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Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#52Smackdown!!!
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good appellate lawyer would likely argue that the judge's over-the-top reaction, along with his written commentary showing clear disdain for the business model of the plaintiffs and the attorneys, shows that the judge was unfairly biased against them from the outset of the case. I don't know if they would ultimately prevail on appeal, but the judge certainly opened the door for it.
I'm curious, what can they really appeal here? It seems like the biggest impact of the ruling is the circulation of the ruling to other jurisdictions and the referral of the matter to local / federal authorities. Is that something that is immediate and an appeal can only reduce the monetary finding, or is the whole order in stasis if they appeal?
Anyone can refer any matter to local or federal authorities, so that cannot be appealed, but the monetary judgement may be subject to appeal. A large portion of the basis for the findings of fact and punishments seems to pertain to conduct that simply isn't illegal. Statements like the following undermine the judge's impartiality:
"So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry. "
It is quite obvious that this is the conduct that the judge intends to punish through this order, but that conduct is entirely legal under current law. So are many of the other things the judge complains about, including the use of boilerplate language in the lawsuits, which is routinely done.
This judge disliked the plaintiffs from the outset and went combing through their conduct to find any way he could to nail them. Judges are not supposed to decide who they do or don't like in a case, then craft an outcome based upon those personal feelings. But that is exactly what happened here. Popular rulings aren't always legally sound.
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#54Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders o…
2 things jump out at me:
1 - From the perpetrators' POV, this kind of white collar crime is orders of magnitude safer and more lucrative than a blue collar equivalent. This may amount to evisceration, but it's nothing compared to a judge getting angry at drug dealers turning that kind of a profit.
2 - From the victims' POV (or at least many of them), the lawyer-extortionist, defense lawyers, laws & judges are all really part of the same "system." It's the system that is abusing them. The judge has tried to make it clear that it's the perpetrators abusing the system, but I wonder if victims feel that distinction. It sounds like a cleaned up version of this scheme might still be legal and profitable: Get actual porn copyright owners on board, pay their taxes, maybe actually litigate a case or two.
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#55What confuses me is that the only stuff they got smacked for was deficiency in how they operated, not anything fundamental to the business of copyright trolling. Another group of lawyers could easily do exactly this, while maintaining more arms-length relationships with the copyright owners, and not taking shortcuts on the cases, and be completely within the law.
That was the only thing they could be smacked for, so the judge smacked hard. It is possible to conduct this extortion within the law and that is a problem, but judges can't change law. Notice has now been sent however that if you're going to flaunt the law's deficiencies for personal gain at the expense of the legal commons, you damn well better bring your A game.
Beyond that, they also showed that such actions now has risk involved. Hopefully this will lead to the lawyers getting jail time, and that will in turn discourage more legit lawyers from trying a similar scheme even with a A game performance.
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#56Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders o…
It's interesting to me that the judge lets so much raw contempt show. I am more accustomed to judges presenting a dispassionate attitude; I always figured that this was an important part of their role of making impartial rulings in an adversarial system. Would showing this much unmasked disgust towards one party leave a ruling more vulnerable to accusations of bias on appeal (presuming this can even be appealed)?
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Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#57Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders o…
2 things jump out at me: 1 - From the perpetrators' POV, this kind of white collar crime is orders of magnitude safer and more lucrative than a blue collar equivalent. This may amount to evisceration, but it's nothing compared to a judge getting angry at drug dealers turning that kind of a profit. 2 - From the victims' POV (or at least many of them), the lawyer-extortionist, defense lawyers, laws & judges are all rea…
Regarding the "cleaned up" version, perhaps, it just won't be profitable? From judge's order:
"Further, Plaintiffs cannot conclude whether that person spoofed the IP address, is the subscriber of that IP address, or is someone else using that subscriber’s Internet access. Without better technology, prosecuting illegal BitTorrent activity requires substantial effort in order to make a case. It is simply not economically viable to properly prosecute the illegal download of a single copyrighted video."
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#58Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion. Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders o…
It's interesting to me that the judge lets so much raw contempt show. I am more accustomed to judges presenting a dispassionate attitude; I always figured that this was an important part of their role of making impartial rulings in an adversarial system. Would showing this much unmasked disgust towards one party leave a ruling more vulnerable to accusations of bias on appeal (presuming this can even be appealed)?
I suspect the turning point was the Prenda Law people turning up in court and taking the fifth.
By refusing to testify on the basis of the right to avoid self-incrimination, they effectively admitted on the court record that they'd committed a crime. At which point, the judge can see the smoke, and though he may not be allowed to investigate the ignition source he can certainly point the DOJ in the general direction of the fire.
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 things jump out at me: 1 - From the perpetrators' POV, this kind of white collar crime is orders of magnitude safer and more lucrative than a blue collar equivalent. This may amount to evisceration, but it's nothing compared to a judge getting angry at drug dealers turning that kind of a profit. 2 - From the victims' POV (or at least many of them), the lawyer-extortionist, defense lawyers, laws & judges are all rea…
Regarding the "cleaned up" version, perhaps, it just won't be profitable? From judge's order: "Further, Plaintiffs cannot conclude whether that person spoofed the IP address, is the subscriber of that IP address, or is someone else using that subscriber’s Internet access. Without better technology, prosecuting illegal BitTorrent activity requires substantial effort in order to make a case. It is simply not economical…
Maybe. I don't know enough about it to tell. It sounds like like a lot of the stuff leading to the judges angry response is somewhat incidental to the business model.
In any case, if they hadn't evaded taxes, forged signatures and were "legitimately" representing copyright owners they may not have gotten such "harsh" treatment from the judge. So even if not completely above board, they may have escaped with a wrist slap and moved on to another scam.
Re: Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order
#60The Star Trek references in the judgement are rather strange and (to me) diminish the judge's credibility. Is it normal practice for judges in the US to use popular culture references in their written judgements? Anyone care to explain the reasoning behind this?