given the right manpower and resources it would be possible to bring down the site, but at some point the mounting costs versus the potential gains stop making financial sense.

Another thing for NNPbeta to consider is DMCA notices, not served on the site itself, but on external Usenet providers. One of the things pointed out by NZBMatrix in its goodbye message is that anti-piracy groups are becoming so fast at taking down infringing content from Usenet itself, Usenet indexers are being rendered much less useful. Tyrion believes that can be mitigated by acting quickly.

“From the time something is released on Usenet, [NNPbeta] users will have (at absolute maximum) about 30 minutes until we are able to identify that release until we are done with backfill. Once we are done, users can depend on knowing about a release in two minutes which provides that much more opportunity to grab files before something happens to them,” Tyrion concludes.

NNPbeta also plans on not succumbing to the payment processing issues suffered by other sites such as Newzbin2. Tyrion insists there will be no ads or affiliate links on the site, ever. As expected, the site will accept donations into a Bitcoin account.

Whether NNPbeta will grow to become a site as successful as NZBMatrix remains to be seen but they have significant hurdles to overcome. Not being indexed by search engines and sitting quietly in the Deep Web may be good for security, but it’s also likely to prove a hindrance to people who are just passing by.

Nevertheless, the emergence of sites hidden by Tor and other cloaking systems such as those employed by The Pirate Bay are an interesting development in the file-sharing space and a trend only like to increase in the months and years to come.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Over the past year they’ve been hit for roughly $311,000 in damages and costs, while hitting a roadblock in developing new revenue.

Little over a month ago the ongoing saga received yet another twist when a significant blow was dealt to the embattled law firm by the mother-in-law of Prenda front-man John Steele.

After a month of deliberation the court has now handed down additional good news for five accused BitTorrent pirates. Yesterday’s ruling made it clear that there is no evidence that AF Holdings holds the copyrights to the titles they sued the individuals over.

“The copyright-assignment agreements [...] in each of these five cases are not what they purport to be. Alan Cooper denies signing either agreement and also denies giving anyone else the authority to sign them on his behalf. AF Holdings failed to produce any credible evidence that the assignments were authentic.”

As a result of this fraud, U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel ordered the company to repay the four defendants who already settled their cases, including their legal fees. In addition, the judge dismissed the suits against all five alleged file-sharers.

“The Court has been the victim of a fraud perpetrated by AF Holdings, LLC. The Court concludes that the appropriate remedy for this fraud is to require AF Holdings to return all of the settlement money it received from all of the Defendants in these cases, and to pay all costs and fees incurred by the Defendants.”

The order further suggests that there may need to be more investigation into the Prenda law firm and its principles. As a result, the court ordered the following (among other things):

The Clerk of Court shall send a copy of this order to the following individuals and entities for the purpose of further investigation:

- The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota

- The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office

- The Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board

- The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois

With the above, the ruling echoes that of Judge Wright, bringing the firm to the attention of lawyer disciplinary boards and criminal investigators.

Of course, the total amount of damages so far doesn’t even come close to the alleged $1.9 million that Prenda took in settlements during 2012, but with the IRS, FBI and even state law enforcement investigating, asset forfeiture is always a possibility.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Most of the defendants are sued in bulk, with copyright holders joining hundreds or thousands of alleged copyright-infringing IP-addresses in a single complaint. The rightsholders then ask the court to grant a subpoena to identify the account holders behind the IPs, who are then approached with settlement requests of a few thousand dollars.

After an initial avalanche of mass piracy lawsuits in 2010 and 2011, federal courts in several districts ruled that these cases should be restricted to one defendant each. Last year several ISPs asked for a similar ruling in the District of Columbia, but without success.

Judge Beryl Howell ruled against the Internet providers and granted the adult movie company AF Holdings the right to obtain the personal details of more than 1000 Internet users suspected of downloading their works using BitTorrent.

The adult film studio and its controversial law firm Prenda celebrated the verdict as a huge win, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. Adding to the controversy, Judge Howell told the ISPs who joined the case that they were not doing enough to stop online piracy.

The ISPs were disappointed with the ruling and Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox filed an appeal hoping to reverse it. The case has been lingering for a few months but yesterday the ISPs filed their latest brief.

The providers argue that the request for customer information is not supported by good cause, as previous cases have shown that AF Holdings has no intention of actually serving the defendants. “In 118 multi-Doe actions filed by Plaintiff’s counsel during a two-year period, none has resulted in a defendant being named and served,” they write.

In addition, the ISPs note that the adult studio is only attempting to generate as many settlements as it can, at the lowest cost without knowing whether the defendant is actually the person who downloaded the copyrighted work.

“Plaintiff’s primary purpose in seeking the personal information for hundreds or thousands of Internet subscribers per lawsuit is to extract payments without conducting any investigation into whether the subscriber — rather than another person using the subscriber’s Internet connection — is indeed responsible for accessing Plaintiff’s film without paying for it.”

