Enraged by abusive lawsuits, anonymous troll slayers fight back
When the couple we'll call the Smiths received a letter from their ISP—one saying they were being threatened with a copyright lawsuit—they were scared. The middle-aged immigrant couple moved to the United States from Eastern Europe more than a decade ago. Both have advanced degrees, but they knew very little about the US legal system. They denied (and still do deny) the plaintiff's accusation they downloaded a pornographic film on BitTorrent, but the Smiths were still worried about the consequences of being sued.
"We never were involved in the legal process," Mr. Smith told us in a phone interview. "I didn't know the difference between criminal cases and civil cases. I was totally ignorant."
The Smiths' predicament has become increasingly common. So-called "copyright trolls"—often law firms representing third-tier pornography producers—have threatened tens of thousands of users with lawsuits for allegedly sharing copyrighted pornography on peer-to-peer networks. A key part of the troll business model is the cost and embarrassment of a public lawsuit involving pornography can be enough to intimidate even some innocent users into paying the trolls' ransom.
The Smiths decided hiring a lawyer would be too expensive. So after some online research they drafted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit themselves. The judge didn't grant the Smiths' motion, but the plaintiff only pursued a handful of the "John Doe" defendants in the Smiths' case. After a few months of anxious waiting, the Smiths concluded their adversary moved on to other targets.
Now out of danger, the Smiths wanted to share what they learned with others facing the same threat. So the pair established a blog called Fight Copyright Trolls in May 2011. Nearly two years later, the blog has emerged as the nerve center of a growing community of anti-troll activists. And SophisticatedJaneDoe, the couple's shared online persona, has become a de facto leader of the Internet's grassroots anti-troll movement.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/enraged-by-abusive-lawsuits-anonymous-troll-slayers-are-fighting-back/
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