The purpose of this article is to specifically discuss the prospect of a Strike 3 Holdings Anonymous Settlement. A Strike 3 Holdings lawsuit targets users based on the activities taken by their IP address over a long period of time. Strike 3 Holdings copyright infringement lawsuits are filed with a federal court, Strike 3 Holdings subpoenas are sent to ISP subscribers, and after realizing that filing a motion to quash their subpoena might not be the best option, deciding whether to negotiate a settlement or to fight becomes the main consideration.
Strike 3 Holdings settlements are very expensive — not because they ask for a lot of money for the download (or streaming) of one of their copyrighted pornographic films, but because they ask for the settlement of EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE STRIKE 3 HOLDINGS MOVIES YOU MAY HAVE DOWNLOADED OVER THE COURSE OF YEARS. Thus, instead of asking for a settlement of, say, $3,500 for the download of one copyrighted video (as other copyright holders did), they’ll ask for a settlement of ALL 50 MOVIES they claim you downloaded over the last three (3) years. This article will go into the various pitfalls a defendant may face when being lured into a Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlement.
NOTE: BEFORE READING THIS ARTICLE: If you have not already done so, and you are implicated as a John Doe in a Strike 3 Holdings, LLC lawsuit, read these first:
- “ISP Subpoena Notification Received – WALKTHROUGH.” (Updated 3/2023).
- “Strike 3 Holdings Sued You? — JUST THE FACTS.” (Updated 3/2023).
- “Everything You Need To Know in One Page About Your Strike 3 Holdings Lawsuit [FAQ]” (Updated 3/2023).
- “In-Depth Strike 3 Holdings. Their Lawsuits, Their Strategies, and Their Settlements” (Updated 3/2023).
FOR IMMEDIATE CONTACT AN ATTORNEY: To set up a free consultation to speak to an attorney about your Strike 3 Holdings, LLC lawsuit, click here. Lastly, please feel free to e-mail me at info [at] cashmanlawfirm.com, or call 713-364-3476 to speak to me now about your case (I do prefer you read the articles first), or to get your questions answered.
Strike 3 Holdings’s list of “movies infringed” is often INCOMPLETE (and for a reason).
If you choose to fight and defend the infringement claims against you, they have ‘slick tricks’ built into their lawsuits. They file their lawsuit in federal court alleging copyright infringement of only one (1) video, and they list (for example,) the fifty (50) videos they claim you downloaded using BT software over the years. However, they hold back any other so-called “evidence” from the court and they do not list the videos you have downloaded in the recent months. Thus, if the lawsuit was filed in March, 2023, our experience is that that they’ll only list downloads you participated in until December, 2022. This leaves all of the Strike 3 Holdings downloads you participated in between January 2023 – March 2023 off of the lawsuit.
Why would they do this? Because they know that when you start fighting your case, you might dispute a number of their infringement claims in your response. You might even go line-by-line and tell the judge that they did not follow the copyright laws in protecting their rights (e.g., Strike 3 Holdings has consistently fudged the ‘publication’ requirement, as I have fought with them [and others] on this topic in the past). However, whether you are right or wrong, their method of hiding so-called “evidence” always gives the company the chance to ask for settlements for other titles they “found” that you downloaded as a threat against you fighting them in litigation on the merits. For example, they might say “If you argue that this list is not accurate, we actually have many more titles we believe you have downloaded — we can list these too when we proceed against you if you would like to risk of going down this path of inquiry.”
Obviously it is more complicated than this, but point being, I have seen that Strike 3 Holdings LLC lawsuits always keeps some set of information ‘off of the table,’ and they reserve this information to gain additional leverage when an inexperienced attorney tries to fight them on the line-by-line details of their court case (which, by the way, is often flawed or contains copy-and-paste mistakes from other lawsuits).
Strike 3 Holdings anticipated anonymous settlements and built in a way to re-sue defendants who settled.
Now as far as an anonymous settlement, Strike 3 Holdings lawsuits are ‘slick’ here too. Their lawsuits do not implicate you, a “John Doe” defendant, who has had many IP addresses over the past few years. Rather, they implicate only “John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address 172.2.51.244,” a John Doe defendant who has been assigned a specific IP address on one day.
