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Crime The Courts The Internet United States

Prenda Copyright Troll Sentenced To 14 Years (boingboing.net) 53

JustAnotherOldGuy shares a report from Boing Boing: For years, Paul Hansmeier terrorized internet users through his copyright trolling racket Prenda Law, evading the law through shell companies and fraud, until, finally, he was brought to justice and pleaded guilty last August. Now, Hansmeier has been sentenced to 14 years in prison and must pay $1.5 million in restitution to his victims -- the same people he accused of being copyright infringers and then bullied into paying "settlement" fees to avoid being dragged through expensive litigation. Any Prenda Law victim can contact the Minnesota DA to apply for compensation. Prenda's tactics included identity theft, entrapment (uploading their own files to The Pirate Bay in order to generate downloads that they could threaten people over), and several kinds of fraud. Hansmeier and his co-defendant, John Steele, were indicted for money laundering, perjury, mail and wire fraud. Both men entered into plea agreements.
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Prenda Copyright Troll Sentenced To 14 Years

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  • Justice may be slow but it often is achieved.

    • by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @09:25PM (#58765466)

      I will agree with you that justice is slow, but I disagree that it is often achieved. Not only is justice rarely achieved it is also rarely sought after as well. Court is a game where he who has the most money, often wins.

      Justice comes from the word Justified and has nothing to do with the law despite the idea our "in/unJustice System" puts forward. Punishment for breaking the law is not Justice on the merit of its dispensation alone. There are many unjustified laws, and therefore unjustified punishments.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Swift it isn't...

      The case started in 2013, but they were pulling these tactics for quite a bit longer. Sadly, wikipedia lists their take for 2012 to be about 1.3 million and an estimated haul of around 15 million.

      I suppose around 12 million and ~10 years in prison isn't a bad deal after all.

      I hope his wife takes all of the money while he is gone.

      • The case started in 2013, but they were pulling these tactics for quite a bit longer. Sadly, wikipedia lists their take for 2012 to be about 1.3 million and an estimated haul of around 15 million.

        So how much of that went in costs to run this? How much did the other actors in this take? Looks like his personal take was $3 million, which of course means he should have to return that but how much went fighting the lawsuit that took him down? For a lawyer this probably counts as a financial loss compared to what he could have made "honestly".

  • Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dead_user ( 1989356 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @09:26PM (#58765468)
    I'm just speechless. I can't believe a rich guy is actually going to jail for something he did. It's about time.
    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @09:56PM (#58765558)

      I can't believe a rich guy is actually going to jail for something he did.

      He was sentenced to 14 years. The average inmate serves 60% of the original sentence, and non-violent inmates usually serve less than half.

      He won't be doing hard-time in a cellblock. He'll be going to a a minimum security facility, similar to a college dormitory.

      He will have work assignments, but still have enough free time to do reading, online research, and planning for his next business venture.

      • Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @10:08PM (#58765598)

        He was sentenced to 14 years. The average inmate serves 60% of the original sentence, and non-violent inmates usually serve less than half.

        Your unsourced statistics apply only to state prisoners, if that. He was sentenced for Federal charges in Federal court. Thus [pewtrusts.org]:

        under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, all federal prisoners must spend a minimum of 85 percent of their sentences behind bars before becoming eligible for release, with a maximum of 15 percent set aside as a reward for good behavior.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @12:56AM (#58766094)

      There is probably some hidden committee somewhere that monitors this and whenever the idea that "the law" actually has something to do with justice or protecting ordinary citizens starts to become too obviously a lie, they select a scapegoat from the less-well connected rich people and give them a relatively moderate punishment in relation to their crimes.

    • by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ' rich guy is actually going to jail for something he did.'

      He just got caught. There's plenty of legal firms seeding swarms, then sending DMCA claims to providers. Echelon Compliance and Rightscorp Inc still does to this day.The minute they join a swarm, they're a participant in passing the data they they're contracted to protect.

      • They use custom software that doesn't upload anything, just records the swarm participants.
        But what is ridiculous is that it seems the only problem with Prenda was that they made the content. Like the people being extorted by copyright trolls care if they're doing it for a file made by a 3rd party.
        • by fred911 ( 83970 )

          'They use custom software that doesn't upload anything'

          Impossible, the swarm chokes any client that requests peers and doesn't pass data. In addition to the fact that the receipt of copywritten data doesn't prove that you don't have the right to use the data, the data hasn't been transferred until 100 percent of the file has been received.

