Doug McIntyre | TorrentLawyer ISP Subpoena

I Predict No Orange Jumpsuits For Prenda. Just sanctions.

April 5, 2017May 6, 2015 by Rob Cashman (Author, Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC)

It has been almost a full day since yesterday’s historic Prenda flop where the attorney for Prenda Law Inc. (formerly, Steele|Hansmeier, PLLC and before that, Steele Law Firm PLLC) appeared to be woefully unprepared to overturn the sanctions that were ordered against Prenda Law and their team. (Flashback: “The 12 minute hearing and the end of Prenda Law Inc.” on 4/3/2013)

For those of you who missed it, you can watch the entertaining video here (fast forward to the tall guy).

As a quick recap, two years ago, Prenda Law was caught forging the name “Alan Cooper” on the copyright assignment documents which gave them the apparent authority to sue on behalf of their clients. The “real” Alan Cooper (John Steele’s gardener) who was the victim of identity theft hired an attorney, showed up at one of Prenda’s hearings, and served John Steele with his own lawsuit.

I don’t know how to explain what happened in a recap other than that the whole “house of cards” that was Prenda Law Inc. was unraveled — not because of the Alan Cooper forgery issue, but because John Steele couldn’t stay away from the cases when he successfully made the courts believe that he sold his Steele Hansmeier PLLC law firm to Paul Duffy. Shortly afterwards, he resumed making phone calls and openly running things himself, and he started showing up at hearings and speaking to the judges. This is what tipped off Judge Otis Wright to ask who the real parties in interest were in these lawsuits.

Personally, it jaded me a bit to see that after being caught (having their grand scheme exposed by good lawyers), the lawyers for Prenda continued their stories of misinformation by lying under oath in their depositions and in court proceedings. Further, I was annoyed when I learned about the scheme unfold in its entirety, including the creation of various offshore entities created to funnel settlement payments, and where Prenda peddled the blatant lie that Mark Lutz (the paralegal) was the mastermind behind the lawsuits.

Being behind the scenes when all this was happening, I was also hearing about issues of Prenda Law lying to, not paying, and in one notorious case, turning against their own local counsel who put their law licenses in jeopardy to file the lawsuits on Prenda’s clients’ behalf. Lastly, there were even more issues that I was privy to that never even made it into the courtroom, namely what appeared to be a credible accusation that Prenda Law Inc. was uploading and seeding their own clients’ content on the bittorrent networks — the same bittorrent swarms in which they sued the internet users for downloading the content they uploaded.

My own thought process was that the proper judicial response was 1) for the federal judges to serve as the “guardians of the gates” of the federal courts [e.g., to kill the copyright infringement cases as they are filed based on principles of improper joinder, etc.], and 2) to prevent the attorney(s) at this point from practicing law through the remedies of suspension and disbarment through their local bar associations. If the attorney persists, the attorney(s) should be charged with the unauthorized practice of law. Yet none of this happened. A lawyer (who for the purposes of this article will remain private) filed ethical charges against John Steele to have him disbarred, and in return, Steele filed ethical charges against him [a story for him to tell, not my secrets to tell]. Then, Steele at some point appeared to have voluntarily disbarred himself and retired from the practice of law, and his organization went inactive in the Illinois state registry. Yet his involvement in the cases persisted.

Thus, I was not surprised when Judge Wright wrote his order sanctioning John Steele, the Hansmeier brothers, and all those involved in the conspiracy. What surprised me was their hubris in that they continued fighting after they already lost. This is why I call the Prenda Law fiasco a “circus.” Everybody continues to argue in circles, but nobody goes to jail.

So, getting back to yesterday’s hearing (YouTube Link), there were THREE ITEMS that I took note of in what was perhaps the most entertaining 3-panel judge hearing I have ever seen.

ITEM 1) John Steele and the Hansmeiers were quite upset that Judge Wright implicated them as having broken criminal laws, and even though they were never charged for the violation of those laws (which I could only guess include identity theft [forgery], extortion, perjury, fraud, and perhaps even money laundering and/or racketeering). [NOTE: There were other acts allegedly committed, including the unauthorized practice of law, violation of countless ethical rules including compensating a non-attorney as a partner of the law firm, alleged tax evasion, and misuse of corporate structures after they were dissolved, etc.] Many of these acts if looked into could make the principles of the law firm personally liable for any charges without the protection of a corporate entity.

