Evan Stone obviously isn't the devil, but Texas judges are now castigating him nonetheless.
While the Mountain Goats may have sung about the “Best ever death metal band out of Denton,” few people are singing the praises of Evan Stone, a Denton, Texas attorney that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has dubbed a “copyright troll.”
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld sanctions (PDF) against Stone on Thursday for having issued 670 unauthorized subpoenas to the ISPs of unnamed John Doe defendants who were accused of infringing copyright by downloading unauthorized copies of a German porn film, Der Gute Onkel (The Good Uncle). Stone represented the film’s producer, Mick Haig.
Stone issued subpoenas to Internet service providers, hoping to unmask those who had downloaded Mick Haig's porn—but he did so before the judge in the case had agreed. When some of the Does contacted the attorneys provided by the court to defend their interests (from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen), the gambit was revealed, and the attorneys moved to sanction Stone. Stone dropped the case, but it wasn't enough to halt the sanctions bid. The district court judge agreed that Stone's conduct had shown "staggering chutzpah" and fined him $10,000 in addition to other penalties. That sanction was appealed and has now been upheld by the Fifth Circuit.
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