Paul Hansmeier, who’s serving a 14-year prison sentence for submitting sham copyright infringement lawsuits and extorting cash from victims, has misplaced an attempt to implement copyrights from prison. In a ruling Monday, a federal decide rejected Hansmeier’s request to stop the federal government from implementing mail-wire fraud and cash laundering legal guidelines in opposition to him. Hansmeier needed an injunction in order that he might file copyright lawsuits with out going through new prices.
Hansmeier, who can be interesting his conviction regardless of having pleaded responsible, shall be acquainted to Ars readers as one of many principals behind the infamous “copyright troll” agency Prenda Law. He was sentenced in June 2019 “for an elaborate fraud scheme that involved uploading pornographic videos to file-sharing networks and then threatening to sue people who downloaded them,” as our reporting on the time mentioned. Prenda Law’s technique concerned in search of settlements of some thousand {dollars} from every sufferer.
Prenda Law founder John Steele pleaded responsible in 2017 to prices of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit cash laundering and cooperated within the investigation into Hansmeier. Hansmeier in the end pleaded responsible to the identical prices in August 2018. Steele was sentenced to 5 years in prison in July 2019.
Hansmeier and Steele obtained subscriber info from Internet service suppliers and “threaten[ed] victims with enormous financial penalties and public embarrassment unless they agreed to pay a $3,000 settlement fee,” the US Department of Justice mentioned in a press launch on the time of Hansmeier’s sentencing. They obtained a complete of $3 million “from extortion victims to settle sham copyright infringement lawsuits,” the DOJ mentioned.
Hansmeier claimed his “litigation will be socially valuable”
Last week, Hansmeier filed a movement in US District Court for the District of Minnesota saying he desires to “hire an undercover investigator to protect his copyrights against Internet piracy and bring claims under the Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act against people who trespass on his computers to infringe his works.”
The movement sought an injunction stopping “the government from enforcing the mail-wire fraud conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 1349) and money laundering conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 1956(h)) statutes against [Hansmeier] on account of this copyright enforcement activity.” US District Judge Joan Ericksen denied the request for a preliminary injunction in a quick order. TorrentFreak coated the ruling in an article on Wednesday.
Hansmeier’s now-rejected movement for an injunction mentioned his proposed “litigation will be socially valuable. Internet piracy is a cancer eating away at the markets for creative expression.” Hansmeier’s movement claimed his new lawsuits would “avoid association with pornography” and implement copyrights “in less socially stigmatizing material, like poetry.”
Hansmeier additionally informed the courtroom he would “sue fewer people; instead of suing thousands of people at a time, he will bring more significant cases against a considerably smaller number of people.” But his movement mentioned he “is chilled from engaging in this petitioning activity by the credible threat of criminal prosecution” due to “Hansmeier’s current imprisonment based on his participation in copyright enforcement activity similar to that which he wants to participate in now.”
Ericksen’s order famous that Hansmeier is “subject to a filing restriction.” The restriction was imposed in March 2022 by US District Judge John Tunheim in a ruling that mentioned Hansmeier “has filed at least sixteen actions in this district alone challenging the constitutionality of the federal mail fraud, wire fraud, and extortion statutes.”
Hansmeier’s challenges filed from prison “allege that the statutes are unconstitutional because they either prevent him from pursuing copyright enforcement or prevent him from assisting unidentified individuals pursuing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) enforcement claims,” Tunheim wrote. Tunheim’s ruling prohibited Hansmeier from submitting new lawsuits or pleadings on these subjects within the District of Minnesota in opposition to the US legal professional normal and different federal officers “unless he obtains prior written approval” from the courtroom.
…. to be continued
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