Prenda Law Inc. is essentially finished.

Sometimes there are no words other than silence to best express the thoughts I have about Judge Wright’s order essentially referring John Steele and the Prenda Law Inc. gang to the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for all the settlements on which no taxes were paid. There is one police agency that a criminal organization does not want to be contacted by, and that is the CID.

The $81K in sanctions essentially funds the lead attorneys who spent time on this case. And, the referral to the bar associations means that the principals at Prenda Law Inc. may no longer have their law licenses shortly.

In sum, there is not much for me to comment here, except to be silent, because the judge’s order itself says all it needs to. Copyright trolling may seem profitable for the attorneys filing the lawsuits, but no money can compensate for the loss of freedom that one experiences when what was once a multi-million dollar law practice lands the principles in prison for tax evasion. This should be a lesson to all other copyright trolls out there. Judge yourselves accordingly.


CONTACT FORM: If you have a question or comment about what I have written, and you want to keep it *for my eyes only*, please feel free to use the form below. The information you post will be e-mailed to me, and I will be happy to respond.

    NOTE: No attorney client relationship is established by sending this form, and while the attorney-client privilege (which keeps everything that you share confidential and private) attaches immediately when you contact me, I do not become your attorney until we sign a contract together.  That being said, please do not state anything “incriminating” about your case when using this form, or more practically, in any e-mail.

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    DING, DONG, THE HARD DRIVE PRODUCTIONS CASE IS DEAD!

    I don’t know how to say this other than in my field of work, it is not often that I am shocked.  I often speak to local counsel who get excited that they are handling a “porn” case.  Just a few days ago, I called one of Steele’s (a.k.a., “Anti-Piracy Law Group”) local counsel.  When I introduced myself, he said to me (with a boyish excitement), “Aren’t you the porn lawyer?” to which I responded, “Aren’t YOU the porn lawyer?!?”

    Anyway, I cannot help but to generalize these cases into “okay, one more production company suing a college kid or husband for clicking on a link and viewing copyrighted materials.”  What I often forget is that there is usually some guy behind the scenes who has trailed so far into the world of pornography that he has opened up his own company, produced some porn videos, and now is suing defendants for their download.

    The motive is usually the same.  Instead of “let’s punish these pirates” as they would like you to believe, their motive is rather, “let’s hit up as many people for thousands of dollars each until we get shut down by the courts.”  In my opinion, this was the motive of the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. lawsuits.

    Digressing, the epic news of the day is that the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1,495 (Case No. 1:11-cv-01741) case has been dismissed.  Congratulations to the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC defendants who have been released from this case.  

    I don’t need to go into details about the case history — it has been riddled with controversy since they started suing internet users 2+ years ago.  As far as the legal issues were concerned, this was a typical copyright infringement lawsuit plagued with the same procedural issues that most of the other cases of its time suffered from — improper joinder (defendants were not part of the same “swarm”), and improper jurisdiction (defendants were sued in a court which did not have personal jurisdiction over them because the DC court’s reach could not decide the case against most of the defendants who were implicated in the lawsuit because they lived outside of the court’s jurisdiction).

    What surprised me about the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. case was not Hard Drive Productions, Inc., but the District of Columbia judges who made a political mess of these cases.  Judge Beryl Howell came on the scene making pro-copyright troll rulings, such as 1) “you don’t need to decide jurisdiction or joinder until a defendant is named and served in a lawsuit,” 2) an ISP cannot file a motion to quash on behalf of their subscribers, and 3) accused John Doe Defendants cannot file motions to quash until they are named as defendants in the case.  Mind you, she was a copyright lobbyist before she was appointed a federal judge.

    Then in February, 2012, Judge Facciola came in with a ruling in the West Coast Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1,434 (Case No. 1:11-cv-00055) case which I was sure was going to kill the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. case and all the other bittorrent cases in DC.  In his order, he ruled that “a defendant who does not live in the District of Columbia cannot be sued in the DC court because the DC court lacks jurisdiction over those defendants.”  However, at some point, it appears to me as if the RIAA/MPAA copyright lobby (probably by using Judge Beryl Howell as their mouthpiece) pressured Judge Facciola into giving into the copyright lobby’s pressure, and with a few contradictory rulings, he transitioned over to being Judge Beryl Howell’s sidekick in these cases.

