Since 2010, a slew of lawyers have made their living off of pursuing (possible) porn pirates. It's a controversial living, but it's a living.
The most famous porn copyright lawyer in the country has a name that seems out of the kind of films that he helps protect — John Steele. The former Chicago-family-lawyer-turned-Florida "porn troll" has, almost singlehandedly, brought the art of suing adult film pirates to the masses: along with his firm, Prenda Law, a boutique agency devoted to anti-piracy lawsuits, he has put his name on 10,000 letters and robocalls strongly suggesting that their recipients pay around $3,000 or risk being sued for $150,000 or more for illegal file-sharing. Even those who believe in the right of copyright holders to protect their products pause when asked about Steele.
"Robocalls, that's a bit unsavory," said Marc Randazza, an intellectual property lawyer in Las Vegas who has both defended and sued individuals accused of unlawfully trading content. "They cut the cost of doing the case. It's not how you practice law."
At first blush, the multi-million dollar porn anti-piracy legal field itself reeks of graft. How could it not? The basic mechanism is thus: Identify a porno that has been uploaded to BitTorrent; make a list of IP addresses that uploaded the film; subpoena the names behind the IP addresses; send out form letters asking for a settlement to make (embarrassing) alleged wrong go away; threaten a lawsuit otherwise; rinse and repeat.
But those in the adult entertainment industry say it's not so simple to finger the porn studios and their lawyers as the bad guys — not every settlement letter is predatory, and something needs to be done about piracy when the multi-billion dollar industry's profits are down by as much as 50 percent since a peak in 2005, according to online trade magazine Xbiz.
"I think it's important for companies to bring these cases," said Randazza, "Otherwise, there's no disincentive to stealing."
One of the films uploaders are being sued over.
Over the past two years, the number of legal actions have grown rapidly, creating a whole subculture of porn pirates and porn trolls, with a small pool of determined lawyers (the Dallas Observer guessed "about five") attacking and defending those accused of piracy. Hundreds of porn studios have sought out those who upload films like Tooled up Twinks, Fresh Outta High School #21, and, of course, Paris Hilton's sex tape. The Chicago Tribune reported that 3,000 people were sent settlement letters in 2010 — since then, press accounts peg the total number of people accused of porn piracy as as an estimated 250,000. "We suspect it's huge," said Mitch Stoltz, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has been working on this issue on behalf of file sharers, "three EFFs could not begin to address this problem."
Stoltz thinks the practice of sending out hundreds or thousands of threatening letters, pegged to identities lifted from records of IP addresses, is not an honest approach to resolving copyright theft.
"They are misstating the law, they are telling people that the person who is on the internet subscription is responsible, no matter who downloaded the video and that is not true," he said, "a lot of tactics being used just aren't consistent with the idea that a copyright owner trying to enforce their copyright."
But for an industry on the rocks, largely due to pirated content, suing for damages makes sense. "They are trying to find other sources of revenue," Don Parret, an editor at Xbiz, explained. "This is one of them."
View Entire List ›
No comments:
Post a Comment