Sued for Faking It

Raymond.cc recently mentioned a system for monitoring invite openings on more than 500 private torrent sites. In the post, he discusses his own tracker checker software and posts a link to btracs.com the monitoring system. But, I’m not interested in private torrents, it’s what he had to say about fake files that caught my eye.

There are public bittorrent tracker site such as the famous The Pirate Bay and Mininova but these public torrent sites tends to have too much fake stuff such as embedded trojans or even worst, fake torrents uploaded by Anti-Piracy Organizations to catch you red-handed for downloading pirated materials.

As far as I understand it, those fake torrents are there to saturate the seeders with garbage rather than acting as pirate bait, although I guess they could be used in that way. But, what would they (the RIAA, the BPI etc) be catching you doing though…downloading a fake file?

In some jurisdictions, downloading a copyrighted file is not illegal, it’s the sharing that is illegal (and as the torrent system forces you to share, you could be guilty of breaking copyright law by downloading and sharing a copyright file, an mp3 or a DivX movie say). But, we’re not talking about the sharing of copyright music or movies if the file you’re grabbing is fake, are we? It’s a dummy file, a decoy. It could in itself be a creative work and so intrinsically copyrighted, but I suspect a sensible judge would not see your sharing of fake files as having led to any losses for the copyright holder. Of course, it’s pointless having the fake file either, so wtf?

However, there are two possible leading questions to be answered about the deliberate distribution across a legitimate computer system - the torrent networks and P2P systems - by the RIAA or other body. First, this could fall under the entrapment rules of law in some countries. Secondly, isn’t that body guilty of distributing counterfeit goods for their personal benefit?

I see the possibility of a criminal case against them at the least under entrapment rules and even better fraud and misrepresentation charges for them faking it.