They appear to have hired attorney Daniel Voelker for the sole purpose of disputing the $200K+ in sanctions awarded against them because Judge Wright implicated them in a lawsuit which they tried their darnedest to keep at an arms length through the use of legal structures, funneling money into offshore entities, using the paralegal as the “fall guy,” and through the use of local attorneys. But rather than arguing against the sanctions award on the merits of whether it was proper to award the sanctions, they appear to have been offended by the implication of having broken criminal law in what Judge Pregerson called “an ingenious extortion fraud [scheme].” Thus, they instructed attorney Voelker to request that the court REMAND (meaning, return to the lower courts as a “do over”) the case to the U.S. District Court so that they can properly defend the insinuation that they committed one or more crimes while running what was — at the time — the most successful copyright trolling extortion scheme in existence.

ITEM 2) Attorney Daniel Voelker appeared to be woefully unprepared for the hearing. When asked about the details of the various copyright troll lawsuits filed by Prenda Law Inc. / Steele Hansmeier PLLC / Steele Law Firm, PLLC, he was unaware of anything other than what was the subject of the appealed case. This was surprising to the judges, it was surprising to me, and I am sure it was surprising to the hundreds of “fans” who were watching the hearing live and streamed over the internet. How could this attorney not be aware of the hundreds of other filings that his client took part in?!?

I also want to point out that YET AGAIN, STEELE, HANSMEIER, AND MARK LUTZ THE PARALEGAL WERE NOTORIOUSLY ABSENT FROM THE PROCEEDINGS.

ITEM 3) Simplifying the discussions of damage multipliers and other damages issues that were discussed, the jist of what the judges needed to decide were 1) whether to uphold the sanctions award against Prenda Law and company, and 2) whether to remand the case so that the questions of criminal conduct could be hashed out.

IN MY OPINION, again, this whole Prenda Law fiasco is a circus. John Steele and his buddies have been “gaming” the system since they began, and even when their whole scheme came tumbling down around them, they turned to lying, cheating, and misdirection in order to get around the rules.

Nothing will right the wrongs that were inflicted on tens of thousands of internet users except seeing each of these attorneys disbarred and jailed for criminal conduct. Yet I cannot see this happening because notorious criminals today too often go uncharged. Judges too often find the “lazy” alternative of slapping an attorney with sanctions, and then not following up on their order when the attorney weasels their way out of paying those sanctions. This is a sign of a corrupt system, and as much as I have faith in the law, I do not have faith that the judges will inflict stern judgement (“fire and brimstone”) against a bunch of lawyers who look more like a**clowns in the courtroom.

Thus, it is my best guess that the sanctions will not only be upheld, but they will be strengthened and perhaps multiplied. However, as for the criminal prosecution of the clowns who perpetrated this grand heist of an extortion scheme, their activities will go unpunished. Maybe they’ll lose their law licenses (noting that in part, this has partially happened to some of them). Maybe they’ll be held personally liable without the shielding of the corporate entities they tried to use to hide their involvement in these cases. Maybe one or more of them will need to continue to hide their money indefinitely and file for bankruptcy. Maybe one or more of them will need to move out of the country and live out their days on a beach somewhere.

I don’t see orange jumpsuits in anyone’s future here. Not in today’s lawless society.

USEFUL ARTICLES ON YESTERDAY’S HEARING:

Fight Copyright Trolls (Sophisticated Jane Doe): Oral arguments in Prenda’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit: live video feed
Popehat: Prenda Law And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Appellate Argument
ArsTechnica: 9th Circuit judges rip into Prenda law copyright trolling scheme
TechDirt: Team Prenda Has A Very Bad Day In Court… And You Can Watch It All
X-Biz.com: Prenda Law’s ‘Copyright Trolling’ Operation Blasted at the 9th Circuit

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Prenda Law Inc. sues the anti-troll internet community.

