This is a quick post: even though we discussed it on Twitter , I’m afraid many defense attorneys missed the following GFY comment discovered by Raul.

GFY is a very active message board for adult webmasters and producers. One of the last year threads there (NSFW) discussed Prenda’s fiasco in Lightspeed v. Smith. Amid some local boneheads’ denial of the obvious, there were many rational voices calling Prenda’s practice by its real name: extortion. But the comment in question is not about Prenda at all. It’s more about German puppeteers that run Malibu Media, Voltage Pictures, Vision Films and other American shakedown theaters.

it was common practice in germany some years ago to set up a trap, have people download the stuff by P2P, track them down and send them nasty letters

some companies had specialized on that, they offered me a deal where that company, the lawyers and me get 33% each from the money they extorted from people that downloaded content from the trap in place

i refused, many others didnt.

The author is apparently the owner of amazingcontent.com (NSFW) — a wholesale adult content distributor, seemingly the rights holder. It’s heartwarming to see that even those who are understandably pissed off by proliferation of unauthorized copies of their content on the web, are not blindfolded by their anger and capable of telling right from wrong. It is ironic that smut producers have more dignity than certain purported Christians who easily take the golden bait from the fishing Satan.

Mounting proof of trolls’ seeding stuff in order to lure hapless file-sharers is troubling yet not unexpected. For example, the evidence of Guardaley seeding the Elf-Man movie is very compelling:

A list of the Vision Films movies uploaded to bittorrent by “HeroMaster.” Turns out the allegations at paragraph 45 of our Second Amended Answer, Affirmative Defenses and Counterclaims were just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did “HeroMaster” initially seed Elf Man and Blood Money before their public release, he/she also uploaded the majority of the Vision Films movies on the “APMC/Vision Films Schedule A” prior to their public release. So,it appears our suspicions are correct and coming to light: Vision Films uploads the movies and then Vision Films hires APMC to track and sue every one who takes the bait. You said our allegations of “barratry” were scandalous, but it appears they are true.

Also, Malibu’s clips appear in the wild merely 4-10 minutes after the release, and the XArt’s owners apparently close their eyes to this Baden-Württemberg sized hole.

So, I just wanted to draw attention to yet another red flag and suggest that Doe defenders and federal investigators start talking to rights holders and attorneys who had been approached by German racketeers to mount the final counter-action that will eventually wipe copyright trolls off.

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