In June, Prenda and its boss John Steele were accused of running a “honeypot” based on an expert report authored by Delvan Neville, whose company specializes in monitoring BitTorrent users.

The report hinted that the law firm was seeding the very files they claimed to protect, and found that many of the torrents detailed in Prenda lawsuits originate from a user on The Pirate Bay called ‘Sharkmp4′.

In an effort to expose the alleged honeypot, The Pirate Bay then jumped in and revealed the IP-addresses that ‘Sharkmp4′used to upload the torrent files. Since the site wipes all IP-addresses after 48 hours, The Pirate Bay team had to decrypt older backups to eventually offer the list below.

Sharkmp4 IP-addresses

While the public is already convinced that the honeypot is real, the Pirate Bay evidence has now become part of the AF Holdings v Patel case which could land the law firm in even more trouble.

After a judge approved discovery to both parties in the case, defense lawyer Blair Chintella sent out a series of subpoenas hoping to expose the copyright troll’s nefarious tactics.

One of the subpoenas covered the Comcast IP-address 75.72.88.156 used by “Sharkmp4,” as can be seen at the bottom of the list of Pirate Bay IPs shown above.

After a few weeks Comcast returned the subscriber details that matched the IP-address at the time the files were uploaded. As can be seen from their response detailed below, this IP is indeed the Comcast account of Steele Hansmeier PLLC, which is directly connected to Prenda Law.

Comcast confirms

The revelations above are the first solid proof of copyright trolls operating a honeypot scheme on The Pirate Bay, or any other BitTorrent site for that matter.

The honeypot strategy is just one piece of the puzzle, albeit an important one. The defense team has filed more subpoenas which are expected to be returned later, in the hope of uncovering more dirt on Prenda and its associates.

The discovery process in the case is still ongoing and ends in September. After the dust has settled it will be up to the court to decide how to rule on this and other damning revelations.

The irony of the above is that Prenda is now being haunted by the IP-address subpoenas they first used to pressure accused file-sharers into paying thousands of dollars in settlement fees.

Perhaps that can be called justice?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Unlike other lawsuits, the aim of the copyright holders is not to take any of the defendants to court, but to get alleged infringers to pay a substantial cash settlement to make legal action go away.

Recognizing the potential profitability of such schemes – which some equal to extortion – copyright holders of more obscure content quickly embraced them. Often described as copyright trolls, these companies can make more money from speculative lawsuits than actually selling the films they produced.

But while objectionable in their current form, it appears that these enterprises have the potential to stoop to even greater lows. A new scheme we uncover today allows anyone to setup a honeypot and make hundreds of thousands of dollars from naive file-sharers.

A lawsuit that appeared on TorrentFreak’s radar recently shows that in some cases copyright holders are suing people who were not aware that they have even accessed the content they are accused of sharing. The copyright holder in question makes no secret of this practice, which has already claimed several victims across the U.S.

Before we lay out the details we have to say that there’s no indisputable proof of a honeypot in this particular case. But as will become clear, the foundations for such a scheme are definitely there.

The case in question is “IO Group, Inc., v. Does 1-50 Inclusive,” which is a suit from the Californian adult entertainment company Titan Media against 50 unnamed individuals (complaint). The defendants in this case are accused of civil conspiracy and infringing the copyrights of various adult films on the eDonkey (eD2K) P2P network.

By itself the above is nothing special, but there’s one detail that’s somewhat fishy to say the least. In the court papers there’s a letter from a Ms. Gonzales that reveals some very interesting details. In her plea for mercy, Ms. Gonzales explains to the court that she never intended to download gay porn, and that the file she downloaded was labeled as a greatest hits album from the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

What’s even more interesting is that Titan Media’s lawyer was fully aware of the fact that Ms. Gonzales downloaded a mislabeled file. In fact, the settlement letter she received gave her the option to settle the case for $1,875, and clearly stated that the title of the infringed work was “Album – Ryuichi Sakamoto – The Best Of Ryuichi Sakamoto.rar.” If Ms. Gonzales did not pay within a few weeks, the settlement offer would increase to $3,375, it further noted.

To our best knowledge, this is the first time that a copyright holder has gone after people who’ve downloaded mislabeled copies of their work. However, it turns out that this is not an isolated incident. TorrentFreak found another example where Titan Media sued someone for sharing a supposed Dire Straits concert that actually turned out to be an adult movie. Again, they were fully aware of the mislabeled file, and even explained the process to the court in their complaint (page 7).

