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Comcast Allegedly Confirms That Prenda Planted Porn Torrents
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.
So my porn collection is legal after all?
The only thing that would make this any juicier now is if Prenda itself didn't have the rights to distribute that porn.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
." 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.......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Slow news day?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm pretty sure the feds setup websites with CP to lure pedos to their free candy van (ironic?) as a part of a sting operation. You could technically even have a store that sells candy but they are not pre-wrapped. So technically anyone could steal this candy since it's "just there" much like shop items outside a store's doors. Would it not be illegal to just take those items?
I think John Steele (is that his real name or porn name?) may have not done anything illegal but he surely did something immoral. But again, I know nothing about this kind of law so this is mere speculations.
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.
did Prenda upload them or did John Steele upload them?
You KNOW some companies are doing this other than prenda.
I've seen more than a few torrents that have a crapton of seeds and peers. Yet everyone says it's terrible and do not download with a very small number of comments.
These oddball torrents really stand out.
Either the original company or some sort of litigation company is doing this. Has to be. theres no other explanation for the unusual popularity of some really terrible uploads.
And on the flipside. How bad do these companies feel when their actual pirated content gets no downloaders... lol. There's a few games that have been in the top 50 downloads, seeds, and peers for a decade! Some companies brand new latest greatest whatever is being beat by a 10 year old game. That's gotta get some panties in a bunch. You're product is so terrible people don't even want it for FREE!
If this is true not being able to win the lawsuit is going to be the least of his problems.
Of all places you'd think to have your shit investigated...
They settled so fast out of court is was not even slightly funny.
Marvel essentially tried to sue City of Heroes out of existence because of its character creator. Then their lawyers decided to get cute and made their own characters with Marvel's IP. (I think it was Hulk, Captain America and a couple others).
The City of Heroes creators proved this and Marvel suddenly settled out of court in a sealed contract.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
...sounds like a 'Charlie's Angels' episode.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
You can find a copy of the actual Comcast letter here.
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. lawsuit. Specifically, Google claimed that:-
Although summary judgment was granted to Google on other grounds, I'd say this argument has at least a fair chance of success.
And criminal lawyers are definitely not that rare. Not the first case either, in Germany, a Lawyer called "Sozius" (partner of the self-terminated Lawyer "von Gravenreuth", that made a ton of money pretending to be a helpless girl looking for pirated software), was convicted a while ago because he was one of a gang running a subscription platform for the download of pirated movies.
Well, I hope this person has all the bad stuff happening to him that he deserves.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I thought p0rn wasn't copyright-able in the U.S, of A. Am I mistaken?
I would very much like to see it tried in court. Over here in the UK, I believe that Prenda's position is unsustainable. If they claim that putting the files up conveyed no implicit permission to download them, then their behaviour could well be judged to amount to "entrapment", which is a serious criminal offence in its own right (deliberately setting out to entice people who might otherwise not do so to commit an offence, with the intent of then prosecuting them for it). And if by contrast permission was indeed implicit (and it's not easy to see why a court would find otherwise if Prenda deny entrapment), no offence took place. And, yes, I know courts sometimes hand down contrary decisions based on, or even conflicting with, precedent (and non-legal "logic"). IANAL, but I do take an interest in the law and read quite a bit.
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).
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.
I too, would like a citation for this.
I've already done the obligatory Google searches, etc and can find nothing to support your view. The only remotely relevant case is the old MediaDefender and that was never litigated (or even got off the ground, for that matter).
The concept of Entrapment, although strictly speaking is limited to criminal liability appears to be somewhat relevant as well.
I think you will get a visit from the analog police after this. :)
It is like sueing the detective for getting Data he should not have had, because he knew that data should have been private.
If you put a bone in front of a dog, he will get and eat it. You cannot ask the dog owner to pay up for it. you gave the bone. (analogy : dog: users. dog owner: ipadress registrants, bone... ;) ) If you want to get rid of the analog, please quote law.
Lawyers with a published and unbought book called "How to Make Money on the Information $uperhighway". Fortunately Martha Siegel is dead, and Larry Canter has been disbarred..... 5 times now?
It's a start on the legal profession.
Prenda voluntarily chose to use bittorrent as a method of distribution. This means that they themselves approved of the method and the inherited consequences of distributing content via bittorrent. Not only that, but they made the content easy to find, by posting on well known file sharing websites like TPB. By all means, they wanted people to download this, without even giving them a proper payment method, let alone telling them that the content was copyrighted before they downloaded or simply forbidding downloading before payments were made. This inherently means, that they were knowingly giving away the content for free and promoting this free give-away.
If a fake (police) prostitute is being approached and asked to sell sex for money, the john is committing a crime (in most states/countries). If the same fake prostitute was giving away free blowjobs and advertising this loudly, and later on was claiming that people didn't pay for it and they were committing a crime for a going to a prostitute, I doubt any judge would have to think long about who's guilty here.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Whilst the ability of American circuit courts to come up with decisions contrary to obvious and established law never ceases to amaze me, you have things back to front. Except where the intent to do something is itself explicitly an offence (intent to kill, for example), it's NOT normally an offence to simply be aware that you MAY be doing something illegal. The overriding issue is whether an offence actually took place - and that's purely a question of law. Prenda had authority to make the file available, and they made it available with the (undeniable) intent that it be shared. Further, they actively assisted in that sharing. A court might find otherwise - but, in my book at least, that's permission.
I think you mean honeyhole
The whole idea about "illegal" filesharing is that if I set up a torrent and you download, I am guilty of infringement because I made it available.