    Judge Bates also came in appearing to protect the procedural rights of the accused defendants who lived outside of DC, but once again, after what appeared to be some pressure from the RIAA/MPAA copyright lobby (once again, my educated guess is that Judge Beryl Howell was the force behind what happened), he was removed from the case which Judge Facciola took over.  Then, after some time, it appears as if Judge Bates too eventually caved in to the RIAA/MPAA copyright lobby (some refer to them as the “mafia,” or the copyright police), and on my September 27th, 2012 post, Judge Bates reversed his decision in Hard Drive Productions, Inc. case and let the “extortion” of the John Doe Defendants at the hands of John Steele and Co. (a.k.a., Steele Hansmeier PLLC, a.k.a., Prenda Law Inc., and now a.k.a., the “Anti-Piracy Law Group”) continue.

    So.  The story with this dismissal is not necessarily a Hard Drive Productions, Inc. story, but a story of the forces behind the public interest groups and lobbyists who pressure Washington to always rule in favor of the copyright holder, regardless of whether the copyright holder is a pornography company, or whether the copyright holder is involved in making B-movies.  Bottom line, these lobbyists insist that WASHINGTON MUST CONTINUE TO BE PRO-COPYRIGHT AND MUST CONTINUE TO RULE IN FAVOR OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, regardless of who the copyright holder is, or at what cost.

    So as things stand in DC, there is still a split as to the rights of unnamed John Doe Defendants between the rulings of Judge Wilkins (relating to the “motion to compel” lawsuit by Prenda Law Inc. against Comcast relating to their Millennium TGA, Inc. cases [BTW, dismissed last week]) and the rulings of Judge Beryl Howell, because as you read, Judge Howell certified an interlocutory appeal to answer questions relevant to these cases, but it appears to me that someone is dragging their feet there in DC and hoping for a dismissal so that they don’t have to decide the issues.

    Lastly, there is a lot of activity on Twitter as to the 28 or so defendants who have settled their case, and some anger directed at these anonymous defendants who have settled.  Quite frankly, they are not all anonymous.  What happened with these is that without warning, Prenda Law Inc. turned around and sued one of these defendants (or threatened to imminently sue these defendants) in lawsuits in their home states.  I understand that many, if not most of the defendants in the “Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe” cases which were filed towards the end of 2011 probably settled (I’ve listed a few of the named defendants in the “At What Point Does a Copyright Troll Stop Being a Troll” article.)

    In closing, people are asking me whether I think Hard Drive Productions, Inc. is dead, or whether this is just the next logical progression before a slew of defendants being named.  I must note that Hard Drive Productions, Inc. got their butts kicked quite a few times, especially with the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 3:11-cv-05634-JCS (Seth Abrahams) case and the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 4:11-cv-05630-YGR (Liuxia Wong) case, both in California.  If you look at the http://www.rfcexpress.com website, there have been ZERO filings since March, 2012.  A defendant must also understand that with the egos of these copyright troll attorneys, there is the saying, “As the ego of the attorney inflates, so does his hourly rate.

    We also know there have been squabbles between Prenda Law Inc.’s local counsel and Steele, and we know that their own attorneys have been jumping ship (and in some cases even testifying against Prenda Law Inc. in their attempts to withdraw as local counsel.)  Thus, there are problems all around, so my best advise is to watch the http://www.rfcexpress.com website and see whether Hard Drive Productions, Inc. starts a flurry of lawsuits across the U.S. or not.  And remember — behind every lawsuit there is a person (joking using the term “person” to mean a human, a fictitious person (who might not exist), or an offshore entity) who needs to pay Steele’s legal fees so that he can pay for his Las Vegas lifestyle of traveling the country “not” representing his clients in these matters.


    CONTACT FORM: If you have a question or comment about what I have written, and you want to keep it *for my eyes only*, please feel free to use the form below. The information you post will be e-mailed to me, and I will be happy to respond.

      NOTE: No attorney client relationship is established by sending this form, and while the attorney-client privilege (which keeps everything that you share confidential and private) attaches immediately when you contact me, I do not become your attorney until we sign a contract together.  That being said, please do not state anything “incriminating” about your case when using this form, or more practically, in any e-mail.

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      Borrowing the analogy from SJD: “The Steele Snake Changes Its Skin Once Again.”

