Rightscorp, whose data supports several major copyright infringement liability lawsuits against ISPs, has been hit with a $15m lawsuit. Plaintiff American Films, which previously claimed to have acquired the US operations of notorious ‘copyright troll’ outfit GuardaLey, says Rightscorp dangled an acquisition offer and then used confidential information to make bank.

After beginning life as DigitalRights back in 2009, anti-piracy company Rightscorp became known for its cut-price copyright-trolling operations.

Where competitors would attempt to charge hundreds up to multiple thousands of dollars per alleged file-sharing infringement, Rightscorp initially offered to settle cases for around $20. The long game was for every ISP in the United States to forward Rightscorp notices to customers, thereby negating the need for courts, subpoenas, and other legal expenses.

While some ISPs did indeed forward Rightscorp’s notices, the anti-piracy company couldn’t balance the books with its settlement model and lost millions of dollars. In a change of direction, Rightscorp data was later utilized by music publisher BMG to sue Cox Communications for failing to disconnect repeat infringers.

The rest of this article can be read on TorrentFreak.com

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