qubezz writes "The company MediaDefender works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy, setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p traffic. Previously, the TorrentFreak site accused them of setting up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. MediaDefender denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of MediaDefender's internal emails from the last 6 months have been leaked onto BitTorrent trackers. The emails detail their entire plan, including how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up and future strategies. Other pieces of company information were included in the emails such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business."
They didn't just distance themselves from the company, they were going to relaunch it under a totally new name/look while still making sure it couldn't be tracked back to them. Doesn't this constitute entrapment?
They didn't just distance themselves from the company, they were going to relaunch it under a totally new name/look while still making sure it couldn't be tracked back to them. Doesn't this constitute entrapment?
Generally speaking, entrapment only applies to law enforcement and the government. RIAA still isn't there yet, thankfully. OTOH, a good lawyer could probably spin it as morally equivalent in principle for a jury.
In additional to only applying to agents of law enforcement or those acting as such, entrapment also only applies to making you commit a crime that you wouldn't otherwise make. So unless either the old or the new company did that, it wouldn't be entrapment. And if there was entrapment, it wouldn't have anything to do with their secret change.
You can't be entrapped in civil court. Entrapment is a statutory creation of criminal law. (Sorrells v. United States, although later supreme court precedent leads us to believe that rather than the statutory creation theory, they are moving more towards dealing with entrapment in a supervisory sense.)
As people have said, entrapment only applies to law enforcement types.
In the civil arena, I believe unclean hands [wikipedia.org] would be more applicable, especially if you can trace Media Defender back to the RIAA via contracts and such.
I imagine that a clever lawyer could point out that they're attempting to sue over a transaction of which they were an active part. If I give you something outright, it would likely be impossible for me to sue to get compensation later. If I give it to you while wearing a disguise, I'm not sure that principle doesn't apply.
A -really- clever lawyer could point out that since the RIAA has been documented as giving their stuff away, that anyone downloading from anywhere might have a reasonable belief that it was coming from the "authorized" source in disguise. I don't know that it would fly, but seems like there'd be a non-zero chance of diluting RIAA's argument in the entire body of cases.
On a side note, seems like this would give the artists cause to sue the RIAA, for distributing their work in a manner that's likely not covered by their contract (though with artist contracts in RIAA member companies, who knows--maybe they have the right to give it all away for free.)
I'm glad you pointed that out. If this company, acting as an agent for the plaintiff (a movie company, for example), participated in the distribution of this content via P2P, then that constitutes a tacit approval of P2P distribution of the content by the plaintiff, thus making any further P2P distribution of that content potentially authorized by the copyright holder, and thus not a copyright violation.
Further, even if the person did not actually get it directly from an agent of the copyright holder, the rights holder distributing in such a way that causes it to be automatically redistributed by anyone who receives it (P2P) could constitute deliberate abandonment of the copyright (at least for the purposes of personal, noncommercial use) by the copyright holder.
I'm not saying that argument would necessarily hold up in court, but if I were in charge of a media company, I would not be doing anything nearly this stupid and reckless.
Keep reading. He posits that the existence of honeypots lends credibility to the argument that *ANY* download *MIGHT* be coming from a legitimate source. We know the RIAA is distributing songs via P2P, and we know they are disguising themselves, so why can't we assume that the guy sending us music right now is really the RIAA in disguise, making it legal?
entrapment involves the use of a technique that ends up in a crime being committed that under normal conditions would not have happened. would the crime have been committed without mediadefender setting up a trap? in all probabiliy it would. It would just happen elsewhere. it isn't strictly entrapment but it sure is evil.
If they hadn't set up the website, this specific "crime" COULDN'T have happened.
Think about what you said, with respect to, for example, VICE squads:
"Would Joe have been busted for possession of marijuana if the cop didn't sell it to him? In all probability he would have; it would just have happened elsewhere."
This is incorrect. It would NOT have happened; he MIGHT have been busted for possession of OTHER marijuana sold by someone else. On the other hand, he might not.
