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.
no (Score:4, Insightful)
." The problem for Prenda being that initiating the torrent would give anyone who grabbed it an implied license.
Good luck using that idea in court.......
Doesn't work that way (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't quite work that way. Whether the copyright holder uploaded it or not is in and of itself a minor point. The question would be whether the downloader knew or reasonably would have known that the copyright holder had uploaded it and intended to distribute it. It's perfectly legal for the copyright holder to lay a trap for infringers, and the fact that it's the copyright holder laying it won't get the infringer a pass on the infringement. The only defense you might have is a claim that the copyright holder went beyond just laying a trap and actively induced people to download the files. That's going to take more than just uploading them and passively seeing who downloads them, the copyright holder would've had to go out inviting people to download the files and actively represent the files as legitimate or otherwise OK to download (if they didn't give any indication they were the copyright holder and didn't represent the files as legit, you'd still be seen as being willing to download something you knew wasn't legit without any inducement by the copyright holder).
OTOH, while the above holds true in general, Prenda isn't the general case. With all the shenanigans Prenda and Steele et. al. have pulled, if the only source for the pirated files was uploads by Prenda itself the judge may well hold that no infringement would've occurred but for Prenda's own actions and Prenda can't claim damages that they were the primary cause of. That, though, is more in the way of a sanction against Prenda for the other unethical-bordering-on-illegal actions they've taken in these cases than a defense against their claims. I wouldn't advise depending on it against a less-outrageous plaintiff.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
On /. none us are lawyers, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure the Viacom situation applies. Legally Viacom would have been well within its rights to upload a clip, then demand YouTube take down an identical clip uploaded by a user, it's their content.
When you hit the upload button, you also agree to some terms... Google give you the ability to login with the user that uploaded the video and remove it.
But if you file a DMCA take-down notice, and/or sue over it, that's probably abuse of the legal system. Considering that the upload terms explicitly grants Google a license to the work (probably an irrevocable licence).
Re:Doesn't work that way (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, with torrenting, you're distributing without authorization.
Torrenting does not amount to "distributing without authorization." Here's a motion picture that was distributed through torrenting by its author from the get go:
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/ [sitasingstheblues.com]
When I torrented it, I did not distribute it without authorization! And I'd expect posters on this site to know that Linux distros are distributed by torrenting, again, with authorization.
I know that the RIAA, MPAA and their ilk want everybody and their brother to believe that torrent == illegal but we should not swallow their bullshit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Honeypots create copyright confusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Honeypots should be illegal.
If I am a band and I decide to distribute my music free to anyone that wants it, it's still copyright "my band", but apparently free to distribute. I've given users on the internet an implied license to download and use.
I cannot turn around later and start suing people who downloaded my music.
So, if you are the copyright holder of a porn movie and you set up a honeypot to sue people, your act of uploading the movie creates an implied license for others to download and use.
Therefore you should NOT be able to sue. It seems to me that copyright holders want it both ways; to be able to freely distribute and freely sue anyone they want, whenever they want.
But the real irony is that; once it's on the internet, the NSA has a copy, and good luck trying to sue those guys...
Re:Next step (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I find this the scariest part of the summery:
"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.""