(And if your lawsuit is “Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. John Doe”), regardless of the actual location where Strike 3 holdings sued you [while we are in Texas, many of our clients’ cases were in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania]), we are often explaining to our clients that they should look at the COMPLAINT ITSELF AND THEIR “EXHIBIT A” to see if they are implicated as downloading one title or multiple titles.)
Article reference: “How Strike 3 Holdings Lawsuits use an “EXHIBIT A” spreadsheet and your IP Address histroy to “prove” their claims of infringement.“
IP addresses (“IP”) are assigned to internet users when their router connects their computer to the internet. That IP does not belong to that internet user; rather, it is “leased” to that internet user for a limited time, usually 24 hours, 48 hours, or until they reboot their modem or otherwise obtain a new IP. Thus, your situation might be that the IP you have today might not be the same IP you had yesterday, and so on. Now IP addresses are pulled from a limited pool of addresses, so a particular internet service provider (“ISP”) might assign the same IP to a customer for a few days in a row, but that IP does not belong to that internet user. If it did, it would be called a “static IP address” which is significantly more expensive than the residential “dynamic IP addresses” leased to residential ISP customers.
Why is this relevant to you, the person behind the John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address 172.2.51.244 title? Because IF you settled anonymously, you would be settling as John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address 172.2.51.244, and not as the John Doe Defendant having had many IP addresses leased to him. Thus, Strike 3 Holdings, LLC could easily take your $12,000 settlement payment and say thank you, they could ask the isp to cancel the subpoena [historically, not relevant, but here was why], and they would then ask the court for your case to be dismissed… only to your surprise, they would then sue you again under a different “John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address [SOMETHING ELSE]” for this same set of movies allegedly downloaded. If you settled anonymously, your attorney would have ‘unwittingly’ opened you up to this problem, because John Doe subscriber assigned IP address X is a different fictitious legal entity than John Doe subscriber assigned IP address Y. This sounds like semantics, but buyer beware.
In sum, beware of the settlement factory attorney who tries to convince you to settle the claims against you “anonymously.”
Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlement “price gouging.”
Further, Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlements give the Strike 3 Holdings attorneys an opportunity to price gouge their settlement prices. Why? Because an attorney who comes to them asking them to settle anonymously (without disclosing to Strike 3 Holdings the identity of the defendant) prompts the Strike 3 Holdings attorney to inquire why that defendant wants to settle anonymously. “What does he have to hide?,” they ask. Immediately upon learning that the accused defendant wants to settle anonymously, they recognize that the copyright infringement defense attorney has lost all leverage in negotiating the settlement price, and they’ll “spike” the cost of their settlement demand. “Anonymous settlements come at a price,” they may say.
Attorneys Advocating “Anonymous Settlements” are Deceiving You.
Thus, it is important to understand the mechanics of a settlement before jumping to ask for an anonymous settlement. What most accused Strike 3 Holdings defendants do not realize is that the settlements ARE ALREADY ANONYMOUS [with minimal tweaking] without the defendant having to ask for it. A diligent attorney will negotiate a confidentiality clause into the settlement agreement (or strengthen one that is already in their boilerplate settlement agreement) to prevent their attorneys from disclosing the identity of the defendant with anyone. This means that your attorney can (and should) put your name in the settlement agreement itself. This avoids the entire John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address [SOMETHING] issue, because it is actually the real person (not the fictitious John Doe legal entity having a particular IP address) who is settling.
Rather than taking the effort to actually negotiate the terms of the agreement, your settlement factory attorney will try to convince you that you won’t suffer if you try to settle anonymously. This not only alleviates them of the need to negotiate the terms of the agreement, but it also allows them to use their “turn key” boilerplate e-mails, which the plaintiff attorneys (who have already agreed to a pre-arranged inflated settlement price) already know and recognize, so that they can ‘spike’ the settlement amount, gouge the settling defendant, and charge higher prices. I won’t go into the dishonest attorney issue, kickbacks, etc., as I have written about these issues before.