  • by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @09:59PM (#58765572)
    This phucktard harassed me multiple times and my wife gave in... I wish other inmates all the goodness that they get to do to you... son of a bitch!!!
  • Ding Dong! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @10:17PM (#58765634) Homepage

    Fuck these guys. Seriously. Few individuals have single-handedly done more direct long-term harm to the economy, the legal system, and the forward progress of technology at once than these two jackasses. Usually this type of impact takes a nefarious megacorp like Microsoft. Nobody here will genuinely lament this ruling as too heavy-handed, though I wouldn't put it past a few trolls to claim otherwise.

    • If this guy is as bad as many people claim, it would have been nice to see him convicted by a jury of his peers. Even bad people deserve a fair trial.

      Instead the gestapo forced a confession out of him. Gotta feed that gulag!

      • by Socguy ( 933973 )
        I'm assuming you're being sarcastic...
        • Actually something like 98% of crimes are plea bargained nowadays and don't go to trial. As there is no trial, the evidence is never proven to a jury, so there are concrns with justice here, especially given the arm twisting of severe sentencing with the intention of forcing a plea so the prosecutor gets a win.

        • Do you believe that some (or all?!) people don't deserve a fair trial?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe if we had more-lenient copyright laws, we wouldn't have this problem. Those Pirate Bay uploads ought to be a sign that our legal system is completely out-of-whack. We spend too much time protecting copyright holders.

  • by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Friday June 14, 2019 @10:22PM (#58765648)

    Their attorney is Paul Hansmeier who was already notorious in the legal world as a copyright troll. He was partner in a firm called Prenda Law that orchestrated a scheme where it placed pornographic videos on file sharing sites, then sent letters to people who downloaded them threatening lawsuits or public exposure. Most settled and Hansmeier reportedly made millions. That is, until federal judges in Minnesota, Illinois and California shut the operation down.

    Hansmeier then set up the Disability Support Alliance as a nonprofit with Eric Wong, who in a deposition admits that Hansmeier, or his associates, would drive him around looking for businesses to sue.

    - KSMP [fox9.com].

    He violated the spirit of the law, trying to find anything out of compliance in order to threaten a lawsuit. But he'd go after small businesses that were less likely to fight it. After the state legislature decided to fight such tactics by giving businesses sixty days to rectify the situation before a lawsuit could be filed, Hansmeier started filing federal lawsuits. It wasn't about fixing things, it was about enriching himself.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    These are world class bottom feeders. After the copyright scam, and Hansmeier was disbarred, he moved to the background while his wife (another lawyer) drove around looking at small businesses that may not be in full compliance of ADA regulations (wrong signage, not painted correctly, etc.) and then demanded four- and five-figure settlements from these places.

    The world would be a better place if they were removed from it.

  • "pleaded guilty"

    Oh how I do love the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!

    • And you, of course, have evidence that the confession was a) coerced and b) false to make such an accusation. And no, "everybody knows" or "they always do this" are not evidence.

      • All confessions under the "plea bargain" system are coerced. The only legitimate conviction is one delivered by a jury of the defendant's peers.

        • That may be, but don't forget the feds still managed to get an indictment before he copped his plea, as required by the 5th amendment for felony prosecutions.

          That indictment in turn was issued by a grand jury.

          In spite of the fact that the plea bargain system itself leaves much to be desired at least the feds had to jump through a few hoops first.

          • "the feds had to jump through a few hoops first."

            Not really. Grand juries are de facto rubber stamps for the public persecutor.

            According to Harvard Law Review, "grand juries declined to indict in 11 out of 162,351 federal cases in 2010." (https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/02/restoring-legitimacy/). In other words, they rubber stamped the indictments literally 99.9999% of the time.

  • Prenda Law? More like Pretenda Law, am I right guys?!

  • That's like 2-3 songs by current judicial penalties. Seems like a slap on the wrist considering how much they raked in over the years.

"The lesser of two evils -- is evil." -- Seymour (Sy) Leon

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