I'd like to suggest a change in nomiclature

The actions of Prenda, Malibu Media, and the Dallas Buyers Club are "Copyright trolling", but that's really not accurate because it doesn't convey the seriousness of their misconduct. In fables a troll is a brutish creature that lives under bridges.  On the net, a troll is a bully who enjoys riling people up.  While I agree that Malibu Media and Prenda are indeed bullies, that is not all that they are. They are extortionists.  Judge Wright put it best.

Plaintiffs have outmaneuvered the legal system. They’ve discovered the nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense. 

That is extortion, but don't take my word for it.  Take it from Webster:

ex·tort -- verb (used with object)--  to wrest or wring (money, information, etc.) from a person by violence, intimidation, or abuse of authority; obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like.

Prenda and Malibu Media threaten to sue people to sue people for downloading files, regardless of whether or not the file can be found on the computer.  Regardless or whether or not the person was even in the country.

We call that copyright trolling.  But its not.  Its copyright extortion.  And it should be referred to as such.

Let's talk about PACER & RECAP

As I mentioned previously, it costs nothing to create your own PACER account. You don't even have to be lawyer. However using the site can get to be expensive.  While not every page has a fee attached to it, most of the really useful pages do. For example it costs nothing to get to the search feature, but each page of results will cost you a dime. And that's just the start. The purpose of this post is to help you minimize unnecessary expenses so that you are only paying for the stuff that you really want to, rather than the stuff that you really don't have to.

Among the few pages that you can visit for free are the menu pages.   Menu pages are pages that consist of nothing but a list of links.  If you intend to check the status of a case on a regular basis, bookmarking its menu page can save you a ton in search fees.

The case menu page for the Chen/Navasca case.

The last link on the case menu page is the "View a document" link.  This leads to another page where you can entered the number of the document you are looking for.

The View Document page for the Chen/Navasca case.  Judge Chen's order (Doc 122) was the last document posted, so by attempting to view document 123, I am checking to see if there is anything new.

I like to use this page to see if anything new has been posted since my last visit.  In the image above I am attempting to view Document 123 because I know that the most recent document posted (Judge Chen's order) was document number 122. So by attempting to view document 123 I checking to see if anything new has happened.

But what if you don't know what the last docket entry was?  Well this is where the RECAP extension comes in handy.  So if you haven't installed it yet, do so now. I'll wait for you.

Back yet?  Cool.

So where were we...oh yeah, quick, easy, FREE, way to find out what the last known docket number is.

Back on the case menu page there is a history link.  If you click it you are taken to another form page like the one below.

That last link (the one in the white box) leads to the Internet Archive's docket page.  Open the link in a new tab and scroll all the way down.  Ta-dah!  You now know know the number of the last docket entry.

Now in fairness this doesn't work for all cases. The Internet Archive's docket for the Wright Case used to only update (but has since been fixed). But it does pretty well most of the time.

RECAP extension?  Check.  Last known Docket number?  Check.  Okay, now onto the good stuff.

Most of the time, when you check to see if a new document has been posted, the result you get will look like this:

Shucks.

But sometimes you will get lucky and you will get something like this:

Now when you find new documents, the first thing you want to do is to determine if you are the first to find them. Downloading documents that others have already recapped is a waste of money.   In the case of info dump on the right, you can tell that some of the documents have already been RECAPped because of the little blue 'R' next to some of the document links.  Clicking the 'R' will take you to the free version of the document.

If the documents haven't been recapped or if its not clear one way or another (which is the case with the two screenshots on the left) you can go back to the menu page and click on the docket link.

The white box below the form tells you when the newest documents were recapped.  If that date is in the past then you know that your discovery hasn't been RECAPped yet.

What you do next is up to you, but what I like to do is to re-enter the new document number into the Document box and uncheck the boxes in the red square.  Then I click Run Report.

Warning:  Everything you have done up to this point has been free.  But if you click "Run Report" you WILL be charged ten cents for every "page" of results.