Comcast Allegedly Confirms That Prenda Planted Porn Torrents 175
lightbox32 writes "Porn-trolling operation Prenda Law sued thousands for illegally downloading porn files over BitTorrent. Now, a new document from Comcast appears to confirm suspicions that it was actually Prenda mastermind John Steele who uploaded those files. The allegations about uploading porn to The Pirate Bay to create a 'honeypot' to lure downloaders first became public in June, when an expert report filed by Delvan Neville was filed in a Florida case. The allegations gained steam when The Pirate Bay dug through its own backup tapes to find more evidence linking John Steele to an account called sharkmp4."
The problem for Prenda being that initiating the torrent would give anyone who grabbed it an implied license.
Re:Next step (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing that would make this any juicier now is if Prenda itself didn't have the rights to distribute that porn.
Well, they forged copyright assignments with an "Alan Cooper" signature, they negotiated some licenses just for going after copyright violations but not distributing content, and they approached several copyright holders only after the violations started.
So there's all the juice you want in there.
Evidence seems compelling (Score:5, Informative)
You can find a copy of the actual Comcast letter here [torrentfreak.com].
For background :-
It's ironic that the method copyright trolls like to abuse, namely linking IP addresses to alleged infringers is now being used against them in this case.
As for your "good luck" comment, the same point was raised in the Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. [wikipedia.org] lawsuit. Specifically, Google claimed [blogspot.com] that:-
Although summary judgment was granted to Google on other grounds, I'd say this argument has at least a fair chance of success.
Re:Doesn't work that way (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, the supreme court just ruled otherwise for someone who was doing this with textbooks. Google can give you more details, but basically Person A bought textbooks in mass quantities from out of country, imported them in, and then proceeded to sell at a "discount" to the ones available here for a nice profit.
Re:Evidence seems compelling (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure the Viacom situation applies. ...I think the difference is the people sharing the files never had any expectation that the uploaded Prenda content was legit, so they weren't in the same dilemma as Google.
Technically I have to agree with you that the Viacom case doesn't set any precedent insofar as issues of licence/entrapment are concerned. Google argued for (and successfully obtained) a ruling that it qualified under the safe harbour provisions, so the issue of whether or not Viacom had licensed their content impliedly by uploading it themselves or through their representatives never came into question.
As for the reasonable expectation point, I'm not sure that is even a requirement in law at all, and can lead to absurdities if it is. For example, when a copyright owner puts up a file on torrent knowing it will be downloaded, if the downloading is deemed a civil cause of action or a criminal offence, aren't they then abetting the same? When a copyright owner puts up a file on torrent knowing it will be downloaded, isn't that an offer to the world at large to download the file? Or maybe to draw a simpler analogy, if you offer me something and I take it, can you then turn around and accuse me of theft? Things may not be as clear cut as it seems at first glance.
Re: no (Score:3, Informative)