One Single Porn Copyright Troll, Malibu Media, Accounted For Nearly 40% Of All Copyright Lawsuits This Year

from the shakedown dept

Mon, May 19th 2014 1:40pm — Mike Masnick

We've written about porn copyright troll Malibu Media a bunch of times in the past, including noting late last year that it had filed over 1,100 copyright lawsuits in 2013 alone. Many who follow copyright trolling have noted that Malibu Media's practices (and those of the lawyers who represent it) may be much worse than even Prenda, who has become synonymous with questionable copyright trolling practices. The New Yorker has written up a profile of Malibu Media and its copyright trolling, generously referring to the company as an "erotica" website.

Matthew Sag, who has written up an empirical study on copyright trolling, with lots of data, notes that Malibu Media alone is swamping the court system with lawsuits. Of 872 copyright claims filed in the first quarter of 2014, 343 of them were from Malibu Media. Sag also recently updated his chart showing different types of copyright lawsuits, from "regular" copyright lawsuits, those against "porn John Does" and "other John Does." The "red" sections for "porn John Does" is basically almost entirely Malibu Media at this point (back in 2011 and 2012, many were Prenda).

Oh, and if you're wondering about the bump from 2004 to 2007, much of that was back when the RIAA decided to sue thousands of music fans for file sharing music. That strategy turned out to be a disaster, but the RIAA, in many ways, wasn't quite as bad as the trolls. The RIAA was on a moral mission -- it never cared about squeezing money out of people. Malibu Media, on the other hand, is all about the trolling: using the court system as part of a shakedown system to scare people into settling. The New Yorker article only hints at how this is not a legal strategy, but rather a business model, to use the fear of the judicial system to get tons of people to just pay up.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolling, porn
Companies: malibu media

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

WDS (profile), 19 May 2014 @ 1:55pm

People Sued
I would be interested in seeing a similar chart showing the number of people sued instead of the number of cases filed. I don't think Malibu started filing single Doe cases until last year.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2014 @ 1:58pm

Mike Masnick just hates it when copyright law is enforced.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
255, 19 May 2014 @ 2:22pm

Re:
anonymous coward just faps to copyright trolling
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 19 May 2014 @ 2:26pm

Re:
Yes yes, keep pretending stuff like this has anything to do with 'enforcing copyright', and maybe some day, someone who's recently taken a heavy blow to the head, or is suffering from some other form of head trauma will believe you.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2014 @ 2:27pm

Re:
"Mike Masnick just hates it when copyright law is enforced."

Translation: I'm obsessed! I want Mike's babies!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Richard (profile), 19 May 2014 @ 2:33pm

Re:
Mike Masnick just hates it when copyright law is enforced.

AC just hates it when so called enforcement turns out to be a scam!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2014 @ 3:02pm

Re: Re:
"Mike Masnick just hates it when copyright law is enforced."

I'm curious why this comment is always censored. It's true, is it not?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2014 @ 3:15pm

I'm obsessed! I want Mike's babies!

This one comes up quite a bit too but never gets reported. Must be true, huh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 19 May 2014 @ 3:18pm

Re: Re: Re:
Two(and a half) reasons really:

1) It's spam. That exact same line is posted constantly, on pretty much any article that isn't gushing about how awesome copyright law is, and how it's never abused(so all articles basically).

2) It's an ad hom. Much like sending a child to the corner when they throw a tantrum or start calling people 'butthead'(and really, it's the same maturity level in both cases), if your entire 'argument' is an insult, don't be surprised if people click report to hide it(hide mind, when it takes all of one click to reveal something, it's hardly 'censored').

2.5) It's not even an accurate insult at that, being nothing more than a strawman attack, based upon the flawed idea that copyright can never be abused, so any use of it is legitimate 'enforcement', meaning anyone who criticizes it can only be doing so because they're 'against copyright enforcement'.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jacob H, 19 May 2014 @ 3:43pm

Movies
What are some of the titles that this company is going after people for? Asking for a friend
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Whatever, 19 May 2014 @ 6:06pm

Re: finally some due process
You are a brave truth teller in a sea of lies and pirates.

Could you stick your manhood up my ass so I can have your babies?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 May 2014 @ 12:41am

Re: Re: Re:
"I'm curious why this comment is always censored. It's true, is it not?"

No. Mike hates the *abuse* of copyright to enable extortion and threats that would otherwise be illegal.

There's no honest person who can justify Malibu and other troll's actions or realistically classify them as "enforcement".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
zip, 20 May 2014 @ 1:05am

missing stats
A key statistic that is missing is the number of extortion victims who were contacted by these trolls and paid up completely outside the court system. In the early 2000, most ISPs simply gave copyright trolls the identities of anyone accused -- without demanding to see a court order. Most of the people who were threatened presumably paid up under the table rather than go to court, but we'll probably never know the exact number of victims or how much money was shaken out of them.

Were any records of any kind kept of these completely-out-of-court extortion "successes"?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 1:26am

Re: Re: Re:
"It's true, is it not?"

No, it is not. Nor is hiding spam from the view of people who do not wish to view it censorship.

After all this time, these simple facts have not made it through your skull. How can you hope to understand and address the actual issues being discussed by people who know more than how to copy and paste the same lies thread after thread? You can't - you address fictions.

Stop whining or start reading, because repeating the same incorrect action over and over will not gain any change in results. As your heroes in the **AAs need to learn this, so do you.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 20 May 2014 @ 1:26pm

Re: missing stats
Very, very unlikely, and in fact most offers to 'settle' probably include an NDA so the 'mark' can't tell anyone about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
simality (profile), 28 May 2014 @ 9:07pm

Re: Re: missing stats
The mark settles because they don't want anyone finding out in the first place. Which kinda makes the NDA moot.
[ link to this | view in thread ]