Trouble in Trolltown: America's Judges Increasingly Catching On to Copyright Trolls' Unfair Tactics
Posted in: Legal, Privacy & Security at 15/04/2012 15:17
Life under the bridge is a bit less comfortable for copyright trolls these days, as a series of legal losses continues to undermine their misguided business model. Trolls make their money through variations on a simple scheme: file mass copyright lawsuits against thousands of people at once without regard for whether they're in the right court, get a judge to give them power to obtain identifying information for the anonymous "Does," and then send settlement demand letters threatening to name these Does in a lawsuit if he or she doesn't pay up. In many cases, troll lawsuits are based on allegations of downloading pornography, creating additional pressure to settle rather than risk the embarrassment of being publicly named as watching dirty movies online.
The strategy may be simple, but courts are increasingly rejecting it. In the past few months, judges around the country have picked up the pace and gone after both the legal tactics used for trolling and the lawyers engaging in them.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/trouble-trolltown
