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The Courts Electronic Frontier Foundation

Federal Court Pulls Plug On Porn Copyright Shakedown 136

Posted by Soulskill from the millions-of-people-unwilling-to-admit-to-being-relieved dept.
netbuzz writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling it a 'crushing blow for copyright trolls.' A federal appeals court today has for the first time ruled against what critics call a shakedown scheme aimed at pornography downloaders and practiced by the likes of AF Holdings, an arm of notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit called the lawsuit 'a quintessential example of Prenda Law's modus operandi' in reversing a lower court ruling that would have forced a half-dozen ISPs to identify account holders associated with 1,058 IP addresses."
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Federal Court Pulls Plug On Porn Copyright Shakedown More

Federal Court Pulls Plug On Porn Copyright Shakedown

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  • I was just torrenting Game of Bones: Winter is Cumming for the articles........?

  • Sounds like... (Score:3)

    by luckymutt ( 996573 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2014 @09:50PM (#47104265)
    ...there might be a judge who knows how to torrent.

  • I ignored them (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They used to send twenty to thirty emails to support a month. They would call and tell me I was required to deliver them to our customers. I told them fine as long as they were willing to pay fifty dollars a truck roll we would hand deliver their emails to our customers. They never called back.

  • In general governments and "well-thinking" pressure groups don't like porn. It seems to me that a perfect and easy way to give that industry a heavy blow is to rule that porn cannot be copyrighted. So why is this not done?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      If pornography is legal (and it is. Think: free speech), then pornographic works deserve the same protections as any other speech (other recorded works such as movies and music).

      So to do as you suggest would require dismantling of virtually the entire copyright system as it currently exists in the US - either that or a declaration that pornography is not merely socially unacceptable but illegal.

      Besides, what would happen to all of the porn stars if what you suggest were allowed. Won't someone think of t

      • Well, you could be right. I am not an American. But I thought that let us say the artform was illegal in some American states. I read an article a few years ago about a particularly nasty actor/director in the genre (sorry, I forgot the name, others may chime in) who was jailed because of his extreme videos, while it was all consensual adults. If it were legal in that state, then why was he locked up?
        Again, I am not American but because of this my perception is that it is not everywhere legal in the USA.
        I

  • of poiticians that were in possesion of some porn or maybe just one powerfull one?

  • Instead of loser pays or, worse, having the government decide on damage caps, I would eliminate the special lawyer-enriching set of privileges the civil legal system enjoys by making it operate by the same stringent rules as criminal procedure. I would put civil plaintiffs in the same legal position as criminal prosecutors: they would have to win cases on a unanimous jury vote, rather than a majority, and using a 'beyond a reasonable doubt' evidence standard, rather than 'preponderance of evidence'. The jun

    • Re:Unify the two tracks of our legal system (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2014 @06:18AM (#47106469)

      It's an interesting idea, but if you raise the evidentiary bar you raise the cost of litigating civil cases. The higher cost would probably also increase damage awards, necessary for individual plaintiffs to pursue cases with more rigorous evidence requirements. You could actually end up making it more lucrative for trial lawyers by increasing the total amount they receive or cause them to increase the percentage of settlement monies they claim, which also impacts plaintiffs who would obtain less relief through smaller net judgements after legal fees.

      There's also the chilling effect it could have on individual civil plaintiffs -- if the evidentiary standard is higher, many people may be discouraged from seeking relief in the courts because they would be even more unable to compete against deep-pocketed adversaries.

      • Both of these outcomes were exactly my intent. Higher costs would discourage junk suits, and so would a higher evidentiary standard. Everybody wins, because economic progress - not to mention the court system itself - would no longer be barred by a swarm of no-account lottery players. If this means larger awards for solid cases, this would not be a bad outcome either. It would be an incentive to build quality cases.

        Which costs more: larger payouts for a small number of well-proven torts, or large numbers of

  • voir dire is the problem (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The problem is 2 fold. 1) the law is made to be as complex as possible so the lawyers can talk about small points of the issues.
    2) Voir Dire - Jury Selection - is designed to get the stupidest dozen people in the county onto the jury. If you know anything about the issues involved, you are out.
    If you have any kind technical knowledge or skill at understanding complex issues, you are out. The lawyers want it to be about who has the best law team.
    Jury select should be only a few questions - Do you know thes

  • A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

    An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

    A malcontent like myself might be a litt

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