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Welcome to the Torrent Defenders blog, an online publication of Antonelli Law. Antonelli Law has recently expanded their practice to include the defense of those who are involved in BitTorrent lawsuits. Since 2003, Antonelli Law has been involved in computer law—and cases involving BitTorrent are a growing, and swiftly changing, aspect of this area of law. We currently represent a number of people involved in the Guava LLC and Malibu Media cases.

We are involved in the defense of people who have received notices from their ISPs that they have received a subpoena demanding their name and address in relation to a copyright infringement case because we believe that the companies requesting these subpoenas—often companies that produce adult movies—are acting as “copyright trolls.” Copyright trolls have been described as needlessly aggressive, running roughshod on the due process and privacy rights of those accused, and reckless in their supposed evidence of copyright infringement.

While users who have violated the law by downloading copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder may rightly be the subject of a lawsuit, it is unjust for copyright trolls to subpoena entire swarms of users—many of whom they may have no justifiable claim against—and to scare these Internet users into hefty settlement arrangements. Finally, copyright trolls’ allegations of a “conspiracy” of supposed defendants have been criticized as legally unsound. Yet these allegations are often made, and appear to be used in conjunction with the shame or fear of being wrongfully named as a defendant in a file-sharing lawsuit to bring even more leverage against victims of unequal bargaining power.

Our goal with this blog is to inform Internet users of their rights with regard to BitTorrent and similar file-sharing lawsuits and to keep them up-to-date with the rapidly changing landscape of this area of law. We encourage readers of this blog to do plenty of their own research and to hire an attorney if they are able.

Everything in this blog is meant to be general information, and is not legal advice. You should consult with an attorney to evaluate your particular circumstances and evaluate the matter in light of the most recent legal developments. All content copyrighted by Law Offices of Jeffrey J. Antonelli, Ltd. doing business as Antonelli Law.

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