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from www.adultcybermart.com – The love affair between the multi-multi billion dollar porn industry and the media was temporary at best. Where and when it ended I’m not quite sure.

If there was a benchmark story to define that schism, I’m not sure what that was, either. Maybe it happened when Capri Anderson hid from Charlie Sheen in the bathroom of that ritzy New York hotel. Or maybe it was when Bree Olson decided to become a member of this generation’s Manson family headed up by Sheen.

Perhaps it was when the fawning, gossip geeks finally caught on to the fact that Sasha Grey, despite all their hoopla, was badly in need of a personality transplant.

My educated guess is the honeymoon ended when the media finally realized it got played for saps and that porn wasn’t worth more than the aggregate incomes of Major League Baseball, the NFL and the NBA after all. There were stories over the years, without blinking an eye, that actually made those absurd claims.

Just as 60 has become the new 40 in today’s age delineation, lawyers repping porn have become the new porn stars. And not because they’re pretty and sexy. But because they’re doing things in the same predictably moronic way and getting called on the carpet for it.

Our hero so far has been Texas lawyer Evan Stone. Stone gets as much press for the fact that he fucks with the Google search engines by sharing the name of a porn star as he does with his suspect lawsuits. There, for awhile, Stone was at the head of his class as he filed one John Doe class action after another against evil BitTorrent users who hoped to grab porn content off the ‘Net for free.

Trouble was the courts kept kicking out the suits for what amounted to procedural errors. Another lawyer, and obviously not one of Stone’s fans, commented on the Web that first year law students wouldn’t have screwed the pooch as badly.

At least give Stone credit for knowing when to quit while he was behind. He’s gotten out of the porn piracy lawsuit business and is trying to find his niche as a movie director.

[Lawyers always wind up wanting to be something other than lawyers.]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is to squirrelly piracy lawsuits what the ACLU is to bullshit First Amendment violations. In other words the EFF has become the white knights of the legally downtrodden, oppressed and set upon; and it’s the EFF that’s been poking at the hide of porn’s embarrassing gum ups when it comes to the exponentially growing number of Doe lawsuits being filed.

To date there are 296 cases involving alleged porn piracy. The EFF calls it “copyright trolling”; others like Houston attorney Robert Cashman call them “extortion schemes”.

Here’s how it works: Cyber-¬detectives link downloaded movies to a type of numerical Internet address known as an IP address. A copyright infringement lawsuit is then filed, naming thousands of IP addresses.

Internet service providers such as Comcast and Time Warner are expected to identify the names and street addresses of customers linked to the Internet addresses. The fact that Time Warner and Comcast have been grousing in recent weeks about the lack of porn buys probably gives them all the impetus in the world to rat out their customers. Then the lawyer approaches the John Doe with a deal to make it all go away for a couple of grand.

Porno mail order companies used to work on the same principle. They’d advertise ten movies for a buck, send you nothing and figured the sucker’s too embarrassed to admit to the postal authorities that he ordered porn.

The following John Doe story never got out, or else we’d have heard it all over Ars Technica, TorrentFreak and Slyck.com by now.

A dead man was named as a Doe in one of those piracy suits. His widow explained that her husband had been dead for quite some time [six years] and that he couldn’t possibly have downloaded the naughty movie in question. The lawyer who was handling the case actually had the good sense to dismiss her from the suit. Except common sense doesn’t always prevail in these situations.

As it turns out, WiFi scam artists may actually be at the root of all the evil.

Similarly, in recent weeks we had the case of two grandmothers who’d also become the subjects of porn litigation. If Big Porn’s attempting to endear itself to the masses with sob stories about free movies and its financial plight, it’s certainly going the wrong way about it by picking fights with old ladies.

We had one case out of Palm Beach, Florida, and no one in the media picked up on it, whereas a grandmother in San Francisco got all the attention. Of course it also leads you to think that by having a Palm Beach mailing address, no sympathy can be generated.

