John Steele Dismisses His Defamation Lawsuit Against Alan Cooper And Anonymous Internet Critics

from the perhaps-he's-got-other-things-to-worry-about dept

Wed, Mar 6th 2013 3:27pm — Mike Masnick

Today's quite a Prenda Law day around here. While the focus has reasonably been on the upcoming showdown on Monday, where Judge Otis Wright has ordered all of the Prenda players to be in his courtroom on Monday, John Steele has apparently dismissed his defamation case against Alan Cooper, Cooper's lawyer Paul Godfread and a bunch of anonymous commenters who have been mocking Steele mercilessly for months. Perhaps Steele realized that the case would open him up to discovery, which could reveal some things he'd prefer not to reveal to a court. Or, perhaps, he's suddenly realized that he's going to be busy dealing with the fallout from the Wright hearings. Or, perhaps there's another strategy as yet unrevealed. Given Steele's history of searching for and testing out all kinds of loopholes in the hopes that something works, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that this isn't the last we hear concerning this attempt to "out" his critics.

Gov Uscourts Flsd 416314 6 0 (PDF)Gov Uscourts Flsd 416314 6 0 (Text)

Filed Under: defamation, dismissal, john steele, prenda, prenda law, slapp
Companies: prenda, prenda law

16 Comments

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Anonymous Monkey (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 3:38pm

And so...
it's still too late ... He's already opened his mouth and inserted BOTH feet...
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 3:50pm

Perhaps John Steele is concerned he'll have a tough time nailing people for defamation after he called himself "the original copyright troll" in his interview with Forbes. Makes it a little harder to claim hurt feelings and other such "damages" when others do the same.
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Avantare (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 4:01pm

Now that Judge Wright has this to add to the fodder it'll be even more interesting to find out what else he can dig up. He's a Judge and he'll want to know why dismiss ti at THIS particular time?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2013 @ 4:06pm

Pot... Kettle...

�People don�t like to get caught doing anything wrong,� he says. �They should be embarrassed about the lying and fraud...�
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Some Guy, 6 Mar 2013 @ 5:47pm

Is it safe to call him an asshole yet?
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2013 @ 5:55pm

Ah, out_of_the_asscrack. So crumbles the facade of your copyright heroes!
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G Thompson (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 6:41pm

Too little too late and it's without prejudice
It's only a voluntary dismissal without prejudice so I think the best thing would be now that Steele has given the suggestion that he is willing to do this sort of action (unless this was initiated by someone else on his behalf and that's a whole different type of bullshit) then a motion for declaratory judgement initiated by ALL relevant parties INDIVIDUALLY (They might be joined eventually at the courts discretion only) should be performed to make sure that this sort of 'at face' malicious, vindictive, and dare I say idiotic action is not performed by Steele or his cohorts again!
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 6:42pm

Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
The pony, you owes me one
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Anonymous, 6 Mar 2013 @ 6:47pm

Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
Aren't the two suits in Illinois from Prenda trying to reveal identities still in play?
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G Thompson (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 7:31pm

Re: Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
Ha.. you're just sad you're only a part of two suits now and not three ;)
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G Thompson (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 7:38pm

Re: Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
AFAAIK yes they still are and when you actually look at the three suits together they are so similar as to be basically the same (and most likely would of been joined in some way if all came to hearing stage) so Steele still gets to fish and play and confabulate just as an invisible entity of Prenda and his partner in idiocy Duffy.

btw.. Prenda and Steele et.al we know you are watching... I'm more than willing to be a party to any idiocy you want to initiate.. This is NOT an anonymous account and my personal twitter (and web page) is fully linked. I love the challenge of pursuing idiotic petulant egoist's like yourselves.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 6 Mar 2013 @ 8:16pm

Re: Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
Lets see how that works out for them.
Federal Judges have called them worse than what I did... I think...
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 7 Mar 2013 @ 1:25am

Re: Re: Re: Too little too late and it's without prejudice
If only because if they got me into court the Judge would be angry at me always saying Pretenda.
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Ninja (profile), 7 Mar 2013 @ 2:08am

I think we should make some sort of idiomatic expression from this whole debacle. Like "Be careful, you'll go Prenda!" as some sort of synonym for "failing epically".
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DannyB (profile), 7 Mar 2013 @ 5:37am

Re:
Out of the blue just hates it when copyright trolls get the justice they deserve.

That's why they've switched from copyright trolling (gaming the courts) to going direct to the ISP with their new sicks strikes style approach. A kinder, gentler extortion shakedown.
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DannyB (profile), 7 Mar 2013 @ 5:39am

Re:
Only if you have bypassed your net nanny filter.
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