Prenda Law copyright troll gets fourteen years in prison for pornography scam

It was a simple plan: obtain the rights to pornographic films, share copies of them online, then threaten to sue those downloading the skin flicks for copyright infringement unless they paid a $3,000 settlement fee. Between 2011 and 2014, the scaper earned about $3m for two former Minnesota attorneys, Paul R. Hansmeier and John L. Steele, through front companies like Prenda Law. As part of his guilty plea, Hansmeier admitted that he and Steele created fictitious business entities to obtain copyrights of pornographic films – buying the rights or actually creating the X-rated movies – and distribute them through file-sharing websites like The Pirate Bay to encourage people to download them.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk