The persons who signed Exhibit B to Plaintiff’s complaint are Raymond Rogers and Alan Cooper. Although Cooper has repudiated his corporate representative status, Cooper’s repudiation lacks credibility for the reasons set forth herein.

Alan Cooper’s repudiation of his corporate representative status is not credible. To put Cooper’s repudiation in its proper context, the Court might consider the following questions: (1) why is an individual from Northern Minnesota testifying before courts across the United States in copyright infringement actions; (2) how is he paying for all of this; and (3) when did he get his start? Cooper’s testimony at a March 11, 2013, hearing before Judge Wright provided some clues.

At the hearing, Cooper revealed that he first became involved in this nationwide effort when he received an anonymous text message with contact information for EFF panel attorney, Paul Godfread. The text message informed Cooper that he needed to contact Godfread to avoid serious liability.... Shortly thereafter, Cooper, through attorney Godfread, filed a lawsuit against attorney John Steele and others seeking $4.6 million in damages for the misuse of his name.... Contemporaneously with those efforts, EFF panel attorneys from across the nation began using Cooper’s repudiation to launch collateral attacks on Plaintiff’s copyright infringement lawsuits.... These attacks met with limited success, with one notable exception—the sanctions order issued by Judge Wright. EFF panel attorneys paid for Cooper and Godfread to fly from Minnesota to the Los Angeles, California hearing before Judge Wright and Cooper was escorted around at the hearing by an EFF staff attorney who has spearheaded the EFF’s efforts to stymie copyright enforcement nationwide.

Steele described the litigation and his business to Cooper. At some point in early 2011, Steele and Cooper discussed how a friend of Steele’s was exploring opportunities relating to purchasing and marketing adult content. Cooper expressed interest in learning more about these opportunities and Steele offered to help him learn more. Eventually, Steele and Cooper agreed that Steele would help Cooper form a business entity that would allow Cooper to pursue these opportunities. He spoke to Steele many times about this project. Cooper was overheard by his long time friend, Brent Berry, asking Steele, “How’s my porn company doing?” He further joked about never having to worry about having beer money again. Cooper’s then-wife was against Cooper’s participation in the adult industry. They regularly fought about this issue, and these fights were overheard by multiple people, including Steele and a mutual friend, Jason Flesher.

Cooper ended up not moving forward with the ideas Steele proposed to him, but he continued to express interest in connecting with people in the industry to learn more about the business. Steele offered to introduce Cooper to Mark Lutz, who operated two companies, AF Holdings, LLC and Ingenuity13, LLC. Id. Specifically, Steele informed Cooper that he could volunteer as a corporate representative for these companies in order to gain exposure to the industry and people who could help him. Id. In this way, Cooper could identify opportunities for himself, and possibly develop partnerships with industry insiders. Cooper participated in a limited number of transactions in the latter half of 2011, including acknowledging two assignment agreements on behalf of AF Holdings, LLC.

In September 2012, due to this worsening behavior, Steele asked Cooper to leave his property... Cooper was extremely upset and embarked on an extensive campaign of revenge.... Cooper used a chainsaw to remove large portions of load-bearing walls in Steele’s guest cabin, tore down nearly every interior wall in the guest cabin, stole 4 rifles, 1 shotgun and 5 pistols Steele stored on his property, threatened prospective buyers of Steele’s property, cut down significant acreage of wood and unlawfully removed it from Steele’s property, and stole hundreds of items, including tools, equipment, lumber, and virtually every item that was not bolted down in Steele’s kitchen. Id. Cooper even stole a large trailer of Steele’s that Cooper used to haul away entire rooms of furniture from Steele’s cabin.

“Even so narrowed, the statute is unconstitutional. You simply cannot prohibit emails that are said to be intended to offend. That violates the First Amendment flat out,” said University of Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone, who specializes in constitutional law. “You can prohibit email if the recipient has requested you to stop sending them. That’s different -- but that’s not what this says.”

"I know people are focusing on unintended consequences of the bill, but I don’t think that's realistic," Farley said. "I think this is a wakeup call that we should be civil online and in society in general. I don’t think it's right we should ever be able to threaten violence against each other online."

... takes a law meant to address irritating phone calls and applies it to communication on web sites, blogs, listserves and other Internet communication. H.B. 2549 is not limited to a one to one conversation between two specific people. The communication does not need to be repetitive or even unwanted. There is no requirement that the recipient or subject of the speech actually feel offended, annoyed or scared. Nor does the legislation make clear that the communication must be intended to offend or annoy the reader, the subject or even any specific person.

Telephones are basically one-to-one devices, so a phone call that uses profane language to offend is likely meant only to offend the one recipient, rather than to persuade or inform anyone; but computers used to post Facebook messages or send Twitter messages or post blog items can offend some listeners while persuading and informing others.

So, under the statute, posting a comment to a newspaper article — or a blog — saying that the article or post author is “fucking out of line” would be a crime: It’s said with intent to offend, it uses an electronic or digital device, and it uses what likely will be seen as profane language (see, e.g., City of Columbia Falls v. Bennett (Mont. 1991)). Likewise if a blog poster were to post the same in response to a commenter’s comment. Likewise if someone posts something in response to an e-mail on an e-mail-based discussion list, or in a chatroom, or wherever else. (Note that if “profane” is read to mean not vulgarly insulting, but instead religiously offensive, see City of Bellevue v. Lorang (Wash. 2000), then the statute would be unconstitutional as well.)

The same would be true if someone posts something lewd in one of these places in order to annoy or offend someone, for instance if he posts a comment on a police-run public discussion page that says something like “the chief of police can suck my dick,” to borrow subject matter from a prior Arizona telephone harassment case. And note that, given that case, the speech need not even be about one of the recipients, so long as it’s intended to annoy or offend one of the recipients.

Your letter, its accusations, and its conclusions are shocking. And you are wrong in every respect...

[...]

I can't close a letter without pointing out the obvious: your letter, instead of addressing Mr. Shojaee's accurate claims about Mr. Hope's business activities, maligns his character and accuses Mr. Shojaee of "fail[ing] to disclose your true motives to your readers." You then go on to list a number of web domains that Mr. Shojaee legally owns in connection with a legitimate business purpose.

The idea that Mr. Shojaee has done anything to apologize for is laughable. It is Mr. Hope who has built a company based on deception; it is Mr. Hope who has illegally used technology to bilk consumers out of millions; it is Mr. Hope who has chosen to interfere with my client's business...

Basically, we caught Maricopa County elections in a felony today - cross-wiring the central tabulator to a non-secure laptop owned by Sequoia Voting Systems, complete with cellular modem card in there and live. And I couldn't get a picture. Need a micro-cam of some sort to get the proof. See also my affidavit filed with our attorney today.

Remember: by law, the central tabulator system on what's supposed to be an isolated local network is completely unpatched - it's not allowed to be modified in any way since the day it shipped in 2006 or 2007. Even if the Sequoia tech didn't cross-connect the cellmodem to the Ethernet (and both appeared to be live), he could have easily "pwned" the "secure" systems with any number of ancient script-kiddy exploits.

"He used Voter Vault. The The Republican National Committee owns Voter Vault....It's a private list. We own the list. We can do what we want with the list, quite frankly."