People surfing for media files on The Pirate Bay download site would be well-advised to heed the words of Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi: It's a trap!
Some pretty strong evidence has come to light that one of the most notorious copyright troll operations in the U.S. targeted The Pirate Bay with a honeypot operation, a trap set to detect unauthorized use of copyrighted files. According to Torrent Freak, an attorney associated with Prenda Law shares the same Internet Protocol address as Sharkmp4, a user and prolific uploader on the world's most notorious torrent tracker.
Sharkmp4 has uploaded more than 40 pornographic videos to TPB since February 2011. Those same clips were then used in copyright infringement suits. How many of Prenda Law's cases were based on the honeypot is unclear. But in an ongoing copyright case in Georgia, at least one man is being sued over a movie first uploaded to the TPB by Sharkmp4.
The association between Prenda Law and Sharkmp4 was first suggested in an expert affidavit in another copyright case in May by Delvan Neville, the creator of EUPSC2k, a BitTorrent monitoring software suite.
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