March 5, 2023March 4, 2013 by Rob Cashman (Author, Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC)

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!”
– Sir Walter Scott, Marmion: Canto VI. (1771 – 1832)

My greatest effort in this blog is not to decide what to write about, but what NOT to write about. I’ve been very aware of John Steele’s issues in Minnesota (where he made an appearance for one of his cases, and was served by Paul Godfread’s process server on the Alan Cooper identity theft issue). I’ve also been aware of the issues as to whether AF Holdings, Guava, (and we won’t mention Ingenuity 13, or the older MCGIP lawsuits) are in fact entities or whether there is an bit of sham involved in their formation and/or the enforcement of the intellectual property they appear to hold. I have also noticed the clear trend from the smarter lawsuits where Steele moved from suing hundreds of John Doe Defendants to him suing smaller numbers of John Does (20-75) in smaller “under-the-radar” lawsuits, and then finally to the “John Doe” individual lawsuits, some of which ended up with named defendants who were not served, others where the defendants were actually served, and finally others where a defendant and his attorney agreed to allow Prenda to add hundreds of unrelated defendants to the lawsuits as potential co-conspirators.

Then when even the individual lawsuits looked to no longer be fruitful for him, I noticed the move from copyright enforcement to absurd tactics, some of which involved having Mark Lutz pose as a representative for a production company. I noticed when Prenda had their own local counsel (Joseph Perea) shift titles to avoid unauthorized practice of law issues (e.g., in Florida), and I noticed when local counsel Brett Gibbs ended up as “of counsel” for Prenda Law Inc., only to later disavow association from the firm when federal Judge Otis Wright mentioned the word “jail.” These absurd tactics have gone even farther, most recently with the creation of the Livewire Holdings, Inc. entity (see, Part I; Part II) using fake pictures on their website for their so-called “partners,” and reports that Mark Lutz (Prenda Law Inc.’s former paralegal, now pictured as “partner” in the Livewire Holdings, Inc. site) is back at it, calling dismissed defendants using a fake name. I almost fell off my chair when I read local counsel Brett Gibbs’ most recent declaration [under oath] that [he has been informed that] Mark Lutz was the CEO for AF Holdings, LLC (p.4, paragraph 7), and that he was also the CEO for Ingenuity 13, LLC (p.4, paragraph 8). Really?!?

All of this drama (including the Minnesota lawsuit and the so-called fake Alan Cooper issue) are topics I have purposefully chosen NOT to write about for the sole reason that they do not help my clients or potential clients understand the issues surrounding the copyright infringement lawsuits they face when they receive a subpoena notice from their ISP in the mail.

Behind the scenes, as owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC, I and my staff have spent literally months building up local counsel networks and researching each federal court’s rules to properly defend clients who are named as defendants in their copyright infringement lawsuits. I personally warned a number of copyright trolls that if they named my clients, myself and the attorneys I work with would find a way to make defending these cases affordable. So you can understand why I was amused when the principals at Prenda Law Inc. shifted from what looked to be a trend towards individual lawsuits against former John Doe Defendants to their more recent “world domination” shenanigans which led to widespread questions as to the identity of the “real” AF Holdings, LLC Alan Cooper, which of the copyright troll entities are real and which are shams, and then once caught, which led to the finger-pointing which began between their local counsel and other defense counsel, and then ultimately to the finger-pointing towards the principals at Prenda Law Inc. I’m happy that their lawsuits have gone nowhere these recent months, but personally I feel that their focus has shifted to “doubling down” on what appear to be outright lies rather than representing their clients to stop the piracy of their copyrighted films. I often stop myself from asking, “wasn’t that the whole purpose of this grand charade?” At least the war I thought I was fighting was to defend internet users from being subjected to copyright extortion-like lawsuits for the downloading or viewing of copyrighted movies and videos.

For these reasons, I really have nothing to say or comment because what Prenda Law Inc. / formerly, Steele|Hansmeier PLLC/ or more recently, the Anti-Piracy Law Group / John Steele / Paul Duffy / Brett Gibbs / former paralegal Mark Lutz (and their local counsel, many still disgruntled) have been doing and their antics have little-to-nothing to do with the so-called “rampant piracy” and the copyright infringement I thought they were here to stop.

So now John Steele and the entities he supposedly has nothing to do with are suing Paul Godfread, the real Alan Cooper (as opposed to the one they have not yet produced), along with all of the anti-copyright troll internet population, probably most notably, Sophisticated Jane Doe (http://www.fightcopyrighttrolls.com), Die Troll Die (http://www.dietrolldie.com), and probably a handful of others who have been hugely helpful to our law firm over the years through their reporting on Twitter. I could easily be part of this group of anti-copyright troll “Does” from all the posts I have written on his cases.

