Prenda
Trolls call it technicality – I call it lies
Anyone, who follows mass bittorent lawsuits, certainly remembers an amusing event when a judge ordered Prenda Law’s attorney, a copyright troll Brett Gibbs, to present a “list of the BitTorrent copyright infringement cases involving multiple joined John Doe Defendants filed Plaintiff’s counsel’s law firm or predecessor firm in federal court.” She ordered Gibbs to ”Identify the case by name, case number, court, and filing date…” and for each case, to indicate how many Doe defendants were actually served.
The reply was amusingly self-incriminating because, while 118 cases were listed, Gibbs famously admitted that “no defendants have been served in the below-listed cases.”
As I predicted, this document was widely used by defense lawyers and even judges to illustrate the trolls’ blatant abuse of judicial system. The document was so damning that when an attorney referred to it in a related case filed by Prenda, trolls freaked out and filed an absolutely frivolous and ridiculous motion for sanctions. However, those stories were already covered in this blog and elsewhere.
There is a slightly different story to tell: a reader has spotted that some of Prenda’s cases were not at all disclosed as ordered. There are two categories of such cases.
1. [Fellinis and Kurosawas of porn] v. Unknown
Being constantly exposed, trolls are forced to invent new methods to conceal their abuse of the legal process. One product of trolls’ creative arrogance is a set of new cases “[A pornographer] v. Unknown.” Complaints in such cases list a single Doe and about a hundred of so called “co-conspirators.” Some of these cases are even misleadingly titled as “[A pornographer] v. John Doe”, while in reality such a complaint lists pages of IP addresses.
The main goal of this novel approach is still the same: to obtain personal data of many alleged file-sharers at the cost of filing a single lawsuit and subsequently harass them to coerce settlements.
- 11-cv-03479 (caed) Pacific Century International, Ltd v. Unknown (actually a single Doe plus 120 co-conspirators), filed 2011-12-30 by Brett L. Gibbs, Esq., Prenda Law Inc.
- 11-cv-03478 (caed) First Time Videos, LLC, v. John Doe (actually a single Doe plus 115 co-conspirators), filed 2011-12-30 by Brett L. Gibbs, Esq., Prenda Law Inc.
- 11-cv-03476 (caed) Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Unknown (actually a single Doe plus 128 co-conspirators), filed 2011-12-30 by Brett L. Gibbs, Esq., Prenda Law Inc.
These three cases (and maybe others — I did not perform an exhaustive search) were not mentioned in the report at all. Gibbs probably can “explain” this omission: he may dance around the truth claiming that these cases are not among “copyright infringement cases involving multiple joined John Doe Defendants,” but I don’t believe that any judge would buy this weak excuse. A naïve belief that a pure technicality prevents judges (and public) from seeing the bigger picture is simply laughable.
2. Florida’s “Pure Bill of Discovery”
Another set of cases that did not make it to the list is comprised of Florida’s state cases that are based on the antiquated “Pure Bill of Discovery.” Again, trolls may claim that those are not “copyright infringement cases,” and technically they are correct: state courts have nothing to do with copyright, which is a federal issue. Nonetheless, since these cases are based on the alleged copyright infringement, I’m sure that judge Lucy Koh (and other federal judges) would love to know about them and about the fact that Miami-Dade judicial hellhole continues to usurp federal powers and deserves a good slap on the wrist.
Fight © Trolls 
I do not see this case in the disclosure either:
Millennium TGA, Inc. v. John Doe 4:11-cv-04501
https://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/texas-southern-district-court/87025/millennium-tga-inc-v-john-doe/summary/
Nearly 1,000 “co-conspirators”.
Although McIntyre is one of Steele’s co-racketeers, “officially” he is not associated with Prenda – same as Timothy Andersen or Wayne O’Bryan. So we cannot claim that not disclosing this case constitutes lies.
BTW, there is a nice amateur motion to quash in this case – short and up to the point, definiteness written by the defendant, and in English rather than Legalese.
You are right abou the motion but I hope that is not his real name, address, phone number and email address at the end of it.
Double checked: no phone number but still… .
So even though he’s not “officially” associated with Prenda, Paul Duffy from Prenda law can do the work and sign the official subpoena requests in the DC District Court? These people are sick.
Unfortunately motion is likely to be held as moot because defendant has provided his real name and address on the motion to quash.
By the way, how can Timothy Anderson not be considered associated with Prenda when he has signed and filed amicus briefs written by Steele-Hansmeier (which is now Prenda) before?
https://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2011/10/18/trolls-in-panic-steele-hansmeier-files-an-amicus-brief-trying-to-prevent-the-inevitable-downfall-of-the-us-trolls/
If they’re trying to present to court that they’re in no way associated with each other, then it seems to me that they’re purposely misleading/lying to the court and it may be grounds to get them sanctioned. I mean, how often does an attorney sign and file briefs for a law firm he’s supposedly has no relations with?
The court needs to be made aware of this deceit.
Digging themselves deeper & deeper…friggin’ trolls!
“Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions!!!”
You’ve asked before how to subscribe to comments without posting. I suggested to post a comment “subscribe” as you did, and it is good if you want to follow only a few specific comment threads.
But if anyone wants to follow ALL the threads, I found a better solution: this site has a RSS feed for all the comments. If you don’t want a hassle of using RSS reader, there is a service rssfwd.com that forwards rss feed to email. Just register, enter “https://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/comments/feed/” for the feed and your e-mail. I use this service to follow DieTrollDie’s and Cashman’s comments.
Thought everyone might like this little gem that just came out yesterday:
IN THE CIRCUIT COUNTY
FILED ST. CLAIR COUNTY
TWENTIETH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT ST CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS
APR 12 2012
ORDER
Case called for hearing on pending motions to quash subpoenas: parties present through counsel, arguments heard IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED:
1) All pending motions to quash subpoenas filed by the ISPs are Denied.
2) All ISPs shall comply with plaintiffs outstanding subpoenas (consistent with the court’s order entered 12/16/11) as follows: ISPs shall issue any required statutory notice of this order to their subscribers and shall produce all client subscriber identifying information (including but not limited to name and address) on or before 6/12/12. (By agreement of plaintiff and Comcast, Comcast to produce 80% of its compliance on or before said date with final compliance to be completed by 6/26/12.)
3) The 18Ps shall provide the following notice in substantially the following form to their subscribers:
“we have been ordered to provide your identifying information to Prenda Law pursuant to a court order dated April 12,2012 in the case Lightspeed Media Corp. vs. John Doe, case number l1-L-683 in 81. Clair County, Illinois. The court has ordered that any motions filed relating to this order will be heard on July 20, 2012 at 10:00am. No other dates will be set to hear any motions relating to compliance with outstanding subpoenas. All Non-Attorneys are prohibited from directly contacting the court in any manner other than in writing.”
4) In the event one or more ISP subscribers file a motion of any kind relating to the release of their private information, that ISP shall delay production with respect to the moving subscribers only and shall not delay the release of the information of any other subscribers.
5) All pleadings objecting to the release of information must list the IP address associated with the person objecting. The ISP that has the subscribers information shall preserve all information until the court rules on the objecting motion.
Let me summarize it for those of you who are not used to using more than one brain cell, or one hand, at a time: The Master Troll came out from under his bridge and taught Comcast, Verizon, ATT, BellSouth, WayPort, Qwest, Cox, CenturyTel, Embarq some law! (After typing all those ISP names, I know what your right hands must feel like!). So for the 6500 pirates (that number is not a typo) in this case who were gloating that your ISP’s were protecting your crimes, get ready. There are some eager people that have been waiting for this day for some time. I know what your thinking, most of the crap written on this site is not true, how do I know this is accurate? Here is how you can tell. In the next ten days, a little bird has told me that the first 100 individual cases against NAMED defendants will be filed and placed on wefightpiracy.com. If it is not, you will all know the Master Troll is full of ^*(%(&#. If you see your name in lights (or the names of 100 of your pirating buddies), maybe, just maybe, they are really are coming after you thieving criminals.
PS. 1000 cases in May 🙂
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah ….
How about Yuen kicking your ass! Ha Ha Ha !!!
You’re full of SHIT and you know it!
Laughable.
This is just a circuit court order, it’s hasn’t even been challenged and moved into appellate court. Best case scenario is that Lightspeed continues to fight and it reaches the Illinois Supreme Court. Then this kind of litigation will finally get the attention it deserves. There will be a stay filed and granted, so don’t think this is done, not at all.
Additionally, there is another hearing on April 30, which is will before anyone needs to be in compliance with the order.
Even if this motion passes, it’s still improper discover. Once it hits Federal court, even on an individual case-by-case basis, it will be dismissed for improper discover and a whole host of other things.
If this were really about copyright, the plaintiffs would follow DMCA, which clearly they are not and will not.
And, oh, by the way, the Department of Homeland Security is now paying very close attention to these cases. We should expect that within the next three to four month that the Attorney General’s office will get involved.
