Inside the Mind of a Anti-piracy Lawyer

Within the piracy realm, it’s not too difficult to read first-hand accounts of people who’ve been hit with harsh court rulings, or the perspective from the record/movies/etc companies themselves. But it’s not often we hear the opinions straight from the lawyers, who are clearly the binding force that can either work for, or against, the common consumer.

Thanks to an Ars Technica feature, however, we’re able to peer into the mind of one of the most active copyright lawyers around right now – one who’s sent subpoenas out to thousands of people on behalf of many different companies and for different types of content.

Evan Stone, not to be confused with the successful porn actor, has worked on behalf of a gay porn production company and also an anime importer, both of which have used Evan’s skills and dedication to their advantage. As a whole, Evan portrays himself as being someone on the side of copyright law, and it’s in his interest to protect these companies from having their content traded online. He claims that he’s not in it for the money, “proven” by the fact that he drives a 2002 Toyota.

Of course, it’s hard to take a huge amount of credence into someone who once went against a judge’s orders and sent out subpoenas to hundreds of alleged file-sharers, or someone who actively sues without definitive proof for cases that could result in a judgement of up to $150,000 per file, or… someone who believes that suing 1,337 people is a cool “nod to the hacker community”.

Evan claims that he’s not in it for the money, but when is the last time you met a commercial lawyer that wasn’t – especially one that’s setting out to deal with content-publishing companies, where there happens to be a lot of money to be found. If Evan was genuinely interested in his cause, he’d be not suing people left and right. It’s that simple.

Almost all industries, whether it be music, movies or games, could have piracy decreased via many different means. In one case Mr. Stone handled, file-sharers who traded an anime episode, which is freely available at Hulu, were targeted. You know why people trade content like this online? It’s because services like Hulu lock anyone outside of the US out, or people in the US don’t like the implementation or may not even know about it.

Suing people for crazy amounts of money sure isn’t going to help much, if history is worth anything.

Despite sharing the same name as a porn star, Stone didn’t intend on getting into bed (as it were) with the porn business. In 1998 and 1999, he was out in LA and starting a tiny record label at about the time that Napster burst into public consciousness and the Diamond Rio MP3 player hit the store shelves (where it was promptly sued by the major music labels). His business was artist-focused and Internet-aware; years before iTunes, Stone wanted to sell tracks on the ‘Net and give half the money to his artists, a generous split.