Prenda's Porno Copyright Trolls Finally Arrested

Megalith

Megalith

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The saga continues as Paul Hansmeier and John Steele have been charged with major fraud and extortion. These wise guys got millions by coercing porn downloaders to pay up or face legal action.

They were charged Wednesday in an 18-count indictment with running a multimillion-dollar extortion fraud scheme between 2011 and 2014. The charges, unsealed Friday, include conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit and suborn perjury and conspiracy to launder money. “In order to carry out the scheme, the defendants used sham entities to obtain copyrights to pornographic movies — some of which they filmed themselves — and then uploaded those movies to file-sharing websites in order to lure people to download the movies,” the indictment says.
 
Naieve said:
Umm. Wasn't Hollywood doing the exact same thing?
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But it's OK when hw does it. Everyone knows they are doing it for our own good.

Honestly thought, isn't the act of putting the movie online and then going after the people who download it about the same thing as bait cars? Just because you can download something doesnt mean you should. I think the real issue is who is doing the baiting, not the act itself.
 
But with a name as John Steele you need to do something that has to do with stealing or porn , preferably both. I guess he nailed that. Or is that his stage name
 
azuza001 said:
But it's OK when hw does it. Everyone knows they are doing it for our own good.

Honestly thought, isn't the act of putting the movie online and then going after the people who download it about the same thing as bait cars? Just because you can download something doesnt mean you should. I think the real issue is who is doing the baiting, not the act itself.
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Slightly different. The bait car is physical and thus someone can be deprived of it. You're putting it out there to attract certain individuals who are prone to car theft.

Where as uploading your own movie to a pirate site is for the soul purpose of generating revenue.
 
azuza001 said:
But it's OK when hw does it. Everyone knows they are doing it for our own good.

Honestly thought, isn't the act of putting the movie online and then going after the people who download it about the same thing as bait cars? Just because you can download something doesnt mean you should. I think the real issue is who is doing the baiting, not the act itself.
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One is a government sanctioned activity aimed at reducing car theft. The other is run by individuals to make a profit. The differences are in who is doing it and the purpose.
 
Maybe they will video their "interactions" with their inmates who can't wait to hang out with a lawyer in jail, copyright it and then post it on BitTorrent to start the whole process over again.
 
Naieve said:
Umm. Wasn't Hollywood doing the exact same thing?
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Madonna did it in 2003



To counter illegal downloads of the album's songs before and after the release, Madonna's associates created a number of false MP3 files of similar length and size. Some of these files delivered a brief message from Madonna saying "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" followed by minutes of silence. Madonna's website was hacked and the hacker added a message appearing on the main page, saying "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing..." followed by download links for each of the album's songs. The Madonna.com website was closed after the attack for about 15 hours.
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