CK • Washington.   Im Schriftsatz USA v. Paul Hansmeier vom 25. März 2019 erfährt der naive Internetnutzer, welche Tricks ihn zum Porno-Download verführen, wenn Kriminelle ihn zum peinlichkeitsvermei­den­den Ver­gleich zwin­gen wol­len. Die Staatsanwaltschaft schreibt zur Begrün­dung einer 150-mo­na­tigen Haftstrafe:

It was Hansmeier who came up with the idea to construct a co­py­right settlement mill focused on pornographic films. It was Hans­mei­er who directed his brother to upload clients' movies onto file-sha­ring websites to lure downloaders. It was Hans­mei­er who draf­ted nearly all of the legal pleadings used to deceive judges. It was Hansmeier who invented phantom hacking allegations. …
Hansmeier's mass John Doe copyright infringement suits were spe­ci­fi­cally designed to deceive courts into believing that real third-par­ty plain­tiffs were suffering actual damages as a result of un­au­tho­ri­zed, un­invited, large-scale infringement of por­no­gra­phic mo­vies by co­py­right pi­rates. …
Hansmeier uploaded to Bit Torrent websites the very mo­vies he sued others for downloading. …
Paul Hansmeier selected the pornographic movies for his bro­ther to up­load based upon how attrac­ti­ve they would be to Bit­Tor­rent users, thus deliberately encouraging the piracy Hans­mei­er pre­ten­ded to hate. …
[I]n courts throughout the country, … Hansmeier filed hundreds of lawsuits against thousands of "John Does." …
Hansmeier and Steele created pornographic content for the so­le pur­pose of extracting settlements.

Der angeklagte Rechtsanwalt bewegte die von ihm über IP-Anschriften und ge­richt­li­che Zwangsmittel ermittelten angeblichen Urheberrechtsverletzer außer­ge­richt­lich zu Vergleichzahlungen knapp unter der Schmerzgrenze ihrer wahr­schein­lichen Ver­tei­di­gungs­ko­sten, sodass er lange Zeit einer gerichtlichen Prü­fung sei­ner be­haup­te­ten Ansprüche oder der Merkmale einer Urheberrechts­ver­let­zung ausweichen konnte.