However, events took a turn for the strange.

Soon both EFF and Public Citizen, who had been appointed by a judge to act in the Does’ interests, learned that at least one ISP had already been handing their subscribers’ identities over to Stone. It transpired that Stone had been issuing subpoenas to ISPs without the court’s permission.

“To summarize the staggering chutzpah involved in this case: Stone asked the Court to authorize sending subpoenas to the ISPs. The Court said ‘not yet.’ Stone sent the subpoenas anyway,” Judge Godbey wrote.

“The Court appointed the Ad Litems [EFF and Public Citizen] to argue whether Stone could send the subpoenas. Stone argued that the Court should allow him to – even though he had already done so – and eventually dismissed the case ostensibly because the Court was taking too long to make a decision.”

All along Stone had been receiving information from ISPs and had even contacted some of the 670 Does with letters seeking cash settlement for their alleged infringements.

“Because Stone obtained information that he had no right to receive, the subpoenas falsity transformed the access of the Does’ information from a bona fide state-sanctioned inspection into private snooping. The Court rarely has encountered a more textbook example of conduct deserving of sanctions,” he added.

But true to form Stone would not be giving in, informing Ars Technica: “After three rewrites, I finally decided I’m just going to have to let Justin Bieber do my quoting for me: ‘Whenever you knock me down I will not stay on the ground.’”

Inevitably Stone appealed, and yesterday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its ruling. For everyone involved, Stone excepted, it was worth the wait.

On appeal Stone presented a number of arguments but the court noted that “none of these arguments, thus, was preserved for purposes of appeal, nor does Stone contend they were. Accordingly, all the issues Stone raises on appeal have been waived.”

And in a clear indication that the courts are becoming wise to the tactics of Stone and others like him, came the following statement.

“Stone committed those violations as an attempt to repeat his strategy of suing anonymous internet users for allegedly downloading pornography illegally, using the powers of the court to find their identity, then shaming or intimidating them into settling for thousands of dollars, a tactic that he has employed all across the state and that has been replicated by others across the country,” the Judges wrote in their ruling.

“The stay of sanctions is therefore VACATED, and any sanctions imposed
by the district court are AFFIRMED.”

Stone was hit with a $10,000 fine and ordered to pay the costs of the EFF and Public Citizen. Other sanctions compel him to inform all clients and judges he currently has cases with about this ruling against him. Reputation-wise, this kind of hit will be hard to recover from.

Finally, since Stone struggled with his quotes before, feel free to help him out by adding any appropriate Justin Bieber lyrics in the comments below.

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

The self-described programmer, filmmaker and musician, who when speaking of his pirate-chasing lifestyle says “I was born to do this shit,” is perhaps best known for his attacks on BitTorrent users sharing anime. But like many of his counterparts, Stone also dabbles in pornography.

Last year, Stone filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of Mick Haig Production, which targeted 670 BitTorrent users who allegedly shared the movie Der Gute Onkel. Now his behavior in the case has drawn the ire of District Court Judge David C. Godbey.

Earlier, Judge Godbey had denied Stone’s request to start sending subpoenas to the ISPs. Stone had wanted to start straight away on matching his collected IP addresses with real-life identities. Instead, Judge Godbey ordered the ISPs to store the information for a later date and the EFF were brought in to represent the interests of, by definition, the as-yet unnamed ‘Does’ in the suit.

But events had already taken a turn for the strange. Internet users started to receive letters from Stone requesting cash settlements, despite the fact that only their ISPs knew their identities and Stone had not yet been given permission to access the information.

Soon the situation became clear. According to the EFF, despite the Judge’s earlier refusal to allow the sending of subpoenas to ISPs, Stone had contacted them anyway. Without a court order, ISPs had been handing over information on their subscribers to Stone and he had been contacting them for cash settlements.

Then in January 2011, Stone and his client dismissed the entire case with prejudice, which brought it to a complete conclusion. Their justification was that there was no “meaningful opportunity to pursue justice in this matter” because there was “little chance of discovery in sight,” this, despite already receiving settlements.