The problem with the “sue everyone for defamation” approach is 1) the elements of defamation are simply not there (as Forbes Magazine might report, John Steele is clearly a “public person” who has cast himself forth as being one of the foremost and first copyright trolls), 2) his lawsuits likely invoke the anti-SLAPP laws because they appear to have been filed to “create chilling effects and to stifle speech,” and most importantly, 3) people like Sophisticated Jane Doe, Die Troll Die, and the others blog and tweet anonymously. Thus, even if they figured out which IP addresses did the posting or the tweeting, the IP address will likely point to a private internet service who have no ability to even know who these anonymous bloggers are.

In closing, there is not much to say about these lawsuits. Techdirt wrote about them here. ArsTechnica wrote about them here. Sophisticated Jane Doe wrote about them here. Copyright Clerk wrote about them here. Jordan Rushie wrote about them here. No doubt there will be many more articles, and no doubt there will be much more drama. However, as far as these lawsuits affect his copyright infringement and “hacker” lawsuits (the purpose for which I write this blog), I cannot see them affecting his lawsuits positively, and if anything, this was a misstep for Steele and his affiliates.

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UPDATE (3/9/2013): DENIED. Automattic, Inc. letter to Prenda Law Inc. (on behalf of WordPress.com sites) rejects Prenda’s attempts to ascertain the IP addresses of the anti-troll community citing five (5) deficiencies in their subpoena. Other notable reasons for non-compliance with the subpoena include: 1) rights under the First Amendment to anonymous speech; 2) right to privacy; 3) subpoena (“outrageously”) overly broad; 4) subpoena seeks information that is not likely to lead to discoverable information.

Hard Drive Productions lawsuit is DEAD and Prenda attorneys still calling.

February 14, 2022January 17, 2013 by Rob Cashman (Author, Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC)

The Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1,495 (Case No. 1:11-cv-01741) case in the District of Columbia has been dead for almost a month now, and Prenda Law Inc. (now the “Anti-Piracy Law Group”) is still calling each and every dismissed defendant as if the case were still alive.

In my opinion, these calls to dismissed defendants are indeed very concerning. The threat is that unless a dismissed defendant settled, they will immediately name and serve them in the federal court in their home state.

HOW TO CHECK WHETHER THEIR THREATS HAVE ANY MERIT

I have literally been hearing about these threats from dismissed defendants for weeks, and there is a VERY EASY way to test whether their threats have merit or not — simply check to see whether Hard Drive Productions, Inc. has filed lawsuits naming individuals. The easiest way to do this is to visit http://www.rfcexpress.com, scroll down on the right-hand side, and check only the “copyright” button. Type “Hard Drive Productions” into the “Party Name” field, click submit, and you’ll see the last state and the last date they filed suit against defendants. [As of 6:45pm on 1/16/2013, there have been ABSOLUTELY NO FILINGS by Hard Drive Productions, Inc. since they tried to sue defendants here in the Southern District of Texas using Doug McIntyre as their local counsel — and you know how badly that ended for them.]

SHOULD YOU CALL THEM?

Now this should be common sense, but you NEVER want to be calling the attorney who is threatening to sue you. Especially when you already know that their game is to extort and solicit settlements from those they believe they can scare into settling.

CAN THEY FOLLOW-UP ON THEIR THREAT AND SUE YOU INDIVIDUALLY?

Obviously Prenda Law Inc. (now the “Anti-Piracy Law Group”) has the capacity to name and serve many individuals in many states. However, they are lawyers just as we are lawyers. And, whatever Prenda Law Inc. does on behalf of a client, somebody needs to pay the bill (especially if there is local counsel involved). If they are suing on behalf of Hard Drive Productions, Inc., then Hard Drive Productions, Inc. needs to pay their bills (or, you do by way of your settlements). Lawsuits are not cheap for a plaintiff, and the up-front cost of filing one ($350 per lawsuit), plus all the time drafting and responding to motions in front of a judge for each case is quite an undertaking.

SHOULD YOU SETTLE?

Thus, if you have no reason to settle, then don’t settle. If you see that they are naming and serving individuals, then contact one of us lawyers. Depending on your circumstances and if I can figure out a way for you to fight your case without settling, that might be the cheaper alternative. Just please don’t try to respond to their calls thinking that you’ll negotiate your way out of this. The only way to get out of this is to back them into a financial corner forcing them to drop your case, defend your case on the merits, or to pay them to make the case go away. I like any option that does not include sending them a check.