      Don’t get excited.  Prenda Law Inc. appears to be dead… just like Steele|Hansmeier, PLLC was dead last year (November 18th, 2011), and just like Steele Law Firm, PLLC was dead the year before…  Their new name will be called the Anti-Piracy Law Group.”

      I would joke around and say that these guys don’t want to file their tax returns so every year they shut down their entity and open up a new one.  Joking aside, it is my opinion that the reason they keep changing their name is to evade the courts’ recognition of their copyright trolling business strategy because the tough lesson they have learned is that their firm’s bad name follows their lawsuits.

      If you receive a notice from your internet service provider (ISP) containing a subpoena for copyright infringement, or if you receive a “scare” letter directly from the Anti-Piracy Law Group or one of their local counsel, do not be scared.  It is still the same John Steele / Paul Duffy Illinois racket foisting the same copyright trolling scam on us taxpayers.  As Sophisticated Jane Doe put it in her article, this is merely an example of a snake changing its skin… yet again.

      While John Steele’s “WeFightPiracy.com” website is still up, their “Prenda Law Inc.” entity according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s page is “NOT IN GOOD STANDING.”  I too don’t think this will change.  To get a glance at their new website which is looking for a home (note, “www.antipiracylawgroup.com” has already been registered by someone else), you can visit what the new site will likely look like at http://wefightpiracy.org.previewdns.com/about-us/.

      There is really not much else to say, except that I hear people are getting “scare” letters in the mail with the “Anti-Piracy Law Group” name on the letterhead.  If you are one of these recipients, just know that the game has not changed.  Everything is EXACTLY the same as it was when it was Prenda Law Inc., just as it was when it was Steele Hansmeier, PLLC, just as it was when it was Steele Law Firm, PLLC.  No changes.  No criminal charges.  No disbarments… yet.

      ON A PERSONAL NOTE:  Their new “Anti-Piracy Law Group” name is quite official sounding.  I wonder if next year they’ll have the gall to call themselves the U.S. Copyright Group (oh yeah, that’s been done already by other copyright trolls), because choosing scary-sounding names and changing them as soon as the courts catch on to their scam seems to be their modus operandi these days.


      CONTACT FORM: If you have a question or comment about what I have written, and you want to keep it *for my eyes only*, please feel free to use the form below. The information you post will be e-mailed to me, and I will be happy to respond.

        NOTE: No attorney client relationship is established by sending this form, and while the attorney-client privilege (which keeps everything that you share confidential and private) attaches immediately when you contact me, I do not become your attorney until we sign a contract together.  That being said, please do not state anything “incriminating” about your case when using this form, or more practically, in any e-mail.

        shalta boook now cta

        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. DC case NOT DISMISSED.

        This morning, the following appeared on the Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1,495 (Case No. 1:11-cv-01741-JDB-JMF) DC docket:

        10/18/2012 58 NOTICE of Voluntary Dismissal by HARD DRIVE PRODUCTIONS, INC. (Duffy, Paul) (Entered: 10/18/2012)

        I want to point out that this is NOT a dismissal of the case. If you look at the dismissal document, you’ll see that only one IP address was released [– someone paid Steele off and settled their case].

        The status of the case is that Judge Facciola is still presiding over this case, and the last thing he did was DENY Prenda Law Inc.’s request to suppress EFF’s AMICUS BRIEF. Thus, EFF’s brief is still on the docket, and the brief should be read and considered by the judge (although knowing Judge Facciola, he’ll probably ignore it and let the case continue).

        At what point does a “copyright troll” stop being a troll?

        At what point does an attorney stop being a copyright troll?

        Anyone who knows me knows that John Steele [one of the original trolls from 2010] and I are not the closest of friends. In our many conversations, I have told him quite frankly that I considered him an enemy, and I have told him [and the world] what I think about his lawsuits.  We have sparred over the years over the forums, over clients, over settlements, and to date, everyone knows what I think about his copyright trolling efforts — the “grand extortion scheme” him and his local counsel have foisted over countless victims.  Together, Steele’s law firm — whether it is under the name “Steele Law Firm, PLLC,” “Steele Hansmeier, PLLC,” “Prenda Law Inc.,” (or even more recently, “Joseph Perea, P.A.” [although I have no idea if Joseph Perea is acting on his own, or whether this is a “fake” company, and he is still working under Prenda Law Inc.]) — has inflicted painful damage over the retirement accounts and savings accounts of COUNTLESS people (many of whom had NOTHING to do with the downloading or the hacking they were accused of doing).