The pair also took the opportunity to bemoan the EFF’s involvement in the case, describing them as a group “renowned for defending internet piracy.”

In court papers dated last Friday, District Court Judge David C. Godbey is scathing of Stone’s conduct.

“To say that the subpoenas imposed an undue burden on their targets fails to capture the gravity of Stone’s abdication of responsibility,” writes the Judge.

“Because Stone obtained information that he had no right to receive, the subpoenas falsity transformed the access of the Does’ information from a bona fide state-sanctioned inspection into private snooping.”

“The Court appointed the Ad Litems [EFF and Public Citizen] to argue whether Stone could send the subpoenas. Stone argued that the Court should allow him to – even though he had already done so – and eventually dismissed the case ostensibly because the Court was taking too long to make a decision,” Judge Godbey continues.

“All the while, Stone was receiving identifying information and communicating with some Does, likely about settlement. The Court rarely has encountered a more textbook example of conduct deserving of sanctions.”

But for this clear and gross misconduct, the Judge fine Stone a mere $10,000. Texas lawyer Robert Cashman, who defends individuals targeted by file-sharing lawsuits, says he’s not impressed by the amount.

“This seems like pennies to an attorney who is bringing in $2,500 per settlement at what he claims is a 45% settlement rate. Ten thousand dollars is merely the equivalent of FOUR settlements,” Cashman writes.

“With the hundreds of letters that went out, even if he is lying about the settlement rate, don’t you think he made at MANY TIMES that amount? Think about it. There is nothing punitive about this order.

“Assume Evan Stone merely sent out 100 letters and had only a 20% success rate at $2,500 per settlement. This alone amounts to $50,000. The Mick Haig Productions case had *670* defendants.

“In short, while $10,000 may be a lot to a starving attorney, my opinion is that the sanctions wouldn’t even cover the IRS’ federal income taxes Mick Haig Productions would pay on the settlements they received from this misstep,” Cashman concludes.

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

Thanks to an interview arranged by Patrick Michels of the Dallas Observer we are now given the opportunity to get a little more personal with one of them. Even at six long pages it’s well worth the read, but for the time sensitive, here are the juicy parts.

Meet Texas Lawyer Evan Stone.

Stone is a Junior Attorney who describes himself as a programmer, filmmaker and musician. Together, these skills turn him into the perfect pirate chaser, or so he thinks. Suing tens of thousands of pirates is Stone’s destiny, and despite the fact that he hasn’t won a single trial case yet, he will continue this fight.

“I was born to do this shit,” Stone says. “I eat, sleep, breathe, shit this stuff.”

Despite the perfect fit, the Texas lawyer didn’t come up with the pay-up-or else schemes himself. It was another law firm that inspired him. When he read about the cases started by law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver (who in turn were inspired by operations in Germany and the UK) he immediately knew that the wanted to follow in their footsteps.

At the time he was providing legal services to anime distributor FUNimation, where he recalls a fellow lawyer saying: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this?” Stone agreed, and in the months that followed he approached several content owners, offering his assistance.

Closer to home in the anime business, he didn’t have much success initially. Anime producers know that their audience can be characterized as being pro-BitTorrent. So, suing the very same people who also buy their content was probably not in their best interest, some may have thought. This meant that Stone had to try his luck elsewhere.

“I said, you know what, I know a whole bunch of people whose shit is pirated all the time that don’t give a fuck about bad press.”

And he was right.

Through his contacts at FUNimation, Stone got in touch with people in the porn industry who were happy to work with him. Not just because Evan Stone carries the name of a ‘huge’ porn star, but mainly because there’s some serious cash to be made.

The money is also one of the main motivators for Stone. He admits that he gets about 45% of the cash recouped through settlements, money he uses to take care of his family. But financial incentives aside, Stone thrives simply on his hatred of pirates.