Again, laughable. Hope you folks are prepared for the class-action suit and the general backlash from the legal system that you’re going to have to swallow.
Wow the arrogance of this post is amazing. I know I am feeding the troll but I have to respond. So essentially the court says you can proceed and get the customers information from the ISP. Boy that has never happened in the past…
What you are doing is taking advantage of the loopholes in the system. You are preying upon the ignorance or the assumptions of the court that people bringing the cases are actually you know going to proceed with them. Not use them as a extortion tool to go after people to get some blood money. You and the other trolls out there are truly what is wrong with the system these days. It is sad and unfortunate that our system allows things like this to proceed. Also by not individually filing these cases to save yourself a buck you are also committing fraud on the courts.
The court this case is pending in is a notorious haven for class action lawyers and now the Trolls have set up shop in one of the top 5 “judicial hellholes” according to another blogger. Pirate Hunter might want to run to the liquor shop before it closes tonight and stock up.
Cool story, bro.
Thanks!
blah blah blah is right. Yuen just lost his ass. He tried to avoid the depo and the judge ordered his client to an 11 hour depo. Opps. Of course my favorite port was when Yuen said some stupid, and the judge said “Mr. Yuen, if you say one more word, I am going to sanction you”.
Yep, your boy Yuen as a real ace!
pics or didn’t happen!!
This parasitic amoeba-brained divorce lawyer turned troll can’t even spell, let alone defend against a “legitimate” IP lawyer…
One thinks you meant “oops” not “opps”; one also thinks that you might have a favorite “port” – does this make you a “pretanda” sailor too, just like you’re a “pretenda” IP litigator? Maybe you meant “part,” or maybe you’re typing with one hand? 🙂
It is clear that truth is not your second nature, not third, and not even twentieth. You just cannot help it, lying even where it makes absolutely no sense to lie:
John Steele:
Judge:
What Buffy is neglecting to give you is context. Judges oftentimes beat up on lawyers to .encourage a settlement which I think is happening in the Yuen cases because the judge is nervous about ruling on a novel federal issue (is porno entitled to federal copyright protection?)
Oh, it’s on like Donkey Kong.
Ouch, pretty funny to see what happens when he actually has to litigate a copyright case, so far it doesn’t look like things will go well.
We all know that motion to dismiss was just a stalling tactic, which is Prenda’s real specialty, but still funny to see it get dropkicked into the garbage like that.
Rusty has until April 30 to actually file a response, hopefully that doesn’t make them too busy to start on their epic torrent of NAMED defendants.
I mean to actually file an ANSWER to the Wong complaint. Should be funny, especially how he addresses the registration issues.
Haha, Prenda getting DENIED on a motion to dismiss!? You’d think John would take his own advice about not bothering with those silly motions 😀
That motion of yours read like amateur hour anyway. If you have a war-chest from all that trolling maybe it’s time to spring for a real lawyer!
If a “real ace” = an actual IP lawyer, then yes, when compared to you and your “divorce lawyer” clown Posse, Yuen and his firm are real aces. Steele, Why don’t you pull the plug in California already? Your firm is going down in flames there and Gibbs seems to be hurting the rest of your cases around the country. Maybe he can help Lutz cold call people??? It is kind of curious that you claim Prenda is finally ready to sue everyone but can’t even afford another paralegal on the payroll to harass thousands of people. You got a real high end firm there champ! Have a Pirat Ale on me… cheers!
PH doesn’t read.
Click to access gov.uscourts.cand.248038.16.0.pdf
Mr. Abrahams is moving the court for a protective order to continue his deposition until after the court’s case management conference in his case so that he is not unduly burdened with attending two separate depositions—once in Hard Drive’s case and another deposition in his own case, both of which relate to Hard Drive’s infringement claims of its purported copyright. Mr. Abrahams is further moving the court for protective order so that it can occur on a date and time that his counsel is available.
A friend of mine received a letter Saturday from prenda law threatening him. And now is receiving threatening phone calls. The settlement offer has jumped from 3k to over 100k. He was in the hospital on the day of the alleged infringement.I don’t know what I can do to help. He is upset with me because I was supposed to be keeping an eye on his house. Please give advice if you can. I am very overwhelmed and concerned.
Sure he did.
Well at least that makes it easy for him to decide not to settle. If they do come after him 100k is a whole lot more than it will cost to defend the case, so clearly no reason to settle this one.
I spoke to him again. I misunderstood, they were saying they would come after him for that much if he didn’t settle. I am way out of my depth with all of this.