Prenda Law, as Judge Otis Wright II put it in a case similar to this, was a “porno-trolling collective.” Ingenuity 13 LLC v. John Doe, No. 2:12-cv-8333, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 64564, at *3 (C.D. Cal. May 6, 2013). According to Judge Wright, Duffy and the other principals of Prenda Law were “attorneys with shattered law practices” who, “[s]eeking easy money, ... formed . . . AF Holdings,” acquired “several copyrights to pornographic movies,” then initiated massive “John Doe” copyright infringement lawsuits. /d. at *5-6. These suits took advantage of judicial discovery procedures in order to identify persons who might possibly have downloaded certain pornographic films. Such individuals, although generally able to use the Internet anonymously, are, like all Internet users, linked to particular Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, a series of numbers assigned to each Internet service subscriber. Internet service providers like Appellants can use IP addresses to identify these underlying subscribers, but not necessarily the individuals actually accessing the Internet through the subscribers’ connections at any given time. Confronted with these realities, Prenda Law’s general approach was to identify certain unknown persons whose IP addresses were used to download pornographic films, sue them in gigantic multi-defendant suits that minimized filing fees, discover the identities of the persons to whom these IP address were assigned by serving subpoenas on the Internet service providers to which the addresses pertained, then negotiate settlements with the underlying subscribers—a “strategy [that] was highly successful because of statutorycopyright damages, the pornographic subject matter, and the high cost of litigation.” /d. at *6—7; see also Claire Suddath, Prenda Law, the Porn Copyright Trolls, Bloomberg Businessweek (May 30, 2013), http://www.businessweek.com /articles/2013-05-30/prenda-law-the-porn-copyright-trolls (recounting Prenda Law’s history and litigation tactics). If an

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