All of this is moot anyway, as you can't be entrapped in civil court. If they passed federal charges (under the DMCA), then an entrapment suit might possibly be in order if those entrapping were operating "above the law". Otherwise, either THEY were committing a crime by distributing the content, or those downloading weren't committing a crime as they would have been given legal permission to download the data. The worst thing they could be asked to do if those distributing the data didn't have permission to do so would be to remove their copy from their computer by the court. Of course, in most sane countries, possession of copywritten data isn't a crime, infringement, or anything similar; only distribution is. All you can be sued for is breach of contract in civil court (assuming there was some sort of contract).
If you read the emails, apparently utorrent is their favourite torrent client, since it allows them to 'interdict' torrents, whatever that means. Whatever they're up to, that surely warrants a campaign to boycott the client in favour of free software torrent clients where these sorts of deficiencies can at least be fixed by anyone who cares.
Oh, and the rumors of them being behind the spyware-encrusted ziptorrent were false; that one seems to have been MediaSentry's doing.
First google result for bittorrent interdiction [google.com] is a resume [linkedin.com] from a former MediaSentry (a competitor of MediaDefender) director. The juicy bit (in case it goes away):
Director of Interdiction Development MediaSentry Div of SafeNet (Public Company; 501-1000 employees; SFNT; Computer & Network Security industry) September 2004 -- November 2005 (1 year 3 months) Lead team of software developers and systems engineers developing interdiction solutions for P2P networks. Designed and deployed new Linux based 300+ host distributed infrastructure for p2p decoy distribution with automated command, control and monitoring. Designed and deployed network of filtered eDonkey servers. Managed roll out of new BitTorrent interdiction infrastructure. Implemented multiple p2p file trading clients on hosts utilizing VMware.
It seems like it's basically a distributed network of clients that feed garbage data, trying to slow down everyone's downloading. Sadly for them it seems that uTorrent defeated [utorrent.com] their work:
After more in-depth analysis...we've determined that the new version DOES affect our interdiction in a negative way. They've added a new "bt.ban_ratio" field that takes into consideration how many good pieces a client has uploaded. [....] We still see a lot of hash_check fails...but now the only peers getting banned are ours. This also affects MediaSentry's interdicted torrents. They are no longer effective on the newest version either.
That's not the problem. The idea is that it's easier for MediaDefender to disrupt bittorrent when the other users are using utorrent.
I don't know exactly what interdiction involves (it's a military term so I can make a guess) , but it seems to be an exploit in utorrent that they use to disrupt downloading of utorrent users. The less people use utorrent, the harder it is for MediaDefender to practice this 'interdiction'. MediaDefender seems to be quite worried every time a new version comes out, and they do try to get their customers to use utorrent when checking torrent sites to see that their files are being spoofed properly.
Some of this stuff could conceivably be used by MD's customers to sue MediaDefender for deliberately misleading them as to the effectiveness of their spoofing, like this one, when Amy Winehouse' record company wants to come and see how well they're doing:
From: Ben Ebert To: Randy Saaf; Tabish Hasan; Ben Grodsky; Jay Mairs Cc: qateam Sent: Wed Jun 27 09:23:42 2007 Subject: Re: umgi
Neil is asking for this now, let's give him amy winehouse on the sites I listed below. We need to make +sure they are usiny utorrent since our decoys are not as strong as they could be. If you can influence +the methodology have them download the top 15 with a short time frame like 2 hours.
Oh, and their emails do show them avidly reading slasdot and Digg and the like whenever a scandal affects them. So hello and welcome, to all you grifters taking the piss out of corporate record executives in ineffective-but-lucrative-peer-to-peer-spoofing land!
Decoying. This, in a nutshell, is the serving of fake files that are generally empty or contain a trailer. The goal is to make legitimate content a needle in a haystack, so MediaDefender works hard to ensure that its copies of files show up in the top ten spots when certain keywords are searched for. Everything about the file is tailored to look like the work of pirates, from the file size (movies are often compressed enough to fit on a CD) to the naming conventions to the pirate scene tag. With massive bandwidth and plenty of servers, the company has little trouble in getting these decoy files to appear at the top of search results, but decoying has a down side: the bandwidth. Because MediaDefender actually serves these large but bogus files, it incurs a significant bandwidth bill by using this technique.
Spoofing. Spoofing sends searchers down dead ends. MediaDefender coders have written their own software that interacts with the various P2P protocols and sends bogus returns to search requests, usually directing people to nonexistent locations. Because most people only look at the top five search results, MediaDefender tries to frustrate their first attempts to download a file in hopes that they will just give up.