Some of this grudge originates from early last decade when he founded a music company that was planning to sell MP3s. The timing was perfect, bands were interested and the first MP3-players were just hitting the mainstream. However, there was a slight problem that burst the bubble – a problem called Napster.

“My vendetta against pirates has been building for years and years,” he says, commenting on that history.

Back to the present day, Stone admits that he enjoys going after pirates, but the scheme has also met resistance from various sides. Among other issues, ISPs are putting up a fight, with some claiming they can only lookup a few IP-addresses a month. Stone doesn’t buy it.

“I know what’s involved, and it’s such horseshit for them to say they can’t get this stuff,” he says, later referring to them as “those fuckers” at Verizon and “those snakey fucks” at Time Warner.

Similarly, the porn industry hasn’t given him the love he was looking for either, at least not in a business way. The legal community in the porn business didn’t like the newcomer and turned against him. This is one of the reasons why Stone decided to pull out.

“Fuck the adult industry,” he says. “You can quote me on that,” he told the Dallas Observer journalist.

Stone is now looking for more mainstream clients to continue his business. According to him there is no shortage of pirates and plenty of publishers who want to make a few extra bucks after all. Interestingly enough, one of Stone’s latest clients is FUNimation, who sued 1337 BitTorrent users earlier this year.

And so this hatred-fueled battle of a generally likeable lawyer continues.

“I hate hardly anybody,” he says, “but when I think about pirates, I do tend to think about a lot of them as smarmy entitled little brats,” Stone says.

The above is just a small sample of the excellent piece just published in the Dallas Observer. We encourage everyone who’s interested in more background on Stone to have a read.

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

As reported in December, the cases suffered a setback when ISP Time Warner Cable refused to hand over customer details, but now the problems for Larry Flynt – and others embarking on similar projects – may even prove terminal.

Rob Cashman, owner of Cashman Law Firm, has contacted TorrentFreak with great news for the Does in both these and similar cases in the future. Cashman’s company has been working against these lawsuits and it now appears that thousands have been dismissed due to the Does involved being improperly joined.

After a description of how the Does allegedly shared the movie in question, Royal Furgeson, Senior United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, said that in the plaintiff’s complaint there are no allegations that the defendants are in any way related to each other, or that they acted in concert in the alleged infringements.

Taking the ruling from an earlier file-sharing case, West Coast Prods., Inc. v. Does 1-535 of December 16, 2010) the judge reiterated that “merely committing the same type of violation in the same way does not link defendants together for purposes of joinder.”

Additionally, the judge ruled that “joinder is improper in this case because each Defendant will also likely have a different defense.”

“In my opinion [these cases] had much more credibility and corporate backing than the West Virginia cases did,” Cashman told TorrentFreak. “This result will likely get noticed by judges across the US who are trying their own John Doe mass media copyright infringement lawsuits.”

So what does the decision mean for the Does/defendants in the cases?

“In short, all defendants were dismissed and severed. What this means is that if the plaintiff attorneys wish to continue the lawsuit, they will have to file against each of the six thousand defendants individually,” says Cashman.

If one views these mass lawsuits from the plaintiff’s viewpoint, this is a disaster. The whole process relies on doing everything in bulk, as cheaply as possible, in order to make the most profit on settlements. If this type of ruling spreads, the word ‘cheap’ isn’t something that will be often associated with these operations in future.

Cashman says that if the plaintiffs do decide to proceed with these cases, the process is extremely time consuming. The plaintiffs will have to draft complaints specific to each defendant, submit them to the local court where each lives, learn and follow the local court rules, pay the filing fees for each defendant and properly serve them.

“Then us attorneys will begin defending the cases, and we will begin conducting discovery and making them attend depositions, answer interrogatories, and prove their case,” he continues. “I would think this would be difficult for them to do with just a few defendants. I can imagine this would be nearly impossible to do with 6,000+ defendants.”

“But, I’m sure if asked, they will probably post some news article expressing their determination to go after each and every defendant, and I wish them well,” Cashman concludes.

