File-Sharing Site Was Actually an Anti-Piracy Honeypot 225
An anonymous reader writes "The administrator of file-sharing site UploaderTalk shocked and enraged his userbase a few days ago when he revealed that the site was nothing more than a honeypot set up by a company called Nuke Piracy. The main purpose of the site had been to gather data on its users. The administrator said, 'I collected info on file hosts, web hosts, websites. I suckered $#!&loads of you. I built a history, got the trust of some very important people in the warez scene collecting information and data all the time.' Nobody knows what Nuke Piracy is going to do with the data, but it seems reasonable to expect lawsuits and the further investigation of any services the users discussed. His very public betrayal is likely meant to sow discord and distrust among the groups responsible for distributing pirated files."
Re:Whaaa? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Whaaa? (Score:5, Informative)
Internet piracy: choose what you want to watch and watch it. Available on the day it is aired on or released, in any country or region around the world, best quality, all versions available, subtitles for all languages, no ads, transferable to any device.
DVDs: find a shop that has what you want and is willing to sell it in your region, or order them online. Go to the shop or wait. Put the DVD in your current DVD reader in its box. Put the DVD you just bought inside the DVD reader. Watch the mandatory ads. Go through some horrible and unpractical menu. Bad subtitles. Not transferable. Bad resolution and often interlaced video. No easy way to keep track of which version of the video it is and whether there are better ones that got released later or in other regions. Must use the DRM-locked interface of your DVD reader to do anything.
Blurays: pretty much like DVDs, except the quality is better and the non-transferability and ads are even worse.
TV channels: you must be present at the time of broadcast to see the show, or set up the appropriate recording with an inept interface (assuming you have paid the premium to be allowed to do this). If your connectivity fails or stutters during the broadcast, you've missed the bit in question. Ridiculous amounts of advertisements (especially in the US). Very bad subtitles, if they're even available. Not transferable to another device. Must use the DRM-locked interface of your TV box to do anything.
Video on Demand: Number of shows available fairly limited, even with the best services, since only the shows for which the provider has struck a deal are available. Shows only available quite after they've been aired or released. Not transferable to another device. Services tied to particular geographic regions. Some problems similar to that of TV channels with some services. Must use the DRM-locked interface of your TV box to do anything.
Re:Entrapment (Score:4, Informative)
The site smells of entrapment to me.
There is more to making good a defense of entrapment than being caught in the trap.
In criminal law:
A valid entrapment defense has two related elements: (1) government inducement of the crime, and (2) the defendant's lack of predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct. Of the two elements, predisposition is by far the more important.
Inducement is the threshold issue in the entrapment defense. Mere solicitation to commit a crime is not inducement. Nor does the government's use of artifice, stratagem, pretense, or deceit establish inducement. Rather, inducement requires a showing of at least persuasion or mild coercion.
Even if inducement has been shown, a finding of predisposition is fatal to an entrapment defense. The predisposition inquiry focuses upon whether the defendant "was an unwary innocent or, instead, an unwary criminal who readily availed himself of the opportunity to perpetrate the crime."
Entrapment --- Elements [justice.gov]