The ISPs continue by citing several similar cases in which judges ruled that joining so many defendants in one case is not allowed. If the current verdict is upheld, they fear that the District of Columbia will become a “unique venue” for copyright holders to “gain the Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce payment from them”

Finally, the ISPs mention the controversial nature of the law firm Prenda, who were recently punished in court for their mob-like tactics. Among other things they note that Prenda’s principals used The Pirate Bay as a honeypot, relied on fictitious persons as clients, and submitted fake documents in support of their lawsuits.

“In the wake of these revelations, virtually all of Prenda Law’s multi-Doe cases have been dismissed or transformed into investigations into misconduct by AF Holdings’ principals and counsel. Yet, incredibly, Plaintiff derides the ISPs for objecting ‘with an air of moral superiority’ to Plaintiff’s ongoing efforts to extract personal subscriber information from them,” the brief notes.

The ISPs tell the court that this “lack of candor” should be addressed, and they ask the judge to throw out the case, or reduce the number of defendants from 1,058 to just one.

It’s good to see that Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox are attempting to protect their subscribers. Of course it’s in their own interests, but it also helps to minimize the profitability of these classic copyright troll lawsuits.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In Federal courtroom 9W, in downtown Minneapolis’s US courthouse, a somewhat bluster-filled hearing dealt more blows to Prenda law, and their clients AF holdings. Two bombshells stood out; That AF Holdings “CEO” Mark Lutz has gone missing, and that even members of Steele’s family are working against him.

While most of the hearing proceeded as a normal smear-fest for Steele and co, attempting to discredit caretaker-turned- ID theft victim Alan Cooper (a strategy that has largely failed in every other court it’s been attempted in) the revelations about who tipped Cooper off to his name being used really stunned some people, chief amongst them Steele himself.

Cooper was alerted by a text from a “Kim Eckenrud” (spelling unknown) who sent a copy of a document with Coopers signature on with the advice to get an attorney. Kim is John Steele’s mother in law. Steele later tried to dismiss this, saying she’s religious and a frequent poster on anti-troll sites, who disapproves of his porn work. Or it could also be the work of Anonymous Pirates on the Internet, resorting back to the claims of internet bullying that have been echoed in other Prenda/AF Holdings cases.

To underscore this, he had earlier recounted a tale where someone posted a picture of his house and child, with the message “Best caliber to kill Steele’s family? When and Where?“. That was also why he stopped practicing law, because of threats from pirate blogs, he claimed, choking up and having to stop for water. He did seem to be silent about the police’s reaction to it though.

It was not the only bombshell of the day however, as when it came time for AF Holdings CEO Mark Lutz to testify, he was nowhere to be found. It’s reminiscent of a month earlier, when he failed to show up after being order to appear in San Francisco, and no-one knew where he was. Then it turned out he was ‘detained’ at the airport for 16+ hours without being allowed to contact his attorney. This time though, no-one knows where he is. Steele went to pick him up (as they were on the same flight, and produced the boarding pass to the judge as proof) and he wasn’t at home.

While there were no rulings, as yet, it doesn’t look good for Prenda, and the associated principles. The hearing’s order stated that the burden on proof was on Steele&co to prove the documents legitimate, which they completely failed to do, providing zero evidence beyond character assassination via hearsay.Despite Steele then driving around Miami looking for him, he was still missing, and has now missed three different court-ordered appearances.

This has led some to speculate that he’s now not only been thrown under the bus, by his Prenda cohorts, but possibly under some concrete as well (although Steele did refrain for speculating that Anonymous Internet Pirates had kidnapped him)

Additionally, with Steele testifying on issues he’d previously “taken the Fifth” for in California, he may have doomed his appeal in that case, and possibly opened himself up for a contempt motion (by answering he may have nullified his 5th plea, turning it into refusal to answer a question)

All in all, not a good day for Steele and co, and certainly not a performance worthy of the ‘big leagues’.

Thanks to johnhenrylawyer and Nancy Sims for the courtroom reporting

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Last week we wrote a news article based on public court records, revealing that Prenda Law has been involved in operating a honeypot in order to lure Internet users into downloading copyrighted material.

This revelation came to light after Comcast returned a subpoena linking the IP-address of Pirate Bay uploader “Sharkmp4″ to the infamous law firm, and has since been published by several other news outlets since we broke the news.

It was an article like any other, we thought, but on Monday we learned that Comcast was not happy with our coverage. Through the brand protection company Cyveillance they sent a cease and desist letter for an alleged copyright infringement, demanding that we take the article offline, or face legal action.

The threats are clear. If we fail to comply with the takedown notice within five days Comcast will file a lawsuit seeking immediate injunctive relief, compensatory damages, statutory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs of the suit.

Unfortunately, the email above provides no indication of what we have done wrong. It simply states that we infringed on Comcast’s copyrights without explaining what the actual infringement entails.

To find out more we contacted Cyveillance with a request for additional information. In a quick response, the company informed us that the copy of the subpoena (also available on the Internet archive) response was the problem.

“The thing that we would like you to remove from you post is the copy of the subpoena form that contains Comcast subscriber’s information, The rest of the post can stay,” we were told.

