It wasn't legal, but that didn't prevent them from running off with the money. Nobody wants to get involved in a lawsuit over porn movie piracy, so many people just pay the fine.
And when you pay, it's almost impossible to get the money back, because you basically admit your guilt, even when the claim was not legit.
There's more to this case, you can read about it here:
tl;dr: They got users' IPs through ads and misled the courts into thinking the users committed a crime by watching the videos. Courts ordered the ISPs to give out the users' info, the law firm CD'd the users and ran off when shit hit the fan.
The same thing can happen with JS torrenting and it's even easier to do.
And when you pay, it's almost impossible to get the money back, because you basically admit your guilt, even when the claim was not legit.
There's more to this case, you can read about it here:
https://torrentfreak.com/viewing-pirated-streams-is-not-ille...
tl;dr: They got users' IPs through ads and misled the courts into thinking the users committed a crime by watching the videos. Courts ordered the ISPs to give out the users' info, the law firm CD'd the users and ran off when shit hit the fan.
The same thing can happen with JS torrenting and it's even easier to do.