Porn | Downloading Porn Could Bring Lawsuit

The legal campaign has hit federal courts particularly hard in the Bay Area, where the porn industry has lawyers and favors tech savvy local federal judges, as well as, Texas, West Virginia and Chicago, where the primary architect of the strategy, lawyer John Steele, is based. The adult entertainment industry has dubbed Steele the "Pirate Slayer."

"Our clients," Steele said, "are losing millions of dollars from people stealing their movies. They should get their money back from thieves."

But critics, led by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, say the industry is abusing the court system by casting a wide net that ends with menacing letters to embarrassed targets who'd rather cut a check than fight back and be identified in court as someone who may have downloaded porn.

"The intent of these lawsuits is to get peoples' identifying information and attempt to extort settlements out of them," said Corynne McSherry, EFF's intellectual property director.

The so-called "mass