Prenda’s last stand: threats sprawl from a Minnesota hacking lawsuit

Given how badly things have been going, it seems like the copyright-lawsuit factory that is Prenda Law should be on the verge of shutdown. The lawyers behind the operation were hauled into federal court in Los Angeles, and questioned about possible "fraud on the court." Instead of talking about their litigation tactics, they chose to clam up and plead the Fifth Amendment. Meanwhile, they're dismissing their copyright cases as fast as they can.

Now, Prenda is actually pushing boldly forward with a new set of threat letters—and this new campaign has the potential to be the biggest set of threats yet.

Prenda has been best known for using a variety of shell companies, like AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13, to file copyright cases. It uses discovery in those cases to scoop up as many names connected to IP addresses as possible, accusing defendants of downloading porn files through BitTorrent. But Prenda has also filed some bizarre non-copyright lawsuits, making claims over computer hacking and other offenses. Those lawsuits are lower-profile and harder to find, since they are filed in state courts and can't be found through PACER, the federal courts database. Even though their claims are somewhat muddy, they still lead to discovery.