THE PROBLEM: You were sued by Strike 3 Holdings, LLC (not you exactly, but you implicated as the placeholder “John Doe Defendant”). You received a notice of subpoena from your ISP. This ISP letter told you that you were accused in a “Strike 3 Holdings LLC v. John Doe subscriber assigned IP address” litigation lawsuit. The ISP letter is based upon a subpoena from Strike 3 Holdings. The lawsuit is a federal copyright infringement lawsuit, and you have learned that Strike 3 Holdings aggressively pursues accused downloaders.
WHY YOU ARE HERE: You are looking to hire a lawyer from a copyright infringement defense law firm with a legal team to help you litigate the claims against you. Or, you want to determine whether you need a lawyer to engage in confidential settlement discussions to settle the case (even if you financial hardship). Or, you might just be wondering whether you should ignore the subpoena and not choose to settle at all.
WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN: You have seen other law firms in the search results, e.g., Antonelli Law, or Vondran Legal, as have many other Strike 3 Holdings defendants.
YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOLD: To settle with Strike 3 Holdings anonymously. The problem is that an anonymous settlement in a Strike 3 Holdings lawsuit might not properly protect your interests.
Keep reading, and if you agree with me, then call us. I might be able to give you some peace of mind by speaking to you about your case, and really how to handle it.
This purpose of this article is to expose the various pitfalls a defendant may face when being lured into a Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlement, and to share how to create a better, more enforceable settlement agreement and release of liability.
WHAT YOU WILL GET BY READING: If you do settle, you will be able to protect yourself against future lawsuits; you will never need to settle again, which could save you thousands or dollars. And, by doing things ‘correctly’ (and not getting sucked into a scam), you will be able to better protect your legal interests by having a better settlement agreement itself — a better and more enforceable legal document that can protect you and inoculate you in case Strike 3 decides to sue you again (and again) for ‘other titles’ you might have also downloaded.
Overview of Strike 3 Holdings Lawsuits against John Doe Defendants who received a subpoena or legal notice from Strike 3 Holdings.
Why Strike 3 Holdings Settlements are Expensive.
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, when you settle a Strike 3 Holdings lawsuit, 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. This “per movie” calculation that they do multiplies the per-title amount that they ask for by how many of their copyrighted works they believe you have downloaded.
Thus, instead of asking for a settlement of $3,500 for the download of one copyrighted video (as other copyright holders have done in the past), they’ll ask for a settlement of ALL 50 MOVIES they claim you downloaded over the last three (3) years.
[Strike 3 Holdings asks initially for $750/title, and then they go down to $600/title. Average Strike 3 Holdings settlement amounts are between $12,000 – $18,000). If the client cannot afford these numbers, settlements end up becoming an analysis of what the accused defendant can afford to pay.]
Every case is different, so the 3 key elements are:
- How many titles did they download,
- What settlement amounts (along the bell curve) have they agreed to in the past, and
- If my client cannot afford what they are asking for (or what they have accepted in the past), how much can he actually come up with?
If you choose to fight and defend the infringement claims against you, they have ‘slick tricks’ built into their lawsuits.
The ‘real number’ of titles downloaded is left off of the lawsuit’s EXHIBIT A.
They file their lawsuit in federal court alleging copyright infringement of only one (1) video. In the EXHIBIT A, 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” (other videos you might have downloaded) 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, 2026, our experience is that that they’ll only list downloads you participated in until December, 2025. This leaves all of the Strike 3 Holdings downloads you participated in between January 2026 – March 2026 off of the lawsuit.
They can now claim that they ‘found’ new titles that you recently downloaded.
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 knew ‘copyright infringement defense law firms’ would sell you an ANONYMOUS SETTLEMENT. By settling anonymously, they build in a way to sue you again.
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 173.3.56.214,” 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 173.3.56.214 title? Because IF you settled anonymously, you would be settling as John Doe, subscriber assigned IP address 173.3.56.214, 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. Many defense attorneys are not on your side:
- Beware of the settlement factory attorney who tries to convince you to settle your case, and that they are the best ones to negotiate on your behalf (because of some good relationship they have with Strike 3 Holdings, or other concocted reason). Settlements should be based on FACTS AND DATA, not relationships and ‘winks’ shared between the plaintiff and defense attorneys.
- Be even more wary if they tell you settle and remain anonymous.
- Be especially wary if they tell you to pay a settlement regardless of whether you were downloading Strike 3 Holdings’ copyrighted videos.
But it also goes without saying… Beware of the Strike 3 Holdings attorneys as well.
Anonymous Settlements allow Strike 3 Holdings attorneys the ability to engage in “price gouging.”
Really, Strike 3 Holdings anonymous settlements give the Strike 3 Holdings attorneys an opportunity to price gouge their settlement prices.
Why? Because an attorney who suggests to their client that they settle, but remain anonymous (without disclosing to Strike 3 Holdings the identity of their client) 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 who suggest that you settle with Strike 3 Holdings, LLC using an “Anonymous Settlement” 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.
Strike 3 cases are already set up so that when they file a lawsuit, they sue an unknown internet user as a “John Doe”. Strike 3’s attorneys do this because if they filed every lawsuit against a named defendant, they would be so tied up in litigation that they would never have time to get a settlement from any defendant (my reason for arguing that actual damages, not statutory damages should be the standard in settlement-only-motivated cases). So by suing a legal fiction (a “John Doe” placeholder entity) — they avoid the need to have to go into court (whereas ‘going to court’ to prove their claim was why they were awarded the ability to ask for statutory damages in the first place). Despite the true motives for their lawsuits, Strike 3 DOES STILL get the ability to send a subpoena to discover your identity and pursue their settlement goals.
This “John Doe” scheme almost always causes you to run looking for an an ISP Subpoena Defense attorney to represent you in your Strike 3 case. The attorneys you see on the search engines (who often PAY for you to click on their website) will give you legal advice, but their advice is usually never to ignore your subpoena. Rather, their legal advice is almost always to pay Strike 3 Holdings, “because settling is cheaper than litigation.”
THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. SOMETIMES LITIGATING IS SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER THAN SETTLING.
There are only a few reasons why an accused defendant would want to settle the lawsuit that Strike 3 Holdings filed against them, and that is 1) if did the downloading, 2) or if they were already named and served, and they want to avoid litigation (and there are a number of valid reasons why a person would want to do this).
However, what people don’t realize — and THIS is WHY THEY DO NOT NEED AN ANONYMOUS SETTLEMENT.
The way these “John Doe” lawsuits are set up, an account holder who decides to settle would remain anonymous in many cases without any attempts to “anonymize” that defendant or take extra ‘fake steps’ to preserve that account holder’s anonymity.
TWEAKS TO THE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT (TO PROTECT YOU FROM NEEDING TO SETTLE AGAIN IN A FUTURE LAWSUIT).
Yes, 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 Strike 3 Holdings LLC’s lawyers (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., by so-called “copyright infringement defense lawyers,” who claim to “negotiate the best settlement,” as I have written about these issues before. The settlement process isn’t magic (like some settlement factories try to get you to believe); it is based on common sense, a bit of psychology, historical data (what they have accepted in the past), and MATH.]
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), all of the downloads happened prior to the settlement. So the settlement agreement needs to cover “ALL PAST ACTS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.” This also means it 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.
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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, or if you are seeking legal representation, 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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