Recently I stumbled upon an interesting presentation created by someone named Gerephil Molina from Cebu, Philippines. This presentation describes the inside operations of an infamous German copyright troll Guardaley (and its various facades, for example, IPP international — Lipscomb/Malibu Media’s “engine,” or the subject of this post — Anti-Piracy Management Company)¹.

You can watch this Anti-Piracy Management Company Presentation on the Prezi site (Flash-based) [The original presentation was hastily removed on 4/21/2014 — scroll down to see update], or read the pdf embedded below: I spent a couple of hours creating this document in a premonition that Prezi’s material will be removed — once visitors from Karlsruhe show up in my blog’s log. Content wise, it should be exactly the same as the original presentation (sans graphics, which is meaningless anyway).

This presentation does not look like a final product; and I’m still not sure who the target is. It looks more like an operations manual for the BPO Cebu office, yet the trolling technology description is definitely obtained from the original source — Guardaley. I have a feeling that it was not intended for public eyes.

There is a little doubt that one of Guardaley’s key players, Patrick Achache is behind this particular Guardaley’s incarnation (Anti-Piracy Management Company — APMC). Another Guardley-connected name that appears in this playbook is Daniel Macek (p. 35), an “expert” in some US cases, in particular, a potentially fraudulent Elf-Man LLC, v. Lamberson (the other “expert” in this case is Michael Patzer, who played his small role in the Bellwether vaudeville nearly a year ago).

I put quotation marks around “expert” not only because of my “biased opinion”: as we see in the presentation (p. 35 — emphasis is mine), I’m not the only one who questions this expertise:

paragraph 2 in regards to software consultant (i.e., he can talk about software issues), & we’re hoping the judge won’t question his qualifications too much.

I will not go over the statements and bullet points: they speak for themselves. The overall air is rather dry, business-like, cynical, which is not surprising: it’s a business based on exploiting the letter of the law, with little, if any, thought about the irreparable harm to thousands of families. Similar to how the military-industrial complex monetizes war, cartels like Guardaley monetize infringement, but in reality both thrive on suffering of others.

The stated goal of “ending the infringement” is laughable: no sane businessman wants the source of income to dry out.

I hope that defense lawyers (“bad guys,” according to the trolls, p. 5) will find some points that can be used in the ongoing fight against the copyright trolling plague.

Updates

04/21/2014

The original Prezi presentation was deleted around the time this post was published. Fortunately, yesterday I not only preserved the textual part (embedded above), but grabbed the video of presentation itself. Because of YouTube clip length restrictions, I broke it to four pieces.

04/21/2014

I was digging through my archives and found this 2+ years old document, a “business proposal” by the same entity, Anti-Piracy Management Company:

The metadata reveals that the author of this champertious proposal is Josh Partridge. A quick search leads to his LinkedIn page, where he clearly states that Anti-Piracy Management Company is Guardaley:

Since this man is in the US (San Diego), does the idea of deposing him sound crazy? I hope not.

Also, don’t miss DieTrollDie’s update on the same topic: we are untangling the cobweb slowly but surely.

Coverage

• TorrentFreak: Accused Pirate Slams Bittorent Tracking Outfit in Court
• Techdirt: International Men Of Mystery: How Discredited German ‘Anti-Piracy’ Company May Secretly Be Behind Malibu Media’s Copyright Trollery
• TorrentFreak: Copyright Troll Calls UK Government “Cowards”

Followups

• Defense: Unlicensed German investigator Guardaley is steering US copyright trolling operations
• Elf Man v. Lamberson: presented with the evidence of wrongdoing, plaintiff attempts to run away
• Why the FBI should investigate the Guardaley racket
• Copyright troll David Lowe dropped eleventh defendant after defense attorney threatened to expose fraud
• In devastating detail, defense attorney documents years of copyright trolls’ fraud on the federal judiciary

¹ You can read more about the tangled web of German shell companies in Morgan Pietz’s recent motion he filed with the Maryland court.