Not even a year ago, lawyer John Steele was touting himself as the “original copyright troll,” talking up his efforts to fight online porn pirates. Now his law firm is on the other end of legal boot, accused of planting copyrighted content online with the sole purpose of tracking — and threatening to sue — the people who shared those files.
Steele and his firm Prenda are notorious for their controversial practice of identifying consumers who have allegedly shared copyrighted porn content, and then dangling the sword of a lawsuit and public humiliation above these folks’ heads in order to convince them to pay pricey settlements and make it all go away.
Earlier this summer, Prenda was accused of operating a “honeypot” scheme, in which it deliberately listed content on The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent site, with the intent of trapping those who took the bait.
People noticed that many of the shared files Prenda was using as the basis of its legal letters were linked to a single Pirate By user with the ID of Sharkmp4. It was believed that this user was just a front for Prenda, but that was mostly speculation.
In July, lawyers in a lawsuit involving Prenda received a court order compelling Internet service providers to reveal the actual subscriber info behind the Sharkmp4 uploads. And last week, it was revealed in a response from Comcast that one of the IPs is actually for Steele’s office in Minneapolis.
“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,” writes TorrentFreak.com.
Copyright Troll Ran Pirate Bay Honeypot, Comcast Confirms [TorrentFreak]
Comcast letter said to confirm that Prenda, Steele planted porn torrents [Ars Technica]
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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