YNOT – Note to would-be adult industry attorneys: Suing suspected copyright infringers on behalf of porn studios may not be the quick-bucks slam-dunk you expected.
Just ask Richmond, Va.-based personal injury attorney D. Wayne O’Bryan. Last week a federal judge in Richmond severed a copyright-infringement case O’Bryan filed against a few dozen suspected file-sharers after likening the attorney’s tactics to a shakedown racket.
On its face, the lawsuit, filed on behalf of KBeech Video over the adult movie Gangbang Virgins, doesn’t appear much different from other massive piracy lawsuits filed within the past year or two. O’Bryan named the defendants by IP address and obtained the court’s permission to subpoena personal information from their internet service providers in order to negotiate out-of-court settlements or bring the miscreants to justice before the bench. It is at that point that O’Bryan’s methods apparently veered from the straight-and-narrow, strictly legal path.
According to court documents, all was fine and dandy as long as defendants ponied up the $2,900 O’Bryan demanded in order to end the litigation. The minute a defendant balked and complained to the court, however, O’Bryan dropped him or her from the lawsuit, regardless of alleged guilt, in order to prevent the case from actually going before a judge.
Judge John Gibney Jr. took a dim view of the approach.
“The plaintiffs have used the offices of the Court as an inexpensive means to gain the Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce payment from them,” Gibney wrote in an order rife with reprimand. “The plaintiffs seemingly have no interest in actually litigating the cases, but rather simply have used the Court and its subpoena powers to obtain sufficient information to shake down the John Does.”
Consequently, Gibney quashed all outstanding subpoenas, required O’Bryan to re-file against each defendant individually, and gave KBeech and O’Bryan 10 days to convince him they should not be sanctioned for misrepresenting their motives to the court.
O’Bryan is the second attorney in less than a month to face official condemnation for his anti-piracy tactics. In late September, a federal district judge slapped Dallas lawyer Evan Stone with a $10,000 fine after Stone sent subpoenas seeking personal information about suspected file-traders before receiving judicial approval to do so.
