Copyright troll in deep trouble with judge

The case of Prenda law is a relatively complicated one. We covered it a little bit recently, with links to far better run downs. However now it's all coming to a head and the judge of the case was not happy when most of the copyright troll defendants didn't even show up for court.

One of the Prenda employees that didn't make an appearance was John Steele. As far as the judge and attending spectators were concerned, his stock fell drastically during the hearing. He stands accused by former employee Alan Cooper, of stealing his identity. Several answering machine messages were played for the court to hear, that make it clear Steele followed up the identity theft with harassment, suggesting multiple times that Cooper should not look into Steele's use of his name.

It was also discovered that Prenda law had ignored a judge given notice, to not press ISPs for customer details – so that they could target critics of the company for slander. Apparently Prenda had done no such thing and had instead continued pressing ISPs for details.

Further angered, the Judge went on to describe how the money making for Prenda was never salaried to company staff or any of its “clients,” only lawfirms seemed to profit. The deliberate way in which this was hidden has been highlighted as further cause for concern.

In a final slight, the Judge suggested that every statement given by Prenda Law's lawyers was untrue.

For a more detailed rundown, check out TorrentFreak. For a more eye witness account, Popehat has you covered.

KitGuru Says: Good to see copyright trolls getting a beating. All they do is hinder innovation and make it a pain for companies to push the envelope of current technology – all for their own financial gain.

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