Prenda lawyers lose key appeal, will pay $230k sanction
(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)
The lawyers behind the Prenda Law “copyright trolling” enterprise have lost their key appeal and will have to pay more than $ 230,000 in sanctions.
The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a 12-page ruling [PDF] upholding the sanction order that began Prenda’s downfall, issued by US District Judge Otis Wright in 2013. Today’s ruling defends Wright’s sanction in its entirety and doesn’t give one iota of credit to the copyright troll’s claims that its due process rights were violated.
Prenda Law, masterminded by two lawyers named John Steele and Paul Hansmeier, operated by filing massive lawsuits against thousands of defendants, accusing them of illegally downloading porn movies. After using the subpoena process to identify the subscribers behind the IP addresses, they’d send threatening letters about the lawsuit. Many defendants settled, either out of fear of humiliation or inability to pay for litigation. Typically, they paid around $ 4,000.
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