In any event, the Palm Beach grandmother had a 14-year-old grandson who set up her Wi-Fi system and someone may have tapped into it because, apparently, it wasn’t password protected to download contraband. And she was blamed.

“She says she doesn’t know Wi-Fi from hi-fi,” said Bradford Patrick, the Tampa lawyer who represents her.

But that didn’t stop the grandmother from being named in a lawsuit which could cost her up to $150,000.

In San Francisco a retired widow who does volunteer work was hit with a similar lawsuit and can’t afford an attorney to make her case. She was told it could all go away by charging $3400 on a credit card.

“It smacks of extortion,” she has said.

Attorney John Steele of Steele Hansmeier PLLC filed that case in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Hard Drive Productions. Steele is rapidly becoming the new Snidely Whiplash in these Little Nell scenarios. And, in the past year, Steele has sued roughly 15,000 John Does in 110 separate cases. He plans to file another 50 cases in the next month.

“I don’t feel embarrassed about watching porn,” Steele says.

“I don’t think you should have to hide it. I think you should be embarrassed about a federal lawsuit being filed against you for stealing. Whether it’s adult content or not, the issue is theft.”

Granny Doe said she’ll go to trial without an attorney if necessary and “throw herself on the mercy of the court.”

“I’d say to the judge, ‘I have no idea how this happened.’ If Sony can get hacked, if the Pentagon can get hacked, my goodness, what chance does an individual have?”

Steele in his defense of picking on hapless senior citizens went on the attack by accusing owners of unprotected wireless service of wild irresponsibility.

He said anyone who fails to secure their Wi-Fi is as responsible for the subsequent crimes or tragedies as a parent who leaves a loaded gun within the reach of a 3-year-old.

Then you got to wonder who the 3-year old is when you read of a blind man in Seattle, Washington accused of illegally downloading porn, and the lack of God given sense that prevails in that case.

The lawsuit on behalf of Imperial Enterprises against Blind Man Doe was filed in Washington D.C. federal court.

[Most cyber-pirates are prosecuted in D.C., and more than 85,000 John Does are currently in ongoing litigation in the district’s federal court.]

According to the lawsuit, the name of the movie Blind Man Doe purportedly downloaded was Tokyo Cougar Creampies.

“To be honest, it’s a little ridiculous,” said Blind Man Doe.

“My movie-watching ability is nonexistent. My kids watch movies, but they are 4 and 6, so they don’t watch porn either. Well, hopefully they don’t.”

Blind Man Doe had just accepted a job in the network-security division of a Seattle software company. (Special computer software allows him to function and do his work.)

The attorneys for Imperial Enterprises tracked his IP address and he’s referred to in the court documents as John Doe 2,057 [out of 3,545 total John Does]. Later he discovered via a letter from Comcast, that Imperial’s lawyers asked the judge to order the cable company to identify him.

Blind man Doe swears he didn’t do it that it had to have been someone with Wi-Fi access.

“I didn’t have time to set up the wireless network in my old apartment,” he explains.

“I was working 18-hour days, so I just told my wife to go to Best Buy and pick up a router. She installed it, hit next, next, finish, and — boom — that was it. We lived in a very upscale building; there was no riffraff. We just assumed we didn’t have anything to worry about.”

Wrong. Apparently his “no riffraff” neighbors were using his unprotected wireless to download movies. It could have cost him up to $150,000 under federal copyright law.

But it just so happens the offices of Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver — the D.C.-based attorneys who represent Imperial Enterprises — offered him an easy alternative. Blind Man Doe could pay a few thousand dollars in fees and the case would disappear. In exchange for the settlement, they’d drop their lawsuit.

Blind Man Doe took the deal. Despite his claims of innocence, he hired an attorney and paid a settlement to make his case go away. The experience, he says, taught him a valuable lesson.

“Never leave your wireless network open,” he advises.

“It could end up costing you a few thousand dollars.”