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A ruling from a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has knocked out one of the primary tactics used by copyright "trolls" in their campaigns to shake down accused infringers. This represents a major victory, and one that the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- the digital civil liberties organization where I work -- has pursued for years.
In the first appeals court decision of its kind, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that the technique used by appellee AF Holdings of bundling together dozens of Internet users in a single suit in order to obtain their identities is an unfair abuse of the legal process.
Unfortunately for the trolls, that illegal practice is a critical part of their business model. Like email spammers, copyright trolls depend on the ability to cheaply cast a very wide net, sending out hundreds or thousands of accusations at once and getting settlement payments back from some percentage. In recent years, many copyright trolls have focused on unauthorized downloads of pornography, 핑카지노주소 adding to the risk of embarrassment that would come with being named in a lawsuit.