Rights holders often go through great length to combat piracy and sometimes find governments on their side. This week, it appeared that the Portuguese government is not only facilitating the battle against pirates, but takes the crusade to another level. In Portugal, a collaboration between a government agency and the local music industry has resulted in a protocol that creates honeypots, in order to shame, scare and threaten those who download music without authorization.

A ‘honeypot’ is a set–up to bust people that engage in illegal activity. Literally: you put some honey on a nice looking spot and wait until the bees show up. The label is often applied to suspicious looking sites, that seem to be specifically set up to lure people into downloading copyrighted files, but proof of the existence of live honeypots is seldom provided. Although this is an attractive and often succesful procedure, honeypots are quite controversial when used by government agencies, for example to support criminal investigations. Once state officials start tempting potential offenders to actually engage in criminal behavior, we are crossing several red lines. 

In Portugal the existence of a file sharing honeypot is now confirmed, as an agreement between the Portuguese Phonographic Association (AFP) and the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC) was exposed by the Portuguese Pirate Party. 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. 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”, according to The Pirate Party. 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, IGAC and AFP conclude that the main purpose of the collaboration is not a criminal investigation, but to influence public opinion through the media. Therefore, they aim to be as transperent as possible on the results obtained under this Protocol and on the enforcement actions taken.  According to the Pirate Party the IGAC is acting undemocratically and possibly illegally too. 

The pirates’ criticism is understandable. However, the facts that IGAC does not use advanced ways to collect evidence and that they explicitly state it is merely an action targeted at the media, shows that they realise they are on thin ice. As more details on this state-sponsored honeypot will surface, it is interesting to see how the Portuguese will regard proportionality here. Preferring the interests of a few music labels before basic principles of rights of individual citizens is probably not the way to go forward.

Source: TorrentFreak