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prenda law

September 6, 2018 by Leonard J. French

Copyright Troll Behind Prenda Law Pleads Guilty

Paul R. Hansmeier has pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges in Minnesota for his part in the Prenda Law “copyright troll” extortion scheme. The plea comes over a year after his remaining co-conspirator, John Steele, pleaded guilty last year to similar charges. The third perpetrator of the scheme, Paul Duffy, died of complications from alcoholism in 2015.

Reddit user /u/beardfearer may fear beards, but not copyright notices

In September 2010, Hansmeier, along with John Steele and Paul Duffy, began to represent pornography producers against alleged copyright infringement online.

They monitored activity on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing networks that use the bittorrent protocol — then sued IP addresses they alleged contributed to the downloading and sharing of their clients’ films. They obtained the identities of the alleged infringers through court subpoenas and sent settlement demand letters to thousands of defendants.

Many defendants were intimidated by the letters they received. Hansmeier and his associates saw BitTorrent downloads as a powerful money-making scheme. They created shell companies such as AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, Guava, and LW Systems, to seemingly insulate themselves from the exposure. They produced their own adult films and uploaded them to BitTorrent networks to encourage their download and sharing.

They then sued the very people who downloaded and shared their movies.

[Read more…] about Copyright Troll Behind Prenda Law Pleads Guilty

Filed Under: Bittorrent, Cablevision Subpoena, Cases, Comcast Subpoena, Copyright, Federal, States, Subpoena, Summons, Time Warner Subpoena, Verizon Subpoena Tagged With: hansmeier, prenda law

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Notice of subpoena to ISP?

If you have received a notice that your internet service provider has been subpoenaed in a lawsuit, you may still have time to protect your identity and keep your anonymity.

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Most Recent Updates

  • Strike 3 Holdings Files 18 New Cases in New Jersey February 8, 2019
  • Pennsylvania Flooded by 20+ File Sharing Lawsuits by Malibu Media and Strike 3 Holdings February 5, 2019
  • 12 More BitTorrent Lawsuits Filed in Illinois by Strike 3 Holdings February 2, 2019
  • Strike 3 Holdings Hits Maryland with 10 More BitTorrent Copyright Cases January 31, 2019
  • Virginia Hit with 13 More Strike 3 Holdings Lawsuits January 26, 2019
  • Strike 3 Holdings File 14 More Cases in Michigan January 24, 2019
  • Strike 3 Holdings Starts the New Year with 15 New Cases in New York January 22, 2019
  • Strike 3 Holdings Files 133 new cases in California January 16, 2019
  • Malibu Media Files 5 More File Sharing Lawsuits in Virginia January 10, 2019
  • Malibu Media Files 9 More BitTorrent Lawsuits in Maryland January 8, 2019

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