all your ip's are belong to us —

Prenda Law wants IP address of every anti-troll blog reader

Huge info request is part of defamation lawsuit against two blogs.

The key players at porn-trolling firm Prenda Law are pressing forward with their new defamation lawsuit against anonymous online critics. Now they've made one of their wildest demands yet: they want an Excel spreadsheet with the IP address of every visitor to the two most prominent troll-fighting blogs, DieTrollDie and Fight Copyright Trolls.

The Prenda defamation suit cites dozens of anonymous comments on those blogs that describe Prenda lawyers in less-than-endearing terms, using terms like "brain-damaged" and "assclowns."

The subpoena was sent to Automattic, the company that owns WordPress, which is the blogging platform for DieTrollDie and Fight Copyright Trolls. It's dated Feb. 25 but was just published yesterday on DieTrollDie.

"Due to the emergency nature of the requested information, it is imperative that your organization responds to the subpoena immediately," writes Prenda lawyer Paul Duffy in a letter accompanying the subpoena.

The anonymous author of DieTrollDie published the subpoena (large PDF) as part of a blog post indicating that he's going to fight it but isn't sure of the results. He expected a specific request for information about the allegedly libelous comments, but he doesn't seem surprised to see, "in true Prenda fashion," an incredibly broad information request.

"I’m working to prevent this," states the author. "I don’t know if WordPress will laugh at this overly broad request. As there is a possibility that a release could occur, the public IP address (date/time stamp) could fall into the hands of Prenda. I would expect that they would then try to cross-reference the IP address with their list of alleged BitTorrent infringement IP addresses."

Update: Friday afternoon, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said on Twitter that it will be representing the two blogs as they fight the subpoenas. Automattic has also said it will not comply with the subpoenas.

Many of the key players in the Prenda Law saga have been ordered to come to Judge Otis Wright's courtroom in Los Angeles on Monday. Ars will have a report from the hearing.

Channel Ars Technica