Prenda Law's Trip To San Francisco Turns Out Badly

It's a pretty damned complex story at this point. Basically there was this porn trolling outfit who would buy low budget porno and go hunting for infringers. Mostly, they would get people to settle for $X,000, but when people fought back, things got weird.

When defense lawyers investigated the people behind this, we started seeing crazy allegations about how the forensic evidence was handled by one of the guy's brothers. And how there were a bunch of corporations that owned each other, but which all seemed to be run by the same small group of people. And headquartered, for the most part, in a tax haven with weird laws relating to trusts. I'm not sure how many places allow trusts for the benefit of the children of a man who has no children, for example. There were also allegations that certain defendants settled by agreeing to have a lawyer chosen by the plaintiff lose their case for them. And there were serious questions about the copyright transfers, not to mention a man who claims to have had his identity stolen so that he could be listed as the owner of one of the shell companies.

All this crazy has prompted several judges to look into it. It has also prompted the porn trolls to start pleading the 5th. And dismissing cases, including one where they had already won a default judgment. In this particular case, however, it was too late for them to dismiss it without the judge's approval. This judge wants some answers first.

I have no idea what their answer will be, but with things as crazy as they are, it's bound to be interesting.

It would be nice to have a tl;dr on the whole case. I don't really know the backstory here and popehat doesn't seem inclined to recap.

It's really not that long. TL;DR is for the lazy or people who should be working but aren't.