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

As revealed in our earlier article, the complaint stated that Mick Haig owns the copyright to the movie, but it was never officially registered with the Copyright Office. But as we will read, there were bigger, more terminal problems in store.

The court appointed counsel for the Does, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen, had argued that Mick Haig had wrongly sued hundreds of people in one case, in the wrong jurisdiction and were therefore not entitled to send subpoenas for the Does’ personal details.

In the face of this criticism, last week Mick Haig and Evan Stone dropped their case, but not without some extremely harsh words for the EFF, PC and the Court.

“Rather than choosing competent local counsel experienced in intellectual property law, the Court appointed a trio of attorneys renowned for defending internet piracy and renowned for their general disregard for intellectual property law,” Mike Haig said in their notice of dismissal.

Going on to complain about various processes, Mick Haig concludes:

“Now, four months after the initial filing of this case, with little chance of discovery in sight, Plaintiff feels it has lost any meaningful opportunity to pursue justice in this matter. As such, Plaintiff has notified all relevant internet service providers that this case is being dismissed and hereby notifies the Court of the same.”

In a statement the EFF noted that copyright holders have the right to protect their works, but not if they use unfair tactics.

“When adult film companies launch these cases, there is the added pressure of embarrassment associated with pornography, which can convince those ensnared in the suits to quickly pay what’s demanded of them, whether or not they have legitimate defenses. That’s why it’s so important to make sure the process is fair,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry.

“This dismissal is wonderful news for the 670 anonymous defendants in this case, but troubling questions remain about the behavior of Mick Haig Productions,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman.

“Given the extremely invasive power of subpoenas, plaintiffs have a duty to ensure that subpoenas are not misused. EFF is committed to ensuring that litigants are held accountable for taking shortcuts around the due process rights of their opponents, especially in cases such as this one where the very act of obtaining someone’s identity could be improperly leveraged into pressure to settle a claim.”

Since the case was dismissed with prejudice, the Mick Haig cannot file cases against any of the 670 Does in this matter in the future, even in the correct jurisdiction.

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

Soon after the practices of USCG were laid out in the mainstream press, several adult film producers hired lawyer Evan Stone to do the same for them. The procedure in all these cases is identical. Sue hundreds of BitTorrent users, and ask them to settle the case for a substantial sum instead of going to court for a full trial.

In previous articles we’ve dubbed this creative use of the legal system as a pay-up-or-else scheme. The number one priority for the people involved is to make money off alleged file-sharers, it’s a new business model that has proven to be very effective.

Last week hundreds of new suits were filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The case was filed by lawyer Evan Stone on behalf of Mick Haig Productions, and targets 670 BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded Der Gute Onkel. No, not the 1912 short film that is in the public domain, but an unknown adult film.

The complaint that was filed alleges that Mick Haig Productions owns the copyright to the movie “Der Gute Onkel”. Technically, this may be correct as makers automatically hold the copyright to the content they produce. However, the title was never registered with the Copyright Office which could spell trouble for the ongoing cases.

In U.S. law there is plenty of jurisprudence that shows that one can’t pursue a case where the copyrights are not registered. In Positive Black Talk, Inc. v. Cash Money Records, Inc. the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff must show that the Copyright Office has actually received the copyright application before starting a lawsuit.

In June 2010, Judge O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas – the same Court where the “Der Gute Onkel” case was filed – cited this ruling and found that registrations not properly pled “are not in the case.” Again, this ruling affirmed that copyright has to be registered before bringing a lawsuit.

Since the lawyer, Evan Stone, failed to properly inform the Court that the movie in question is not registered with Copyright Office, he has not plead the case properly. For the alleged 670 downloaders this misstep is good news. If any of the defendants challenges the complaint through a motion to dismiss or motion to quash, it should be dismissed.

Alternatively, downloaders can argue that they never intended to download a hardcore adult movie, but that they were looking for the public domain movie with the same title. Perhaps they should then sue Mick Haig Productions for the disturbing footage they got to see instead.

Evan Stone was contacted for a comment but did not reply before the time of publication.

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