The big question is of course, how did the plaintiffs know that the mislabeled files were actually disguised versions of their works? The logical explanation would be that they found the original copyrighted work, and discovered the relabeled files when they did a search for the hash. However, TorrentFreak found that in the case of the supposed Ryuichi Sakamoto file, all alternative copies of the allegedly infringed movie we could find had a different hash..

The above suggests that the copyright holders in question may have intentionally renamed the files as bait for naive pirates. A classic honeypot. However, Titan Media’s lawyer Gill Sperlein told TorrentFreak that this is absolutely not the case.

“This is not a scheme to make money. My clients are hurt immensely by copyright infringement and they are not going to make it worse by actually distributing their works on these networks,” he told us.

Sperlein further told TorrentFreak that they assume that people who downloaded a mislabeled file were actually aware of the real contents. And if this is not the case, it’s their responsibility to convince the court otherwise.

“If someone made my clients’ works available but did so unintentionally it is up to them to set forth facts that prove that claim. This would not affect liability but may affect damages,” Sperlein told TorrentFreak.

“However, I don’t think that someone searching for stolen content but simply got the wrong stolen content is going to prove they are an innocent infringer – no matter how loudly they protest that they are Christian,” Sperlein added, referring to Ms. Gonzales’ plea for mercy.

So there we have it. All the ingredients of a classic honeypot. However, without solid evidence it’s impossible for us to prove, as it will be for the court. For now, this is the sad conclusion that may lead to even greater abuse of the U.S. courts. After all, the above shows how easy it is to make tens of thousands of dollars, even with movies or indeed any material that no living soul is interested in.

All one has to do is shoot a 5 minute video with a mobile phone, copyright it, then sit back and wait for someone to magically appear and rename your video to match the title of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or a musical artist. He or she will then upload it to a file-sharing network, resulting in thousands of downloads, and for each of these you can demand several thousands of dollars in damages. It’s really that simple.

The court will never know that you’re suing for relabeled files, that will remain between you and the thousands of infringers. It’s the perfect pirate honeypot scheme that only requires a judge to sign off on the subpoenas.

Let’s hope that judges in future cases, especially those dealing with eDonkey downloads, will be aware of this suspicious and trollish process. Aside from the Titan Media cases, there are several others that show signs of a honeypot, and more will follow. It seems to us that no sane judge can agree that these low tactics are what copyright litigation was originally intended for.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

People have alleged that some of the pay-up-or-else lawsuits against BitTorrent users came in part from torrents that were uploaded or seeded by the copyright holders themselves, but this hasn’t been proven either.

This does not mean that honeypots are a myth. Indeed, in Portugal their existence is now confirmed, as a previously held back agreement between the Portuguese Phonographic Association (AFP) and the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC) reveals. This agreement is of special interest, since the latter organization falls under the Ministry of Culture.

The protocol, which was announced a few weeks ago, was initially framed as an attempt to combat piracy under which AFP would provide ‘anti-piracy’ training to IGAC inspection officers. However, the fact that the actual text of the agreement was never publicized led the Portuguese Pirate Party to believe that something more was going on.

And they were right.

After filing a complaint with the authorities, the protocol was finally released by IGAC, as they are required to do by law. The Pirate Party believes that it was kept a secret for a reason, and after their analysis of the contents this suspicion was strengthened.

Among other things, the agreement promotes a honeypot scheme where the music industry will grant the Government organization the right to upload tracks to file-sharing networks. These ‘traps’ will then be used to collect the IP-addresses of Portuguese file-sharers.

The file-sharers who are caught by this honeypot scheme can expect a notification from their Internet provider, which may eventually lead to a disconnection due to a breach of the terms of service. The sad part about this, is that the evidence that the authorities gather is not very solid.

In the agreement it’s stated that IGAC will rely on screenshots to prove which unauthorized material people are sharing. A rather simplistic and easy to forge method of evidence collection, The Pirate Party commented in their analysis. To prove their point, the Pirates offer a simple PHP script that can generate forged evidence on the fly.

Towards the end of the agreement, it is revealed that the main purpose of the collaboration is to influence public opinion through the media.

“The IGAC and the AFP agreed that the results obtained under this Protocol shall be disseminated to the media, particularly on the enforcement actions taken, the number and type of complaints, the number of notifications sent to ISP’s and other important aspects to achieve the objectives of this Protocol,” it reads.

According to the Pirate Party the Ministry of Culture’s IGAC is acting undemocratically and possibly illegally too, while putting the interests of a few music labels before the rights of individual citizens.

That stings.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.