        The big elephant in the room has always been “open wi-fi”. Yet guilty or not, people still pay up, and John Steele profits.

        The concerning thing about John Steele is that even he refers to himself as a copyright troll, and he appears to be proud of it.  However, while the classic definition of a “troll” is an enterprising attorney who has taken advantage of the legal system (or a loophole or a weakness in it) for his client’s material benefit, I understand a “copyright troll” term in the bittorrent lawsuit context to more commonly mean “an attorney or a company who sues many internet users for the purpose of extorting multi-thousand dollar settlements from the accused, regardless of whether or not they are guilty, AND who has NO INTENTION OF MOVING FORWARD AGAINST ANY OF THOSE DEFENDANTS IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.” In short, a copyright troll is someone who sues a lot of people and demands settlements through robocalls, “scare” letters, and threatening phone calls, but who has NO INTENT to move forward against those individuals should they decide not to settle.

        The problem is that I’m not so sure that definition still holds, because John Steele, along with his threateningly growing number of local counsel across the U.S. are naming defendants.

        RECAP: Initially, John Steele sued hundreds and thousands of defendants at a time, most of whom did not live in the state in which they were sued. Those were the older cases, most of which have all gone bust because the courts lacked PERSONAL JURISDICTION over the defendants. That was where we saw the “Congratulations to the Cashman Law Firm, PLLC clients who were SEVERED AND DISMISSED from [whatever] lawsuit” posts in 2010-early 2012. Then Steele smartened up. He (though his local attorneys) started filing SMALLER CASES where in many cases, the defendants lived in the states in which they were sued. Hence JURISDICTION WAS PROPER. However, even there, John Steele was still a copyright troll.

        But, eventually people caught on that JOHN STEELE WAS NOT “NAMING” ANYONE AS A DEFENDANT, and no doubt his cases lost any credibility the might have had. Even judges started calling his cases a grand extortion scheme, and even in the news today, SOME JUDGES are shutting down his cases IMMEDIATELY before you — the accused bittorrent user — learned that you are sued. In other words, their initial “MOTION FOR EARLY DISCOVERY” to send subpoenas to the ISPs to learn the identities of the IP addresses / John Doe Defendants are here-and-there beind DENIED. But even here, John Steele is still a copyright troll.

        Where John Steele loses the status of “copyright troll” is when he starts going after individual defendants in the courtroom. Once he files a First Time Videos, LLC v. James Swarez (a fictitional name), and James is now dragged into a lawsuit kicking and screaming and is forced to hire an attorney to file an “answer” with the court, and then James needs to give up his computer to some sleazy digital forensics experts hired by the attorneys (or he can hire his own), and he has to actually fight a real copyright case on the merits of whether or not he actually downloaded the copyrighted works he was accused of downloading in the lawsuit, well, at this point, John Steele is no longer a copyright troll, but rather, John Steele becomes merely a predatory attorney who is suing someone on behalf of his client for the violation of his client’s “copyright rights.”

        Now the shift that is important to note is that in the olden days, John Steele did not name anybody. He never did, and for a while, many thought he never would (except perhaps one here or there just to prove to the courts or the world that he could and would name defendants).

        However, the new strategy is that he *is* naming defendants. In fact, below is a list of defendants (for their own privacy [so that their names do not show up on search engines following this post — because PACER court documents often don’t get indexed on the search engines, but my posts do], I have edited out their last names, except for a few notorious cases) who have been named in their lawsuits (and this list is a crude list, some of which are state cases, and I even know of a few cases which are not on here):

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN ALABAMA
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Dewey W., 05-CV-2012-900893 (Dewey W.)

