Prenda
Connecticut defendant strikes back at AF Holdings with articulate counterclaims
Friday’s Connecticut campaign delivered an (un)expected strike in AF Holdings LLC v. Elliot Olivias (MAD 12-cv-01401). The heroes and villains are the same, plus a local CT attorney Frances Codd Slusarz on our side.
As usually, it is easy to feature Booth Sweet’s pleadings: neither translation nor annotation necessary. Just skip the legal mumbo-jumbo “defendant denies the allegation in paragraph…,” have a quick look at 23 (!) affirmative defenses on pages 5-9, and proceed to slowly enjoying the counterclaims on page 10. There are four of them:
- Declaratory judgment on non-infringement
- Abuse of process
- Copyright misuse
- Defamation
It is worth noting that prior to this Answer no one (to the best of my knowledge) attacked one particular link in the chain of fraud — the fact that in many AF Holdings lawsuits, including this one, the copyright assignee is not “AF Holdings” but a mysterious non-party “AF Films,” hence AF Holdings has no standing to sue:
Plaintiff provides contrary information to its standing in the Complaint. Plaintiff includes with the Complaint the “Certificate of Registration” from the United States Copyright Office for “Sexual Obsession,” which lists that the author and copyright claimant as Heartbreaker Films in California. ECF No. 1-2. However, the assignee signing the agreement is AF Films, LLC, which is not a party to this case.
In fact, the concept of “standing” is not applicable to ghosts, so I propose to replace standing by levitation: “AF Holidngs has no levitation to sue.” I urge Jason to incorporate my proposal in the next pleading v. AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, Guava, LW Systems and other corporations run by ghosts.
Fight © Trolls 
We have now passed the Tipping Point. @SJD take a well earned respite. In one month or two the troll scenario is going to become radically altered.
I feel like I see where they are headed with this outfit. eventually they will start producing porn for a low cost (might only cost a single settlement payment.) They will then legally register the porn so they have all rights at the outset, unlike these previous incarnations. they will then have a surrogate release it to torrent sites so the uploader id isn’t traceable to them. Then they will harvest IP addresses to subpoena and harass. This, they will think, will be a stronger business model because they will own everything from the start. All these previous suits and settlements seem to have been a testing of the waters. try Each time refining the model after each misstep. They probably feel they are close to a perfect setup and will soon be able to print money from this scam. Mark my words: I foresee them lowering the settlement payment to around 1000 because more people would pay that sum.
All that said, I hate saying my thoughts in a public forum like this because I feel like it gives them ideas if they didn’t already have them. We all know they read these blogs.
I mostly agree with your assessment.
Regarding your concern about saying that out loudly: we cannot keep the cat in the bag. This community is blessed with many bright guys and girls who are capable of seeing the bigger picture, and I see more and more comments and tweets. We can conceal some concrete information for tactical purposes for a short time, but this one is too big, and increasingly obvious. I feel compelled about letting it go and making a big post that will include these thoughts.
It is what it is. Publicity was always a double-edged sword, but I believe that the benefits are far more valuable than drawbacks.
According to @MarcusLongon and @gaialovesco** Steele already is making porn.
you missed censoring the twitter name on the retweet. lol
That said, one wonders if they will legitimately build a site to sell the videos or if they will bypass that expense and go straight to distributing it on torrent sites. my guess is they will attempt a double dip. put it out on torrents and have a site, then distribute “illegal passwords” so they can harvest IPs coming in from those links to their site (and subpoena them for ‘hacking’.)
I want to refine one of my earlier points about my idea that they will lower settlement payments. They lower it to something like 1000 which will actually increase their revenue as far more people can raise that as opposed to 3500 and 6000. THEN, and this I would believe to be their endgame, they will be able to market themselves as the firm with the highest settlement rates in the country without trial, and… under their new AntiPiracy law firm name, might actually work to get new clients who only focus on stats and figures.
Of course, this is what Steele and company probably see as their future with rose colored glasses. I doubt they are able to see how damaged their names and reputations are. To use an example from the above article: Ruggiero actually had good standing and reviews as a lemon law lawyer (for those unaware, that’s when someone sells you a car that breaks down soon after purchase – the person who sold you the “lemon” refuses a refund and then you need a lawyer.) then Steele comes along and says “the stuff you’re doing now is small potatoes. how would you like to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year without even going into a courtroom except for show from time to time?” Well, for a small time lemon lawyer this sounds win win all around. However, now his name on Google is damaged. If you Google him, pages about this scheme and other schemes are working their way up in rank. pretty soon they will be the top results. Then all those people contracted by Prenda will become a cautionary tale when Steele comes knocking in need of new patsys with cleaner records on internet searches, and cleaner hands in court.
Sorry for the soapbox moment, but I don’t have my own blog to put these thoughts I have out. lol
Oh there is AF Films… I knew that was left around here somewhere….
Sorry I like cats, can’t keep them in bags….
Given all the recent activity with this case ie: Who is Alan Cooper? AF Holdings not even a real company? The date issue with regards to when copyright assignment was given to AF Holdings vs when the alleged infringement was made, I am curious if there are enough grounds to proactively sue John Steele / Prenda Law / Anti Piracy Law Group (who ever they are going by this week) on the grounds of willfully use false info to obtain my personal info from my ISP and then harassing me with letters and phone calls? Any thoughts to this?
Predictably on 2-14 Ruggiero filed a motion to strike “Defendant’s numerous immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous remarks regarding Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s counsel made in Defendant’s counterclaims.” http://ia601507.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.ctd.98605/gov.uscourts.ctd.98605.14.0.pdf Likewise he also filed a motion to dismiss the counterclaims “for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” http://ia701507.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.ctd.98605/gov.uscourts.ctd.98605.15.0.pdf
Like in the MAD case it is going to be entertaining to see Booth & Sweet use recent developments in both CACD and CAND in their reply. Speaking of which I think we will see some sort of a Hail Mary play in CA today but it may not hit PACER until tomorrow.