Sunlust Pictures, LLC attorney was a no-show this afternoon in the Southern District of Texas.

September 13, 2020December 11, 2012 by Rob Cashman (Author, Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC)

So… I was in the Southern District of Texas court this afternoon, and I thought that I would stop by and sit in on the Sunlust Pictures, LLC v. Does 1-75 (Case No. 4:12-cv-00695) case management hearing.

Prenda Law Inc.’s local counsel was a no show.

Using the court’s speaker phone, the clerk called Douglas Clemons, Prenda’s answer to Doug McIntyre’s withdrawal as local counsel from all of their cases.

RECEPTIONIST: “Manfred Sternberg & Associates, how may I help you?”
CLERK: “We are looking for Douglas Clemons. He has a hearing scheduled with Judge Ellison.”
RECEPTIONIST: “With who?”
CLERK: “Judge Ellison.”
RECEPTIONIST: “Let me see if he is here… No, he is not in the office. I don’t even see anything on his calendar for today. I’m going to transfer you to his cell phone. [click. dial tone.]”

In other words, Doug Clemons, local counsel to Prenda Law Inc. didn’t even know he had a hearing this afternoon. This baffles me — I’ve known about it for weeks. I expect that he has some explaining to do.

As far as the Sunlust Pictures, LLC v. Does 1-75 case is concerned, the hearing from today will probably be rescheduled with no consequences to the plaintiffs or to Prenda Law Inc.’s local counsel. That being said, I do want to point out that the John Doe Defendants in this case likely have nothing to worry about — well, at least the Comcast Cable Communications subscribers.

Comcast refused to comply with the subpoena issued to them to release the names of the accused defendants, and Prenda sued Comcast in DC in a “motion to compel” case entitled “Sunlust Pictures, LLC v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC” (Case No. 12-mc-00383). They have done this before. The judge denied Prenda’s motion, and thus Comcast will not be complying with the subpoena which essentially means that any Sunlust Pictures, LLC clients here in the Texas lawsuits are home free. Your plaintiff attorneys will not know who you are.

As for non-Comcast defendants, there will be another case management hearing. It’s probably a good idea to mount a proactive defense and at least let yourselves be heard. Judge Ellison is a fair judge, and he will listen to you regardless of whether you are represented by an attorney or not.

I think more generally that it is probably a good idea for Doe Defendants across the country to start showing up to these hearings. If you don’t have an attorney, wear a tie and a jacket, and say hello to the judge and the clerk. If you do not have an attorney representing you, then represent yourselves. I don’t think one local counsel who doesn’t have his heart invested in these cases can stand up to many of you, especially when you are passionately against these kinds of lawsuits.

Copyright Going Insane — How The Fight Between the Online Content Providers (ISPs) and TV Networks Are Affecting Our Bittorrent Piracy Lawsuits

September 11, 2020September 4, 2012 by Rob Cashman (Author, Owner of the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC)

I am always hesitant to write articles which are not relevant to the reason you are here. Very simply put, you and I are fighting against the production companies (the “copyright trolls”) who hire Intellectual Property (“IP”) Enforcement Companies and “copyright troll attorney” law firms who turn around and hire local counsel (your “Doug McIntyres, Joseph Pereas, and Mike Meiers” of the world) who sue defendants on behalf of their bosses to shake down internet users (regardless of whether they actually did the bittorrent downloads or not) to extort thousands of dollars “or else they will move forward in a copyright litigation lawsuit against that individual John Doe Defendant.” This is *our* fight.

However, there is a bigger fight looming in the courts, and our so-called “piracy” lawsuits are getting influenced by their headwinds — there is a brewing fight between 1) the CONTENT DISTRIBUTORS (e.g., the cable companies, the ISPs, and streaming content providers such as Netflix, Hulu, and now Amazon Prime), and 2) the CONTENT CREATORS (e.g., the television networks and movie, film, and production companies) who produce the films that the ISPs share with you, sometimes for a fee or a premium membership. Where it is impacting us is the strange and recent “out-of-place” rulings in our cases discussing the applicability of the Cable Act to ISPs. It appears that the judges want the ISPs and the CONTENT DISTRIBUTORS to fall under the Cable Act.