Interdiction. While the first two techniques try to prevent searchers from locating files, interdiction prevents distributors from serving them. The tool is generally used when media is leaked or newly released; the goal is to slow its spread in those crucial first days. MediaDefender servers attempt to create constant connections to the files in question, saturating the provider's upstream bandwidth and preventing anyone else from grabbing the data.
Swarming. Though he acknowledges the BitTorrent networks can be hard to disrupt, Lee points out that MediaDefender can use "swarming" to make life more difficult for users trying to download copyrighted content. BitTorrent works by using a hash file to reassemble a file from many pieces, each of which may have been downloaded from a different user. MediaDefender simply serves up its chunks of these files, but instead of providing the proper data, its chunks contain static or nothing at all. When the file is eventually reassembled by the user, it may contain clicks, silent spaces, or odd skips. This can make the viewing/listening experience less pleasurable, but it's most effective with software downloads since even small errors can prevent programs from running.
Ok, normally I don't like the DMCA, but PLEASE , come on Media Defender, do DMCA this. Pretty please, with sugar on the top... you know you want to... I mean you have to beat your own incompetence somehow...
This is so good. It's like reporting your stash of marijuana stolen to the police. To DMCA it is to validate its contents. All they can do is claim ignorance and say it's all a hoax.
If it is a long hair working as a code grunt/sysadmin in their it lot, may god make his/her hair glitter with sunshine and rustle in gentle, warm winds.
>From: Watson, Jeff (WBR)
>To: Octavio Herrera; leaks
>Cc: Bird, Jennifer
>Sent: Sun May 13 10:49:59 2007
>Subject: Re: # LP illegal album downloads
>MediaDefender folks - please let us know roughly how many Linkin Park albums have been downloaded since the leak. Album is called Minutes To Midnight. Thanks.
I wouldn't normally e-mail you directly about MiiVi stuff, because a lot of what I say about this is total crap (so keep that in mind) and Jay filters the crap from the important stuff for you. Is there a way to add this hash/title to the porn filter explicitly?
I just flagged it as Other Terms of Use violation. It's a warthog (or maybe it's a big bushy dog, I can't tell) having sex with a woman and NOT a Korn vs. Slipknot mash-up video.
If this is a big deal, don't worry about it for now. But eventually this would probably need a tool of some kind for a Super User account to remove files from our indexing system all together.
Seriously, since I know they also read Slashdot, and definitely this story: Find a new career where you can be constructive rather than destructive, and where it's not just a completely futile battle, for fuck's sake. Wouldn't you feel better about that, than helping out media companies with a flawed business model? Quotes like the one I did above is just sad. When you get to stumble upon animal porn while you work to solve an inheretly flawed business model in the "digital millenium", you know you're just plain losers. Wow.
Comments from the torrent for the leaked emails make for an interesting read also:
MediaDefender-Defenders proudly presents 9 months worth of
internal MediaDefender emails
By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and
personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails
contains information about the various tactics and technical
solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services.
A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire
email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail
account, and using the really highly secure password: blahbob
So here it is, we hope this is enough to create a viable
defense to the tactics used by these companies, also there
should be enough fuel to keep the p2p bloggers busy for
quite some time.
okay, so Mr. Maris wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed in forwarding the stuff to a gmail account.
However... assume the the group/person releasing this did at least have a gmail e-mail address for this guy, he still wouldn't have the password. Now, it's not a very strong password - it can certainly be cracked easily by a dictionary or even a brute force attack.
But if either of those methods are what were used - then what's up with Google apparently not stopping this in one way or another? E.g. maximum of N login attempts in a given time, notifying the rightful account holder of the attempts, etc.?
The info on the intertubes is that Mr. Maris, otherwise known as The Putz of the Century, after having forwarded all his corporate mail to his Gmail account, signed up for one of the p2p forums he was "investigating" using that very Gmail address and the same password as his gmail account had.
And he did so from an IP address already known to belong to Media Defenders.
If the emails were obtained by hacking somebody's GMail account -- as seems to be the case given the comments on the torrent file -- then they were obtained illegally. The RIAA's lawyers would immediately cry "illegal search."
