Porn studio asks judge to ban talk about “copyleft” blogs at trial

Prenda Law is gone, and today it's a legit porno company, Malibu Media, that files more copyright lawsuits than anyone else. Malibu sues thousands of people for downloading the company's content via BitTorrent, then asks for settlements reportedly in the several-thousand-dollar range.

The antics of Malibu and other "copyright trolls" are often documented on two pseudonymous troll-fighting blogs, FightCopyrightTrolls and DieTrollDie.

Now that Malibu has a case where a defendant is insisting on his right to have his case heard by a jury, it really doesn't want those blogs coming up at trial. Malibu's attorney Keith Lipscomb has asked (PDF) the judge in the case to ban "inappropriate references to blogs" during the copyright infringement trial, seeking $150,000 in damages from Indiana resident Michael Harrison.

"The Court should preclude Defendant from referring to copyleft blogs for any purpose, including specifically references to fightcopyrightrolls.com and dietrolldie.com," writes Lipscomb in the motion, filed earlier this week. "The blogs target Plaintiff and its counsel with vitriolic hate speech and contain comments that are biased, slanderous, and prejudicial, and should not be referred to at trial for any purpose."

In a footnote, Lipscomb explains "copyleft" for the judge, writing: "Copyleft is the polite way of describing an anti-copyright ideology. 'Freetards' is the degrading equivalent of 'copyright trolls' when used in association with copyright producers."

The author of Fight Copyright Trolls, who goes by the moniker Sophisticated Jane Doe (SJD), commented on the motion via e-mail, saying he doesn't care whether it is granted or not.

"I don’t feel offended in any way," SJD wrote. "On the contrary, I regard this motion as a form of flattery and confirmation that my humble effort was not in vain. FCT is an opinion blog, and as such my writings are inadmissible hearsay anyway."

The Malibu Media v. Harrison lawsuit (PDF), filed in 2012, accuses Harrison of downloading a motion picture called "Pretty Back Door Baby." Trial is scheduled for the end of August.

The motion was pointed out yesterday by an anti-troll critic on Twitter.