pre settlement

Every month thousands of people are sued for allegedly sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent. Many of the accused claim to be innocent, and point their finger at someone else who may have used their Internet connection to share the file.

But does this mean they’re off the hook? Lawyer Nicholas Ranallo believes so.

Today we publish two opinion pieces from copyright lawyers who are familiar with the mass-lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent users in the U.S.

To the various lawyers in the US who have been jumping on the mass copyright infringement/pre-settlement shakedown bandwagon, you might want to pay attention to what's happening in the UK, where the guy who really made this strategy famous has been found to have breached the solicitors code of conduct with these lawsuits.

John Steele, the former divorce lawyer who jumped into the mass copyright infringement game feet first, and who seems to keep running into problems with judges who actually understand the law, seems to be at it again.

With all of the highly questionable pre-settlement lawsuits out there demanding cash from people to avoid a lawsuit for copyright infringement, we've heard of a few different scams designed to use the same tactics: accuse someone of copyright infringement and demand cash to avoid a lawsuit... even if the operation demanding cash has nothing to do with the copyright holder.

One recent example of this was a bit of malware that, once installed on a computer, would generate fake infringement warnings from the RIAA/MPAA, demanding cash settlements.

We've been covering how tons of porn companies have jumped on the bandwagon with these mass pre-settlement shakedown operations, in which they threaten thousands of people for the possibility that they might have infringed on their copyrights, and ask them to pay up to avoid a lawsuit.

Over the last few weeks, TorrentFreak has been following how Liberty Media has been gearing up for just such a plan, with a few twists.

We've seen the various mass copyright infringement factories popping up all over the world, often using similar strategies: suing or threatening to sue thousands of individuals based solely on an IP address.

The whole "business model" is based not on traditional copyright infringement statutory awards, but on convincing people to pay up beforehand to avoid being sued.

The model feels quite similar to what's normally considered extortion ("pay up or we harm you").

We've noted how in the past year, a bunch of "pay up or we'll sue" law firm operations have popped up, signing up confused and short-sighted copyright holders, who believe that shaking down fans is a business model that can work.

Of course, to date, this legal strategy has been failing pretty spectacularly in court.

Most of the movie producers who have jumped onto the "pre-settlement" letter bandwagon, whereby they simply demand cash from people, who might have downloaded the film, in exchange for not suing them, have been either small time producers or porn producers.

The fallout from the ACS:Law email leak continues.

Since late last week, people have been submitting the news that ACS:Law's email archives were revealed and spread widely across the internet late last week.

Once again, I find this action somewhat troubling. Like the DDoS attacks that resulted in this leak, I do worry about the backlash that it creates, and I find it a bit shameful that people feel the need to stoop to dirty tricks to try to prove a point or make a statement.