Prenda Law is the notorious, scandal-haunted copyright trolling lawfirm that represents various pornography producers, sending extortionate letters to people allegedly detected illegally downloading videos, demanding money to go away — the alternative being to have your name linked with embarrassing pornography titles in a public record forever.
Prenda made headlines lately for claiming that it was working for a man called Alan Cooper, allegedly the CEO of offshore companies that had hired Prenda to send legal threats on their behalf. Only one problem: Cooper says he has nothing to do with the companies or Prenda. When they were caught in this bit of alleged in-court identity theft, Prenda’s lawyers complained that their judge was being mean to them and tried to get him taken off their case. When this gambit failed, they tried several others — everything, in fact, except for admitting what seems obvious on its face: they’d misrepresented the facts to the court and stolen Cooper’s identity.
In my opinion, Prenda is a shitshow from stem to stern. From absurd claims like the existence of an adolescent male in a household is proof that illegal porn downloading must be taking place to weird legal theories about BitTorrent users being in conspiracy with one another despite never having met, communicated, and not being aware of one another, every one of Prenda’s actions smacks of utter desperation.
But Prenda’s desperation has reached new depths with its latest gambit: filing three defamation lawsuits each against people who called them out for their bad behavior, including Alan Cooper (the man whose identity was allegedly stolen in Prenda’s court filings) and his lawyer; and, apparently online news sites like Fight Copyright Trolls (who’ve tirelessly chronicled Prenda’s misdeeds), and message-board commenters who expressed shock at the bad behavior on exhibit in Prenda’s deeds.
This desperate move comes mere days before a California hearing on sanctions for Prenda’s counsel. Hilariously, in para 104, the lawyers for Prenda (who have given numerous grandstanding interviews to the national and global press) claim that they are not public figures. They also characterize countless instances of obvious opinion and hyperbole as libelous. And they are clearly fuzzy on the liability for libel on message boards, and the limitations thereof, as set out in the Communications Decency Act.
This feels to me like a last attempt to punish Prenda’s victims for daring to refuse to be victimized, a final shot before the inevitable court sanctions, bankruptcy, and potential jail time. It’s the kind of wickedness that makes it hard to believe in humanity’s essential morality. My goodness, it will be delightful to roast marshmallows over Prenda’s funeral pyre when that glorious day comes.
(Thanks, That Anonymous Coward!)