Culture & Religion — October 4, 2010

Pornography & P2P-Settlements

Nate Anderson looks at the “legal blackmail” business, a pornographer who decided to take revenge on pirates and the backlash and legal changes it provoked.

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In “The ‘Legal Blackmail’ Business: Inside a P2P-Settlement Factory,” Nate Anderson looks at what happened when British pornographer Jasper Feversham got fed up with “sharing” of his work on the internet and decided to take revenge — or at least a cut. “So Feversham signed on to a relatively new scheme: track down BitTorrent infringers, convert their IP addresses into real names, and blast out warning letters threatening litigation if they didn’t cough up a few hundred quid.” Anderson examines the practice of P2P lawyering and the backlash it provoked.

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