2 Paul A. Duffy argued the cause and filed the brief for appellee AF Holdings, LLC. Before: TATEL, Circuit Judge, SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judges. and SILBERMAN and Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. TATEL, Circuit Judge: Generally speaking, our federal judicial system and the procedural rules that govern it work well, allowing parties to resolve their disputes with one another fairly and efficiently. But sometimes individuals seek to manipulate judicial procedures to serve their own improper ends. This case calls upon us to evaluate—and put a stop to— one litigant’s attempt to do just that. I. Appellee AF Holdings, a limited liability company formed in the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, sued and then sought discovery regarding more than a thousand unknown individuals who it claimed had illegally shared a copyrighted pornographic film. This interlocutory appeal arises from a district court order granting AF Holdings’s discovery requests. A full understanding of this case requires knowing some things about the lawyer and “law firm’ that initiated it. AF Holdings is represented by attorney Paul A. Duffy. Until very recently, Duffy was associated with “Prenda Law,” an organization that, since representing AF Holdings in the district court, appears to have disbanded and_ then reconstituted itself in a similar form. See Ben Jones, Prenda Suffers More Fee Award Blows, TorrentFreak (August 9, 2013), http://torrentfreak.com/prenda-suffers-more-fee-award -blows-130809.