While the response is clear, it still doesn’t explain what the actual infringement is. According to our knowledge court records are public domain and can be freely used by reporters, especially when they are the center of a news piece.

When we pointed this out to Cyveillance the company suddenly informed us that Comcast told them to “hold off on working on the removal of the post in question.” Baffled by the situation, and unclear how to proceed we asked for further details. However, everything went silent and several follow-up emails sent by us since Monday afternoon have gone unanswered.

Meanwhile, the situation further deteriorated when we learned that our hosting provider LeaseWeb received the same cease and desist notice. LeaseWeb alerted us to this problem on Tuesday and stated that our IP-address would be blocked if the issue was not resolved within 24 hours.

We contacted Cyveillance and alerted them to this issue, but again, no response.

TorrentFreak has consulted several legal experts who agree that we’ve done nothing wrong here. Also, Comcast has not asked the court to seal the filing in question and it can still be accessed through the court records.

While we generally refrain from writing about Internal issues, we believe this copyright claim is a matter of interest and one the public should be aware of. We hope that Comcast can clarify its stance eventually, and that our server remains online in the meantime.

Update 7pm CET: A Comcast spokesperson responded to an inquiry we sent to the company’s lawyers:

“[I] am replying to let you know that the cease and desist was sent in error, and you may disregard it. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There’s more in this cracking filing (Number 61 on the docket) though, including some more fun over the Alan Cooper business. For those that don’t know, Alan Cooper is the name of one of the principles in the case who has signed a lot of the copyright paperwork. It’s ALSO the name of John Steele’s former caretaker, who has sued over having his identity stolen, to which Prenda counter-sued

In the exhibits filed there are some nice audio snippets featuring conversations with GoDaddy. Included in there are some people claiming to be John Steele, and in one (PDF with embedded audio), the same voice is calling himself Alan Cooper.

Is it any wonder that Alan Cooper sued for fraudulent use of his name?

There’s also audio of Steele trying to fix his site when a javascript redirect sent visitors along to the Pirate Bay, sounding rather worried and being admonished that he needed to keep his sites software (mainly wordpress) up to date.

This filing comes hard on the heels of a motion by Prenda’s Craigslist-advertising Georgia counsel, Jacques Nazaire, the day before. In Nazaire’s motion, also heavy with exhibits, he shows upset at the discovery undertaken by the defense (some of which we’ve just talked about) as well as the public comments on the case, including comments by the two other people appearing before the judge that day – Defense attorney Blair Chintella, and his expert witness Andrew Norton (Disclosure, Mr Norton is TorrentFreak’s researcher and community manager, better known as K`Tetch).

Mr Nazaire included posts describing the July 2nd hearing, where discovery was granted, by those two, plus comments on Techdirt, popehat, and fightcopyrighttrolls (although in those last three, the article itself was not included), all as part of a request to put the case under seal, meaning nothing further in the case would be public. His reason was as follows.

Additionally, the Plaintiff is respectfully requesting that any future filings in this case may be filed under seal. This case has generated much unneeded attention on the internet. Please see Exhibits N-S. While the writers listed in exhibits N-S have the right to post these articles, unfortunately, these articles and blogs have created an embarrassment, misleading characterizations and perhaps an unsafe environment for plaintiff’s counsel and third parties. As such, plaintiff is respectfully requesting that all future filings be permitted to be made under seal.

The embarrassment is mainly due to an earlier filing in the case, where Mr Nazaire suggested that the court ignore Judge Wright’s Star Trek order, because states have different laws, just like California allows Gay marriage, and Georgia doesn’t. In the same filing, he also alluded to the EFF being terrorists, and how Mr Chintella was a member, presumably to sway the 83yo judge who sat on the FISA court in the 1980s. It didn’t work.

Likewise the unsafe environment argument was reportedly shot down at the hearing, when Mr Nazaire was asked why some of the contact details on the original complaint were not his, but those of Brett Gibbs, at that time Prenda’s local counsel in California. This is a big no-no under Federal rules, and the threatening behaviour Mr Nazaire was worried about? A single mocking email, he admitted to the court; we at TorrentFreak get trolled more by Piracy fans…

He has since doubled-down on these arguments as well, filing this morning that any sort of discourse or discussion (as required by law for certain things) is impossible, because

The telephone and live conversations will more than likely be taped and played on the internet. The confidential matters discussed via email will more than likely be posted as a publicity campaign on the internet.

It’s a reiteration of a claim made by Nazaire to the judge in the hearing – that of the poor bullied lawyer – and was dismissed by the judge at the time. Unfortunately it’s a technique they are too well associated with, having basically bullied thousands of defendants into paying settlements, or else have their names ‘posted as a publicity campaign on the Internet’.

While the evidence in so far is convincing, it’s by no means conclusive. Discovery won’t end until September 5th, so there’s bound to be more revelations. However, few can probably be as disturbing as the thought of a lawyer having steelefamilylaw.com on one hand, and trannyboyswholovetheirtoys.com on the other. Meanwhile a crowdfunding effort is in progress for depositions to be made of Mark Lutz, and others, to really get to the bottom of things.

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