Innocent victim of defamaton--or total scumbag?

“Die, troll, die” goes to court
Prenda Law specializes in online pornography copyright infringement. Why does that make the Internet so mad?
By Andrew Leonard
Salon.com
Mar 4, 2013

Who hasn’t had the urge when reading Internet comments, at least once, to pull out a great big nail-studded mace and start whacking about at the idiots who gibber and froth online? Earlier this morning, when I saw Timothy Lee’s tweet referencing a case in which a law firm was suing some commenters for libel and defamation, my first thought was, I totally get it.

The complaint is worth quoting extensively. (Emphases mine).

Plaintiff files this action seeking monetary damages, injunctive relief and other damages arising from the egregious Internet-based conduct of a number of individuals, whom Plaintiff knows only by the anonymous, salacious, false and libelous comments they have made, and continue to make, about him on the Internet. Shielded by unconventional pseudonyms, [they] belong to a community of Internet “commentators,” fearful of being identified, and have falsely accused the law firm Prenda Law LLC,of which Plaintiff is the sole officer and employee, of, among other things, criminal offenses; want of integrity in the discharge of employment; lack of ability in its profession; and the commission of fornication and adultery….

The Defendants’ defamatory statements are made under the most cowardly of circumstances; plastered over centralized Internet communities and available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. The Defendants have libeled Plaintiff under the disguise of such childish and unsophisticated pseudonyms as “die troll die.” The defamatory statements that they have made about Plaintiff are the type that, if made under the light of day, would prompt loved ones to suggest (or intervene and force) intensive psychological therapy. But sheltered in a cloak of cowardly pseudonyms, emboldened by association [with] others apparently sharing the same affliction, Defendants have continued unabated in their conduct…

I have to say, based solely on the excerpts above, I was feeling Prenda Law’s pain. Nobody likes to be accused of “want of integrity” or “lack of ability” or get called “assclown” on a regular basis. I’ve been there, I know. I still have yet to be charged with the commission of fornication and adultery, but the week has barely gotten started.

Then I did some background research on Prenda.

This marvelous, bizarre story belongs to Timothy Lee, an adjunct fellow at the Cato Institute who covers tech policy for Ars Technica. Lee’s series exploring the saga of what he routinely calls the “porn copyright trolling firm” Prenda Law defies easy description, but makes for riveting, and hilarious, reading.

I present, for example, the lead sentences to two stories Lee wrote in December and January.

Prenda Law, the ethically challenged law firm that specializes in mass pornographic copyright lawsuits, is facing growing pressure to answer questions about allegations of identity theft.

Prenda Law, a copyright litigation firm that has sued thousands of anonymous Internet users for sharing pornographic videos, has sought the dismissal of a California judge after the judge ordered the firm to answer charges that it engaged in identity theft.

The details of Prenda Law’s high jinks are beyond convoluted. If you’re interested, go straight to the source. But basically, Prenda’s primary business appears to be collecting damages from people accused of sharing copyrighted pornography via peer-to-peer sharing networks such as BitTorrent. Personally, I do not doubt that such lurid piracy is rampant. However, the exact methods by which Prenda has gone about this endeavor do not seem to be winning it any friends with judges, or Internet “commentators.”

The identity theft allegations emerged late last year, when a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper told a Minnesota court he suspected Prenda Law named him as the CEO of two litigious offshore holding companies without his permission. Worried about exposing himself to potential liability for the firms’ misconduct, Cooper asked the court to investigate the situation.

Judging by the details in a letter sent by Cooper’s lawyer to the Minnesota court, Cooper has reason to be concerned. And Prenda’s protestations of injury from the mean and nasty Internet ring hollow.

Who knew? In this case, the ranters and ravers might be right.

(Timothy Lee’s report on the lawsuit is here.)

Rabbi: By 'blood libel' claim Palin admits 'words can be deadly'

Rabbi: By 'blood libel' claim Palin admits 'words can be deadly'
by Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today
January 12, 2011

You might think a rabbi would see Sarah Palin's video claim she's a victim of "blood libel" as monumental chutzpah (nerve), as if she, too, were an Arizona shooting victim like gravely injured U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords or Gifford's murdered aide Gabe Zimmerman.

After all, "blood libel" points to a often distorted and lethally misused passage about Jews and the crucifixion of Christ in Matthew 27:25:

All the people answered, "His blood is on us and on our children!"

It was the pretext of anti-Semitism for 2,000 years and the motive behind centuries of mass killings, pogroms, in Eastern Europe when Jews were falsely accused of using Christian children's blood in religious ceremonies.

The Guardian notes:

That it should be used by an avowedly Christian politician about a Jewish one just takes crassness and insensitivity to a new level.

Maybe it's now a perverse form of 'victim chic' to try to corner your own teardrop of sympathy in every moment of headliner public mourning, I wonder.

But Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, has a surprising (well it was to me) spin on Palin's comment. If she thinks she's turning the guns, so to speak, back on her critics for attempting to endanger her (her what? her political future?) by claiming she contributed to a climate of violence, she's gone about it totally backwards. He told me today:

It's not just inappropriate, it's profoundly ironic. By making this comparison and playing Jew in the picture, the person endangered by a blood libel, she admits that the words people use can have deadly impact.

By claiming that others' words are a blood libel that endangers her, she's at least admitting the prospect that claims her words endangered others could be true.

I'm not giving her a free pass. It was a poor and hurtful analogy. But clearly, she's affirming exactly what her critics charge...

[Rabbi Irwin] Kula even wonders whether the phrase came to her because,

... at some level, unconsciously, she feels guilty in some way for what has happened. But this is so painful at an unconscious level that she has disassociated and lashed out accusing others of what is a deep self-judgment. This is sad, as she is not responsible at all for the shootings in Arizona. She is simply, along with all of us who have created her, responsible for the coarsening of our public culture at a time when we are facing historic challenges that cut to the very core of what America will be in the next period of history.

Rabbi David Sapperstein, executive director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, just back to his office after joining in the House of Representatives' prayer service this morning, says,

To compare (historic blood libel accusations) and their outcomes to what she is facing really distorts and diminishes the meaning of this accusation. In fairness, she's not the first to water it down, as if it means just being falsely accused of something terrible. But it concerns us. It escalates the intensity of the rhetoric, rather than calming it down.

By waving this red flag, it seems to me she's missed an opportunity at real leadership. We call on her to retract the statement and to find a way to help calm things down...