‘Copyright Troll’ Lawyer Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison

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Master_shake_

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Paul Hansmeier, one of the lead attorneys behind the controversial law firm Prenda, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. In addition, he must pay his victims $1.5 million in restitution. The attorney was one of the masterminds behind the fraudulent scheme in which Prenda created and uploaded porn movies to extract settlements from alleged pirates. The Pirate Bay played a crucial role in the case.

In an effort to turn piracy into profit, copyright holders have chased alleged BitTorrent pirates through courts all over the world.

This so-called ‘copyright troll’ model was also adopted by the firm Prenda Law. However, the lawyers involved began to break the law themselves.
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https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison-190614/

from honeypot to lawsuits to being judged themselves this truly was the best story never written.
 
I followed this whole thing on Arstechnica. It was baffling how these guys kept basically doubling down after they first got called on their crap. If they just took their first setback and cut out after that, they probably wouldn't have got more than a slap on the wrist.
 
Snowdog said:
I followed this whole thing on Arstechnica. It was baffling how these guys kept basically doubling down after they first got called on their crap. If they just took their first setback and cut out after that, they probably wouldn't have got more than a slap on the wrist.
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Wow makes you justify the expense of an Express VPN account. Glad that they were caught. As they say, You really cant make this stuff up it's so wild! Haha
 
These guys shot well past mere financial opportunism all the way to blind cruelty.
“Hansmeier was generally content to take this step without investigating whether the subscriber was, in fact, the infringer. Hansmeier thus inflicted plenty of pain on persons who did not, in fact, download his pornographic bait,” the Government previously wrote.
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So these fuckers reached a point where they didn't even care whether or not someone actually downloaded one of their honeypot files. Imagine your wife or girlfriend opened a letter in the mail saying someone in your house illegally downloaded some porn video and you're "being sued", but you can "settle now and avoid a lengthy trial" for thousands of dollars.

These guys are lucky someone didn't track them down and blow holes in their chest.

I've had family members and friends that received these types of letters back in the day, and it caused a lot of stress and fear and anguish because they believed the letter was legitimate, until I explained to them how the scam works.
 
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Snowdog said:
I followed this whole thing on Arstechnica. It was baffling how these guys kept basically doubling down after they first got called on their crap. If they just took their first setback and cut out after that, they probably wouldn't have got more than a slap on the wrist.
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Especially true once you look a bit deeper into what they were actually convicted of. The reason they only are being required to hand back $1.5m of their $6m take was that the feds were only able to make charges stick for the period after they started uploading their own files instead of waiting for someone else to save a copy from a 3rd party site and then torrent it.
 
Too bad he went to prison just for breaking the law, and not because he was a copyright troll..
 
Imagine spending 2.5 years and 300k to become a lawyer only to use your JD to chase rogue mastubators across the internet in search of shekels...
 
Snowdog said:
I followed this whole thing on Arstechnica. It was baffling how these guys kept basically doubling down after they first got called on their crap. If they just took their first setback and cut out after that, they probably wouldn't have got more than a slap on the wrist.
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Doubling down is patent troll 101, not surprised or baffled at all.
 
https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-appeals-14-year-prison-sentence-190627/

Pauls not going down without a fight.

he's appealing his sentence.

Paul Hansmeier, one of the lead attorneys behind the controversial Prenda law firm, is appealing his conviction as well as the 14-year prison sentence. The former attorney will await the result of his appeal in prison. The court further ruled that a $75,000 settlement Hansmeier recently received, will be reserved for the victims of the copyright-trolling scheme. Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release. Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent. Hansmeier and fellow attorney John Steele went a step further though. Among other things they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and concocted a scheme to upload their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.
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Been aong time coming. I remember the 2015 video (no longer available) when the judge handed them their backside. 'Twas a wonderful event
 
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