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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Prenda Law is gone, and today it's a legit porno company, Malibu Media, [arstechnica.com] 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."

A gray-market company seeks the cover of law. Any 'Freetards' care to comment?

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