Awwww, yeeeaaaahh. That is all.
This is an award of fees, not a fine.
In other news, if you are a sleazy scam artist don’t try suing AT&T and Comcast. The sorts of high-pressure tactics that work against newbs and people who can’t afford lawyers don’t exactly work as well against corporations whose legal resources are closer in scale to a malevolent force of nature, and who have very, very, strong reasons to not let you establish an obnoxious precedent, even if they have to grind you down over the next decade to avoid it.
It certainly didn’t help their case that the presiding judge was familiar with their…colorful… history and creative interpretation of reality; but I just can’t imagine what they were thinking voluntarily going up against a couple of gigantic ISPs, especially in a world of much softer targets. Even if they were previously believed to be lily-white angels of goodness, that would have been a bad plan…
Not that I mind, of course.
I’m sure the expectation was that the ISP’s would weigh user data against legal fees, and settle. How’s that workin out for ya, Prenda?
♫ ♪ Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Porno Copyright Troll Attorneys… ♪ ♫
The word’s “principals”. They have those; they don’t have principles.
I think that the issue was precedent: neither ISP gives a damn about user data, unless they can sell it for something; but I suspect that neither ISP wants solid legal ground for any asshole who managed to pass the bar anywhere, or hire somebody who did, to bombard them with (actually legally weighty, rather than merely spurious) demands at will. That would be a more or less unlimited headache. If Steele were the only one in the business, and was only pulling the con a few times, giving him what he wanted would have been easier. But I suspect that neither of those things is close to true.
So all of the sanctions and awards against them still aren’t half of what they earned in the period the accounting records Brett Gibbs released to Judge Wrights court.
The ISPs were angry that they dared to sue them and had a history of not paying for the data they demanded. Many claim the ISPs were standing up for their customers, yet seem to ignore these ISPs participating in the 6 Strikes program. Where corporations are making and enforcing their own laws outside of the legal system. Where the burden of proof is nonexistent beyond - We said so. The same proof offered by Pretenda in courts across the country.
And never forget this fustercluck still hasn’t done anything to make the people extorted by these lawyers whole again. The millions they walked away with are still tucked away somewhere, and the wheels of Justice still slowly turn against these officers of the courts… while they took on bullet train speed in allowing the extortion of citizens.
The history of this copyright trolling firm highlights everything wrong in the legal system. Judges knew/suspected/even said they thought something was wrong with these cases and never did anything to stop them. They sent them to their room without dessert and let them do it again and again and again. A sworn statement from a defendant that he had a deal to not pay anything as long as he allowed them to gain massive discovery against an unlimited number of people… the Judge did nothing.
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