Irony Alert: John Steele Denies Uploading Anything Ever Despite Growing IP Evidence

from the irony-alert dept

Well, well. We recently wrote about a new filing in the Paul Oppold case in Florida, in which lawyer Graham Syfert presents very, very detailed and compelling evidence, as put together by Delvan Neville, that many of the films that Prenda sued people over were initially uploaded by John Steele. The folks over at The Pirate Bay added to this by presenting evidence that the sharkmp4 user who uploaded the works came from the very same IP address that Neville had found (among other evidence) in his findings. Basically, there's a ton of evidence that, at the very least, whoever controlled the Prenda Law domain name, also uploaded the torrent, ran a website "releasing" the movies, controlled John Steele's confirmed email account and commented on various blogs with clear insider knowledge of Prenda Law's actions.

John Steele's response? Deny, deny, deny. Here's him talking to Ars Technica:

"I have never uploaded a torrent in my life, I have never instructed anyone to do so, and I am not aware of anyone I have worked with in any capacity whatsoever (other than pirates of course). I am not sure how much more unequivocal about it I can be. I have no involvement with any case in Florida, including Mr. Oppold's case. I have not read a single document in that case. I don't intend to. As far as Mr. Syfert, you will have to ask him why he is hiring experts to try to connect me to a case I have no involvement with."

For what it's worth, Syfert didn't actually hire an expert to try to connect one to the other, but merely to investigate who did what. That a tremendous amount of evidence then poured out all pointing to John Steele is the result.

That said, here's the really ironic bit: In all of the John Steele cases of copyright trolling, in which he and his partners have been accusing people of copyright infringement and hacking computers, their "evidence" tends to be a single IP address involved in a single action, which they argue is enough information to accurately identify the person and the actions they did. Here, we not only have a single IP address, but a ton of additional information, including that identical IP address showing up in multiple places, while a variety of other evidence directly links Steele to the IP address, yet he insists it's not true. Fascinating.

One of our commenters put it all together in a single image. At this point, not only is the evidence that John Steele was directly involved in uploading the files pretty overwhelming, but on its own it's orders of magnitude more compelling than the evidence that Steele and Prenda have been using against people in court.

Filed Under: delvan neville, evidence, graham syfert, ip addresses, john steele, paul oppold
Companies: prenda, prenda law

New Filing Presents Evidence That John Steele Uploaded Videos To BitTorrent Himself

from the johnny-boy's-in-trouble dept

If you thought Graham Syfert was done with taking on John Steele and Prenda law with the closing of the Sunlust case in Florida, you'd be wrong. Today he's filed an incredible filing not just hitting back at Prenda in another case, First Time Videos vs. Paul Oppold, and asking for attorney's fees, but also including an affidavit from an actual expert (i.e., not a Prenda-style "forensic" expert) named Delvan Neville, who lays out in astounding detail how it's almost certain that John Steele himself uploaded the various videos to BitTorrent that were then used to sue various defendants for either "hacking" or copyright infringement. Oh, and in doing so, Steele appears to have made some choices that are pretty damning, including suggesting that he set up the file to effectively broadcast that it was free for the taking. In other words, there's an incredibly strong argument that the release of the file on BitTorrent was very authorized.

The work builds on some earlier research that Syfert has put out exploring how many of the Prenda-related films seemed to have been initially offered on The Pirate Bay via the same user: sharkmp4. For all the mocking that people have made concerning Prenda's "forensic" investigations into those they accuse of infringement (i.e., finding an IP address and not much else), Neville shows you how an actual investigation is done. You should read the whole thing for the layers upon layers of evidence that all seem to point the finger at John Steele.

Among other things, sharkmp4 seemed to be able to post these works on The Pirate Bay before the works were even mentioned anywhere else, and in at least one case, "sharkmp4" put a video up on The Pirate Bay three days before Prenda shell company Ingenuity 13 had even filed for the copyright. On top of that, the "forensics" company that Prenda uses -- which is supposedly run by Paul Hansmeier's brother Peter, but which had its domain registered and controlled by (you guessed it) John Steele -- apparently identified "infringements" almost immediately after the videos were placed on The Pirate Bay -- meaning they were likely looking for such infringement in conjunction with the upload.

At the end, however, Neville pulls together really damning evidence, tying together a website set up to distribute Ingenuity 13 porn films with the same exact IP address that was confirmed as being used by John Steele to log into his own GoDaddy account, highlighting how Steele -- or someone with access to his logins -- clearly has full access and control over Ingenuity 13 works. As you read through all of the evidence it appears highly likely that Steele is in control of Ingenuity 13, despite all his protests to the contrary.

As the filing notes:

Prenda Law's business structure is such that it is pirate, forensic pirate hunter, and attorney. It also appears that Prenda Law also wants to/has formed/is forming a corporate structure where it is: pornography producer, copyright holder, pornography pirate, forensic investigator, attorney firm, and debt collector. Other than the omission of appearing in the pornography themselves, this would represent an entire in-house copyright trolling monopoly- not designed to promote their own works for distribution and sale, but to induce infringement of their works and reap profits seen from mass anti-piracy litigation.

It remains to be seen if the court bothers to explore this, but I would imagine that it may be of interest in other Prenda and related cases.

Filed Under: delvan neville, graham syfert, john steele, paul duffy, paul hansmeier, paul oppold
Companies: af holdings, first time videos, ingenuity 13, prenda, prenda law