I was floored when I saw this. A proactive John Doe Defendant (Dan Krebs) wrote Judge Facciola asking him why he ordered copyright trolls in the Patrick Collins, Inc. v. Does 1-72 (Case No. 1:11-cv-00058) case not to contact Doe Defendants until they are named and served, but in the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1,495 (Case No. 1:11-cv-01741) case, the judge continues to allow John Steele and his Prenda Law Inc. gang to do whatever they want with the Doe Defendants (and consequently, Steele is sending out “scare” letters to the unnamed defendants).
While the lack of consistency between rulings from the judge is not surprising, I cannot help but to think of the words, “bias, corruption, and perhaps cronyism” when I think of his treatment of these bittorrent cases.
What floored me, however, was the “F’you” order he issued in response to Dan’s letter to the court. In short, he stated,
“The Court notes that it will not answer this correspondence since an extra-judicial comment about matters pending before it is inappropriate.”
Or, in other words, “F’You. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my own court. This is MY WORLD, MY PLAYGROUND, and I will play however I want to!”
My opinion: Kudos to you, Dan. Your letter was proactive, and you called out the judge on his inconsistent rulings. It is my opinion that all judges should have watchdogs like you to force them to adhere to their own precedents.
Attached is Dan’s Letter sent to the court.
And, attached is the Judge’s response.
[NOTE: Scribd is experiencing issues right now. Will update links later.]—
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Thank you for your comment. I see from your IP address (68.83.177.118; c-68-83-177-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) that you are in PA, and kudos to you too for securing the oldest attorney e-mail in the world. You cannot get better than an attorney@aol.com account. That being said, please feel calm that I would not make a statement such as anything that I have written about the DC judges unless I had some justification to make them. If you have done your own research, the rabbit hole — so to speak — goes very deep. However, this is not a conspiracy theory blog, so I do not report on those details (especially since they are not relevant to bittorrent cases). That being said, if you have something to say, please say it.
It is sad to me to see different rulings come out of different courts on the same types of cases, it is more concerning to see inconsistent behavior from 1 judge.
I guess that is the benefit of being on the outside looking in, we can see all of the cases and the track record of the different trolls. We know the patterns of how the cases will go, we know the flaws in the tech, we know the tricks they use to scare people with worst case scenario fairy tales, we have no illusions that these cases are being run by lawyers who are concerned with law over income.
Filing this type of letter is idiotic. By challenging the Judge’s authority in this way, calling him names is only going to push him further away from supporting the Does. The simple fact is that Judges do not want to be criticized, particularly not in this public manner.
I agree that judges do not like to be second-guessed. However, in cases which are politicized, judges — correct or not — do react and cave in to public opinion. Quite frankly, I think you are correct that this defendant will probably be harmed by writing such a letter, and that he should have done so anonymously. However, he was correct in his statement, and judges should be aware that people do read their decisions and hold them to their prior decisions.
Facciola is as corrupt as they come. I was hopeful when I first read his bio, but he has proven himself to be far inside the “rabbit hole”. Too bad, I’m sure that at one time he was doing this for the good of all, now he’s a shining example of why judges shouldn’t serve lifetime appointments.
Judge Facciola. Fascist. FASCIST.
I like (or rather, don’t like) the part where it said “ORDERED”. You know, in big, bold letters.