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN ARIZONA
        First Time Videos, LLC v. Gary P., 2:12-cv-01488-ROS (Gary P.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Adam Sekora, CV2012-053194 (Adam Sekora)

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN CALIFORNIA
        AF Holdings LLC v. John Doe, 2:11-cv-03076-LKK-KJN (Francisco R.)
        AF Holdings LLC v. John Doe, 3:11-cv-05633-JSC (Vu C.)
        AF Holdings, LLC v. John Doe, 3:12-cv-02049-EDL (Josh H.)
        AF Holdings, LLC v. John Doe, 5:12-cv-02048-HRL (John B.)
        Boy Racer Inc. v. John Doe, 4:11-cv-06634-DMR (Daniel C.)
        Boy Racer, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-01935-LJO-SKO (Anthony N.)
        Boy Racer, Inc. v. John Doe, 3:11-cv-05628-JCS (Samuel T.)
        Boy Racer, Inc. v. Philip W., 2:11-cv-03072-MCE-KJN (Philip W.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 2:11-cv-03074-KJM-CKD (Jeff G.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 2:11-cv-03075-JAM-JFM (Kenneth S.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 3:11-cv-05634-JCS (Seth Abrahams)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 4:11-cv-03826-DMR (Soukha P.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 4:11-cv-05630-YGR (Liuxia Wong)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 5:11-cv-05631-PSG (Isaac K.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Reza S., 37-2012-00100384-CU-BC-CTL (Reza S.)
        Millennium TGA, Inc. v. John Doe, 2:11-cv-03080-MCE-KJN (Joe V.)
        Millennium TGA, Inc. v. John Doe, 3:12-cv-00792-MMA (Tyree P.)
        Pink Lotus Entertainment, LLC v. John Doe and Steve P., 2:11-cv-03073-WBS-KJN (Steve P.)
        Pink Lotus Entertainment, LLC v. John Doe, 2:11-cv-03077-JAM-KJN (Jason A.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Myron H., 12-CV-0952 (Myron H.)

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN ILLINOIS
        First Time Videos LLC v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08334 (Arthur S.)
        First Time Videos LLC v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08335 (Arthur H.)
        First Time Videos LLC v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08336 (Christopher P.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08333 (Jason S.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08337 (Jamie P.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08339 (Gerald G.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08340 (Edward N.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08341 (Erik S.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08342 (Stilan P.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08343 (Hyung K.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:12-cv-01053-MMM-JAG (Matt R.)
        Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. John Doe, 1:12-cv-01104 (Robert R.)
        Pink Lotus Entertainment, LLC v. John Doe, 1:11-cv-08338 (Klint C.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Lucas S.,2012L000927 (Lucas S.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Michael A., 2012L000530 (Michael A.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Ronald T., 2012L000531 (Ronald T.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Tom B., 2012L95 (Tom B.)

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN NEVADA
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Adam G., CI12-2625 (Adam G.)

        DEFENDANTS NAMED IN TEXAS
        First Time Videos, LLC & AF Holdings, LLC v. John Doe, 4:12-cv-00535 (Tingwei & Chinatsu L.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Austin C., C-133,846 (Austin C.)
        Pacific Century International, LTD v. John Doe, 4:12-cv-00536 (Stephen C.)
        Lightspeed Media Corporation v. W.T., Inc., CV2012-053230(W.T., Inc.)

        In sum, as you can see, John Steele (through Prenda Law Inc. and his local counsel) are naming defendants, and one-by-one, they are hiring new counsel in a number of states to file against individuals. Now does this mean that John Steele is no longer a copyright troll? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that he is taking the “next step,” and he is forcing more and more individuals into litigation.  This is a concerning trend.

        MY OPINION: Will he come after you? Quite frankly, with the tens of thousands of individuals he has sued, this small list is only a sliver of the huge pool of defendants who have been sued (NOT “NAMED”), who have been dismissed, and who are somewhere in between. The point though, is that while once upon a time John Steele did not name defendants, now he does.

        On a personal note, I am saddened by writing this post, and as much as I always love to write the “we won!” articles (and THERE ARE SO MANY OF THOSE OUT THERE that don’t make it onto this blog), a defendant that calls my office needs to understand that there IS a risk that they might be named as a defendant at some point in the future. As we have said before, it is important that both current defendants AND DISMISSED DEFENDANTS should keep an eye out for Prenda Law Inc. filings in their state. The way they can do this is by going to the http://www.rfcexpress.com website, and watching what is going on in their state. Until a Prenda Law Inc. client (e.g., Hard Drive Productions, AF Holdings, First Time Videos, LLC) files against a John Doe or against a named defendant in a particular state, it is safe to assume they are not yet there and quite frankly, in my opinion, the risk of getting “named” is quite low. But then again, you need to be vigilant even after a dismissal, and for this reason, I have written this blog post.  This simply was not the case just a few months ago.