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Copyright Troll Lawyer Must Pay Victims $1.5 Million Restitution, Appeals Court AffirmsErnesto Van der Sar, 18 Feb 07:52 PM In 2019, a U.S. District

Copyright Troll Lawyer Must Pay Victims $1.5 Million Restitution, Appeals Court Affirms Ernesto Van der Sar, 18 Feb 07:52 PM In 2019, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release. Hansmeier was a key player at the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent. While suing alleged pirates is not illegal, Prenda Law went much further. Over the years the firm faced negative court rulings over identity theft, misrepresentation, and even deception. The Original Prenda Honeypot Most controversial were the shocking revelations that Prenda itself produced adult videos and uploaded its own torrents to The Pirate Bay. In doing so, the company created a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirate downloads. The allegations were serious enough to appear on the radar of US law enforcement agencies which launched a criminal investigation, culminating in prison sentences for the two key players. Today, Paul Hansmeier and his former colleague John Steele are both in prison. While the latter received a reduced sentence for his cooperative stance, Hansmeier continues to appeal his sentence to this day. To make a point, the lawyer even restarted his honeypot scheme from prison. Hansmeier Doesn't Want to Pay $1.5 Million In addition to challenging his conviction, Hansmeier also appealed the $1,541,527.37 in restitution that he's required to pay to victims. According to the former lawyer, this figure is too high because it also includes 'legal' settlements. This case ended up at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the Government opposed Hansmeier's claim, arguing that the convicted lawyer waived his right to appeal by signing a plea agreement. After a careful review, the Court of Appeal judges ruled that Hansmeier has the right to appeal the restitution amount. However, that doesn't help the former lawyer much, as the judges also concluded that the district court correctly awarded $1,541,527.37 in restitution. Evidence Shows that $1.5 Million is Correct According to the Court of Appeal, the Government provided sufficient evidence to show that the restitution amount "was attributable solely to settlement payments from the fraud scheme." This evidence was collected by FBI agent Jared Kary who went over all settlement payments that came in from April 2011, which was when the Prenda lawyers started to upload their own movies to The Pirate Bay. "Agent Kary further attempted to narrow his calculation to payments from fraud victims by excluding any payments that came in over this period that he could not tie to a specific person," the Court adds, suggesting that the actual figure might be higher. However, the most compelling statement may come from none other than Paul Hansmeier himself, who pretty much confirmed the amount in the plea agreement. From Hansmeier's Plea Agreement "Finally, Hansmeier himself acknowledged in his plea agreement that, between 2011 and 2014, he and Steele 'received more than $3,000,000 in fraudulent proceeds' from their lawsuits," the Court writes. More Setbacks for Hansmeier The Court's ruling also provides a detailed description of all the criminal wrongdoings. In a separate argument, Hansmeier also claimed that the district court incorrectly denied his motion to dismiss the indictment. However, the Court of Appeal disagrees with this as well. "Because the facts in the indictment, accepted as true, describe a fraudulent scheme prohibited by federal law, Hansmeier cannot succeed in his claim that it is facially insufficient," the Court notes. While the order will certainly come as a setback for Hansmeier, the former attorney will likely continue to challenge his prison sentence. Among other things, the dispute about whether or not he can operate a piracy honeypot from prison remains ongoing. — A copy of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals order is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Sci-Hub: Elsevier and Springer Nature Obtain UK ISP Blocking Order Andy Maxwell, 18 Feb 08:43 AM Despite being branded 'The Pirate Bay of Science' for offering free access to millions of otherwise paywalled research papers, Sci-Hub is somewhat of an outlier in the piracy scene. While sites like The Pirate Bay receive almost universal condemnation outside of piracy circles, Sci-Hub regularly receives praise from academics. Since the ultimate goal is to further knowledge and education, including among those who can least afford it, Sci-Hub is often considered to be doing valuable work. Courts, on the other hand, have yet to rule in the site's favor so publishers including Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley have been pursuing relentless legal action against Sci-Hub and founder Alexandra Elbakyan in an effort to bring the platform to its knees. Site-Blocking Emerges As Major Strategy Pioneered by the music and movies industries, site-blocking is seen by copyright holders as an effective tool to reduce traffic to pirate platforms of all types, Sci-Hub included. The practice commonly involves heading off to a local court in an effort to persuade a judge that Sci-Hub's behavior represents a breach of copyright law. When a consensus is reached, the court issues an injunction compelling local ISPs to block various domains and/or IP addresses so that subscribers cannot reach them by regular means. Several publishers have been involved in numerous similar actions against Sci-Hub in a number of countries (1,2,3,4), usually with quite a lot of fanfare before injunctions are handed down. However, it appears that another process in the UK has been flying under the radar. UK ISP TalkTalk Quietly Announces New Injunction TorrentFreak routinely monitors for new site-blocking activity in numerous countries but we were surprised to learn yesterday that Elsevier and Springer Nature have apparently teamed up to obtain an injunction in the UK, something that we believe is yet to become public knowledge. At this stage, the news isn't supported by lots of supporting detail but we have learned that UK ISP TalkTalk intends to block (or is perhaps already blocking) access to the Sci-Hub domain 'sci-hub.se'. Additional information indicates that this was the result of an injunction handed down by a UK court on February 15, 2021. Three Most Recent UK Blocking Orders as Per TalkTalk The name of the court is not provided but if the pattern established over the past decade is maintained, the order will have been handed down by a judge at the High Court in London. TorrentFreak contacted TalkTalk's press office during Wednesday for additional information but, at the time of writing, we have yet to receive a response. Records on the UK's BAILII system do not reveal a judgment either, so we are expecting that in due course. TalkTalk Will Not Be The Only ISP Targeted At the time of writing, TalkTalk's rival ISPs including Virgin Media, BT, Sky, EE and O2 are not reporting the existence of a blocking order but it seems extremely unlikely that they won't be required to act against Sci-Hub under the same order. Again, the exact details of the injunction are not yet publicly available but if a similar format is maintained by the High Court, it seems probable that all of Sci-Hub's current domains will be subjected to blocking, not just the one listed by TalkTalk. Indeed, if the trend of so-called 'dynamic injunctions' is maintained in this case, any new domains deployed by Sci-Hub in an attempt to circumvent blocking will be targeted too. When we have access to the full decision we'll report the specifics in detail but in the meantime, Sci-Hub has its hands full elsewhere too. Publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society are currently trying to have Sci-Hub blocked by ISPs in India. In that matter, the judge has agreed to accept interventions from interested parties who believe that any blocking of Sci-Hub would not be in the public interest. Finally, Sci-Hub was banned from Twitter last month, something Alexandra Elbakyan believes was related to the widespread support the site received from Indian users, including scientists. Twitter informed TorrentFreak that Sci-Hub's account was suspended for violating the counterfeit policy and it had nothing else to add. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company