Once an accused Strike 3 Holdings defendant realizes that it is okay to allow his attorney to put his name in the settlement agreement, at that point, the release of liability itself covers 1) ALL PAST ACTS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT regarding 2) ALL OF STRIKE 3 HOLDING’S TITLES, and based on the wording of the CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE in the agreement the contract truly becomes an “anonymous settlement.” Let’s look into this one level deeper, just to be sure that we have also solved the other ‘slick tricks’ they have built into their court cases.
1) “ALL PAST ACTS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT”
Because the settlement agreement containing the name of the accused defendant (and not the so-called ‘anonymous’ fictitious John Doe entity), the settlement will cover “ALL PAST ACTS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.” This means that the settlement will cover even those downloads that they purposefully “left out” from the list of infringements filed with the lawsuit. Further, the Strike 3 Holdings settlement agreement WILL COVER EVEN THOSE DOWNLOADS MADE BY A “John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address” HAVING AN IP ADDRESS WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM THE “John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address” IMPLICATED AS THE DEFENDANT IN THIS CASE. In other words, by negotiating the terms of a Strike 3 Holdings settlement, but having the confidentiality clause protect the client’s identity, the settlement agreement having the client’s real name on it will not only be a true Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlement, but it will also cover any other fictitious “John Doe” entity that could have downloaded any of Strike 3 Holdings movies, ever.
2) “ALL OF STRIKE 3 HOLDINGS’ TITLES”
Strike 3 Holdings settlement agreements used to be very specific as to which specific Strike 3 Holdings titles were being settled, and the settlement used to cover ONLY THOSE TITLES and no other titles allegedly downloaded. This was back when the Patrick Collins, Inc. v. John Does 1-1000 cases were still being filed. Immediately we recognized that this limitation of the scope of the agreement to ONLY THOSE KNOWN TITLES DOWNLOADED exposed the client to multiple lawsuits for 1) Strike 3 Holdings movie titles that Strike 3 Holdings ‘slickly’ left out of their list, or 2) Strike 3 Holdings titles which their investigators missed. Thus today, when we negotiate a Strike 3 Holdings settlement, the settlement necessarily includes ALL PAST ACTS of copyright infringement FOR ALL OF STRIKE 3 HOLDINGS’ MOVIES.
In sum, when dealing with a copyright troll such as Strike 3 Holdings, LLC, and you see that they do something innocuous such as changing the lawsuit names from “Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. John Doe” to “Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. John Doe subscriber assigned IP address 214.42.955.8,” realize that THEY HAVE DONE THIS FOR A REASON.
What else can you tell me about the Strike 3 Holdings cases?
[2023 UPDATE] The best way to learn about Strike 3 Holdings, LLC is to read what happened to them as it happened. The list of stories below (in the order I listed them) tell the Strike 3 Holdings story in a way that you will understand them.The easiest way to do this is to click on the Strike 3 Holdings “CATEGORY link” [here], and read what articles I have written on Strike 3 Holdings and their recent activities.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT STRIKE 3 HOLDINGS, LLC:
Again, if you have been implicated as a John Doe defendant in a Strike 3 Holdings, LLC lawsuit, there are TWO (2) main articles you should read immediately:
- “ISP Subpoena Notification Received – WALKTHROUGH.”
- “Strike 3 Holdings, LLC — JUST THE FACTS.”
- “Everything You Need To Know in One Page About Your Strike 3 Holdings Lawsuit [FAQ]”
- “In-Depth Strike 3 Holdings. Their Lawsuits, Their Strategies, and Their Settlements”, and
- For contrast purposes only, how they Strike 3 Holdings cases may look similar to the former Malibu Media cases (no longer being filed).
FOR IMMEDIATE CONTACT WITH AN ATTORNEY: To set up a free consultation to speak to an attorney about your Strike 3 Holdings, LLC lawsuit, click here. Lastly, please feel free to e-mail me at info[at] cashmanlawfirm.com, or call 713-364-3476 to speak to me now about your case (I do prefer you read the articles first), or to get your questions answered.
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