Therefor, if you setup a torrent will material, you CANNOT then claim that those who download it of you, are downloading it illegally from YOU. It is a simple thing called common sense, you can't claim mutually exclusive things to be true.
Either a torrent creator is responsible for making a download available or he isn't.
And smart people then phantomfive HAVE already ruled on this, it is NOT legal to setup up a honeypot for filesharing. If a content owner makes content available for download, by definition the download is legal. Any other explanation fo the law would allow me to claim you stole this post by downloading it and even READING it!!! You pirate! Now pay me the full worth of my post!
Lets see, if all you readers payed me in full and I had a dollar, I would still be 4 dollars short for a cup of coffee.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ye Ole Bait n' Switch
One of the pieces of information in the Comcast letter is a MAC address. If you could link that address to hardware owned or leased by Prenda Law, you would really have a "smoking gun". I don't know if it is from a cable modem, but you should be very easily be able to identify the manufacturer based on the first three octets (It's been several years since I had my networking class, so my memory could be faulty)
Your memory is still good. The first 3 are the manufacturer, and the remaining 3 are their 'serial' number. Link to first 3 lookup: http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
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...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
MAC address given was B8-9B-C9-D9-5E-00
Using the IEEE data: B8-9B-C9 (hex) SMC Networks Inc
B89BC9 (base 16) SMC Networks Inc
20 Mason
Irvine CA 92618
UNITED STATES
SMC makes cable modems, see http://na.smc.com/
The question is, where is that cable modem and who owned or leased it at that time?
First off the fact that the copyright holders uploaded DRM video video files means that the DMCA is completely irrelevant. As the copyright holders no copyright protection was circumvented in the process of uploading the files.
There are many site you can get access to DRM free video files with a legit licenses to have that file indefinitely and watch it anytime. These again are not protected by the DMCA, as their is not copyright protection to circumvent. What they are protected by is normal copyright, and the terms of the copyright license is in the T&C of the site. Without any specific license terms it would be concluded the copyright holders are happy for the content to be distributed by the normal mechanisms of the web. So free to download and view from the original website, with the ability to share the link to the file elsewhere, but no automatic right to redistribute by putting it on another website.
In this case the copyright holder has distributed the file by the torrent mechanism for free download. They probably haven't included any license terms anywhere so the conclusion is that it is covered by the normal mechanisms of torrent distribution. Which is that it is free to download and view from the original distributed bit torrent, but not free to redistribute any other way. So downloading the original torrent is OK, a position strengthened if the copyright holder continued to seed the file. Repackaging it as a new torrent file with a new seed etc. would not be OK, nor would it be OK to put it onto and FTP server and distribute it that way.
is similar revelation and documentation that the music and movie industries have done the same thing. we all know they do, but we need the proof -- and then the entire sham of john doe lawsuits, '6 strikes' and the like, can be over and done with for good.
Since cable internet providers restrict modem access to their system by MAC address, this would qualify as the smoking gun as the modem is either owned by Comcast and a monthly rental fee is paid or it's owned by Steele and Registered to his account with Comcast in order to access the network.
As to the IP Address issue. This case is showing that an IP can be introvertably tied to a specific account and blessing the RIAA/MPAA efforts to use such information to sue. What it means for the ISP's is that they no longer have the defense that an IP can not be tied to a specific account, thus a demand for who had that IP address will now only need to include the time range for discovery by the RIAA/MPAA sharks.
Simply put, Comcast just shot themselves in the god damn nuts (not foot) with this one.
Isn't what he did illegal?
If so he would be prosecuted correct? At that point we get to see if the evidence is enough to prosecute the shoe on the other foot.
If it isn't enough evidence, well that sort of seals the deal on the other cases being dismissed.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
With his logic i could rationalize any legal or illegal act!
Lets have a little fun with it.
Lets say that 99.7 percent of all thieves, robbers, and gang members use a car during the day that they
commit a crime. I think that then we can conclude that the cars is basically only used for illegal activities
and it only "theoretically possible" that they could be used for non-illegal purposes. "So in common speech it's safe to conflate cars with piracy"
Case closed! Cars are only used for criminal purposes, like bittorrent.
No you couldn't.
You have it backwards. It's more like if 99.7 percent of car usage was for thievery, robbery, or criminal gang business.
The way you said it would be like if 99.7% of copyright infringement used torrents, but what he said was 99.7% of torrents were copyright infringing.
the summary is wrong, and once again the editors are stupid for letting it through.
Unless the downloaders knew that the original uploader was Prenda, or the uploader advertised itself as PRenda (or a representative), there is no implied license.
A private party acting as the agent provactuer is a bit of a grey area, but generally speaking, given that the there was no reason to think the distribution was authorized, the downloaders still knowingly chose to break the law.
http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=701
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
There are plenty of groups that want you to use torrent to distribute their stuff, and some that require it. MMOs have gotten to like to use torrents for their patches, since they are often very large. Their autopatcher uses torrents to accelerate things, and you don't have a choice in the matter. They WANT you to help redistribute their stuff, takes the load off their servers.
If the copyright holder is the one who created, posted, and seeded, the torrent, well then they are implicitly giving permission.
Same shit as a company posting things on their website. They can't go and post something for download, but then claim you didn't have permission to download it.
In both situations, all the users had no expectation of legitimacy.
This is an interesting point you raised. Can you cite any law or cases to show that internet users can only download something off the internet if they have a reasonable expectation of legitimacy regarding that object?
I ask this out of genuine curiosity, as I have not been able to locate anything of that sort at all.
In the absence of such legal precedent, your assumption would appear to be invalid.