Posted on 11/09/2013 9:51:26 AM PST by 1rudeboy
This is a little dated, but Ken White has a mega-update on the Prenda Law case he has been following.
The ins and outs of this case are complicated beyond belief (likely purposefully by the key players in a bid to obfuscate what they were doing), but the basic facts appear to point to this: Prenda and a series of related entities were buying copyrights to porn, uploading electronic versions of these videos to known pirating sites, and then suing folks who downloaded the files (knowing that most folks, embarrassed that they downloaded "Chubby Nurses in Heat" or whatever, will fold and pay a settlement rather than get in a public legal fight). One reason for the complexity and obfuscation is that the porn companies (AF holdings and many other shells) have to pretend on the one hand that they didn't upload the files themselves in a "honeypot" operation, and on the other hand that they have no relation to Prenda Law. By the way, the scheme apparently brought in about $2 million in 2012 alone of which at least two thirds, and likely more, ended up in the pockets of the key principles.
What makes the case so fun to read about is the just idiotic antics and evasions by the key players, the hapless lawyers, the "dog ate my homework" excuses in front of senior Federal judges, etc. All this combined with an arrogance among the principles that could be a case study in the Wikipedia entry on Dunning-Kruger effect. The bad guys remind me of nothing so much as the William Macy character in Fargo. This, for example, is a hilarious article with examples of one principle after another offering absurd testimony to various Courts.
Since the post above, Ken has an update here.
Oh, and “principle(s)” should be “principal(s),” I think.
The best way to kill porn today would be to remove copyright protection. This should be done to half of what Hollywood puts out also. Graphic sex scene = no copyright protection = inability to profit from it.
Three rules of legal practice:
1. Get the fee up front.
2. Don’t P**s off the judge.
3. Never take a criminal case with a client named Guido.
Dude missed two out of three.
Transcript’s a classic example of what happens when you forget rule two.
Hasn’t YouPorn pretty much overwhelmed the “legit” porn biz these days?
With so many idiots willing to show off for free....
It seems like porn is still big business, but you may be right. I really don’t know the statistics on how much money that industry brings in. I do know however that more and more extreme things are being depicted over the past few decades. I think taking money out of the equation would have a positive effect.
I remember in the first few years of the internet, it was a truism that the only folks making any money were doing porn.
Obviously 15+ yrs later that has changed in many respects.
These shyster yahoos better watch out....eventually they are
going to try and rob a victim who instead of paying out the
cashola to prevent embarrassment will actually hunt them down in their office and go “postal” on them.
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