This morning, I read an ArsTechnica article written by New York Law School Professor James Grimmelmann entitled “Why Johnny can’t stream: How video copyright went insane,” which skillfully goes through the recent changes in the evolving application of copyright law from the creation of VHS and VCRs to today’s digital age of DVRs and more recently, Cablevision’s own DVR-RS (remote streaming — “DVRs in the cloud”) technology.

The ultimate issue which everyone is tiptoeing over is simply, “can an internet user download, share, stream, view, or save copyrighted content on their computers (or in their computer’s memory) and not be in violation of the copyright laws?” I suspect the answer will eventually be “yes,” but the law has a lot of catching up to do, and a lot of people like you and me will be sued in the process. This sounds scary, but this is the bigger fight we are in the middle of with our bittorent piracy lawsuits.

In the ArsTechnica article, it appears as if there is a circle of corporate parties fighting to capture the dollar of the internet user. The TV networks create and copyright the movies and the videos they produce, and the cable companies, the ISPs, and the online streaming companies pay extensive licensing fees to the TV networks in order to provide that TV show or that movie to their paying subscribers (and the advertisers who subsidize when subscribers view “free” content). The problem is that as a particular show (in my case, Stargate SG-1 which was pulled from Netflix a few weeks ago without explanation) gets popular, more people view and subscribe to the cable companies’ and online streaming companies’ websites to view the film. The problem is that as shows get more popular and the content distributors make more money from their subscriptions and their advertisers, the TV networks and content creators increase the licensing fees they demand from the cable companies and online streaming companies to erase their profits (and quite often to grossly unfair amounts). As a result, the cable companies and online streaming companies simply pull the show from the list of shows they offer their subscribers, and everyone loses. No TV show is being shown, the online content providers lose subscribers who go elsewhere, the advertisers don’t pay their advertising dollars (products that would be shown in the ads do not get sold) and the TV networks lost their licensing fees. Quite frankly, it is my opinion that this is where piracy kicks in, where users share with others shows that they cannot find online through normal streams of commerce without an outright purchase of a particular season at retail prices — in other words, the internet user loses as well.

In my opinion, the ArsTechnica article is more than a history lesson on copyright as its application to the everyday viewer has evolved over the years as the internet and technology has advanced, but it also discusses the absurdity of the “hoops” that cable companies and other start-ups are jumping through in order to be in strict compliance with the draconian copyright laws. Really? 10,000 tiny antennas so that a cable company does not infringe a TV network’s copyright [when ONE ANTENNA would serve exponentially more viewers at a dramatically LOWER COST to both the cable company AND the viewer]? This is where the laws are interfering with technology (think eating wet glue), and I have a problem with this.

As to the applicability of the cable companies (the “cable operators”) and the internet service providers (“ISPs”), I understand that these smaller-case Cable Act rulings in our cases have nothing to do with our problem, but with the fight between the cable companies, the ISPs, and the television networks. Cable companies have clear regulations as to where they fit within the Cable Act and the FCC’s rules. ISPs however are not so clear, and the water gets muddied when one skilled in telecommunications law compares the rules governing an ISP run by a cable company (e.g., Cablevision, or Xfinity run by Comcast, or Roadrunner run by Time Warner Cable, etc.) and the rules governing an ISP which provides their DSL, satellite (e.g., Dish Network), or fiber optic (e.g., Verizon “Fios”) who use means to allow users to view content other than through a coaxial cable. THE RELEVANCE OF THIS WHOLE FIGHT APPEARS TO BE OVER THE EVER-SKYROCKETING LICENSING FEES PAID TO THE TELEVISION NETWORKS, AND THE CABLE COMPANIES AND ISPs WHO ARE TRYING TO FIND WAYS NOT TO PAY THEM.

I understand that this should help you understand the headwinds which are affecting our cases, and while it is not relevant to the outcome of whether Hard Drive Productions, Inc. or West Coast Productions, Inc. sues thousands of internet users, or whether Malibu Media, LLC (a.k.a., “x-art”) has an unfair strategy in hooking internet users who download one torrent file (a bittorrent “siterip”) and are sued for twenty copyrighted films (even though they probably never downloaded them all in their entirety), it is still interesting to know that judges adjudicating the fight between the television networks and the ISPs are using our small lawsuits to plant case law which I suspect in the coming months and years will become relevant in the fight over licensing fees and which content provider has to pay them.