Question: Can copyright trolling be profitable without suing over porn?

Answer: Probably not.

At least that's what the example of Rightscorp seems to be teaching. The company is the most recent effort to build a business being an online copyright cop, but financial data made public yesterday shows that Rightscorp, which has never been profitable, is losing money faster than ever.

The RIAA's giant lawsuit campaign lost loads of cash, and Righthaven (remember them?) dried up and blew away after legal setbacks interrupted its collections of four- and five-figure settlements from mom-and-pop bloggers.

The latest incarnation of the business model comes in the form of Rightscorp, which tries to compel Internet users to pay up to $20 per song when its clients' copyrighted works are downloaded over BitTorrent networks. The publicly traded company reported its quarterly financial results yesterday, and they're an unmitigated disaster—although company executives somehow managed to put a happy face on.

No surprise, Rightscorp highlighted that its revenue is up significantly—it made $308,000 in the first quarter of 2015 compared to $189,000 last year. But the company was less eager to highlight how much it cost to collect that money—$1.24 million, far more than the $829,000 in expenses from the same quarter last year.

The company is actually bleeding cash faster than ever, having sustained an operating loss of $929,000 in the last quarter. The company had $1.67 million in cash at the end of December and is down to $824,000.

On its quarterly conference call, Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec mentioned a bizarre potpourri of recent copyright cases—from Grooveshark's demise to the "Blurred Lines" verdict—and suggested they somehow bode well for Rightscorp.

"These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate the ramifications against infringement," Sabec said on the call. "Rightscorp is one of the most effective and vital solutions to this multibillion dollar problem."

Earlier this week, Rightscorp sent out a press release touting the launch of a new product called a "Streaming Rights Monitoring" service, which the company says "includes optional 365x24x7 monitoring of mobile streaming networks." A company spokesperson didn't respond to a request for more details about the service.

Care to comment?

In contrast to previous quarters, the executives had to field a few tough questions. Those were parried by company COO Robert Steele, who put a relentlessly positive spin on some bleak financial facts.

"It seems that this year if you look at quarter over last quarter, first quarter over fourth quarter, what you did in the fourth quarter was about the shortfall from 2014," said one unnamed analyst on the call. "Would you like to comment on why we are looking at such flat sales?"

"We’re excited about the fact that we just had the best quarter than we’ve ever had," answered Steele. "We just did $307,000 in revenue, which was a significant increase from the same quarter a year ago."

"What could you say about the fact that the stockholder value has gone down about 80 percent in the last year, in spite of the fact that you’ve done two private equity raises?" asked another analyst.

Steele's answer:

We think this is a great time to get involved with a company as a shareholder. Fundamental investment thesis continues to be proven out. So with approximately 250,000 copyrights being monitored, we generated $300,000 in top-line revenue, there is 27 million Apple copyright on iTunes, so this can be an enormous business.

The premise of Rightscorp becoming an iTunes-sized enforcement business is looking distant, to say the least. Rightscorp stock is currently trading at an all-time low of 8¢ per share.

Rightscorp is also facing two class-action lawsuits saying its collection efforts violated federal laws about robo-calling. The company attributed $68,300 of increased legal expenses to those actions.

The company continues to report that "more than 233" ISPs have agreed to work with it, and it estimates those ISPs reach about 15 percent of the US population. It splits the revenue it collects 50/50 with copyright owners.