IANAL, so I'd like to hear from somebody with real law experience either confirming or denying this, but that's my gut feeling.
I like this one. It seems the record companies try to get marketing data from illegal p2p downloads.
----------
Subject: Nicole Scherzinger
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:14:31 -0700
Nicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called "whatever u like". It's
not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio. A song
called "Baby Love" just leaked (I don't know how long ago). Interscope
wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p. They need to
make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this
song as the single. Please get me a score comparison on Monday for
these two tracks. Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly
furtado singles as comparisons.
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday September 15 2007, @03:31PM (#20618565)
It is big. But I doubt there will be any sensible outcome. What will likely happen is that this will be talked about for a couple of days, soon enough some other story will come along, and people will forget all about it.
I'm betting right now there's a lot of employees of MediaDefender on the phone with their banks right now trying to find out why they bought several boats, cars, etc. in Russia, China, and god knows where else..
I wonder if Ray Beckerman (NYCL) would be able to use this? He's been trying to get discovery about what MediaDefender is up to from the RIAA for ages, last I heard, and hasn't gotten jack. Considering they're now open to all, I wonder if they could be used in court?
After all, you may remember how MediaDefender paid someone to hack into TorrentSpy's email. I'd call this turn-about...
I wonder if Ray Beckerman (NYCL) would be able to use this?
I doubt it, but I'm not a lawyer and he is, so I'd expect him to Do The Right Thing.
Actually, I'm in awe of him. I read the deposition he conducted earlier in the year against an RIAA "expert" witness yesterday (yeah, yeah mod me down for violating/. etiquette in not only reading TFA but also the attached links). Reading the transcript was even more fun than reading about SCO's chapter 11 filing. Brilliant man.
I am wondering is whether we find their vigilante attitude towards stopping downloads more or less distasteful than
Their "vigilante" tactics have inspired a vigilante response, for better or for worse. It's the old "well, they started it" defense.
It's almost a little disgusting to see intelligent Slashdot readers encouraging identity theft and other federal crimes because they don't like the work that MD does. Obviously the vast majority of readers aren't doing so, but there have been full names of low-level programmers already posted in this thread and I'm sure far worse on other sites.
Do the ends (stopping MD's work) really justify the means? If this were the internal emails of an abortion provider we would all be disgusted if a pro-life group sent the names, addresses, and social security numbers of clinic secretaries and janitors around. But when it's the low-level functionaries of a hated technology group it's apparently OK and to be commended.
Just because a large number of people disagree with their work it shouldn't be OK to break federal law to discourage them. Yes, they may have broken federal law first, but the answer is not to raise the ante.
Why the hell would anyone pay that much money just to engage in the online equivalent of pissing against a force 10 gale?
You assumed that the narcisstic, vain, executive types, having landed in their positions straight from their MBA mutual-adoration "schools", actually have an ounce of a clue. That is a very dangerous assumption. These people are the new artistocracy. Their time is spent in adoring each other's golf swing on exclusive golf courses and a byzantine dance of trying to ingrate themselves with the "right" coctail party crowd, which then, if successful, leads to their occupation of new, ever more obscenely overpaid, musical seats on various boards of directors, finally ending in a massive "golden parachute" payout.
Well being of the companies, competence and the financial gains of shareholders have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.
Returning to the case in point: the overpaid clowns, not having a dimmest idea as to what they are doing (as the leaked emails plainly and painfully show), did what their kind usally does: played and postured at being "rent-a-cops" for their objects of adoration, the much better paid, and even more clueless, executives of various media conglomerates.
It is a little wonder that other buffoons would pay millions (usually comprised of some blue-collar worker's pention fund money) for this glorified circle jerk of "serious businessmen crime fighters".
One of the dimwits, seeing himself so much more competent that mere "techies", then proceeded to bypass all of the security measures of their email system by forwarding all of his mail to Gmail, and then used the very same account, with the very same password of "blahbob" to "investigate" one of the p2p sites.
In short, everything that is happening here is merely a sympthom of the state of total corruption to which the modern corporate world has descended, other indicators being known under the names of Enron, WorldCom, Haliburton etc.
And you, sir, are a walking, talking, slashdot-posting parody of yourself, who apparently learned everything he knows about the mindset and behavior of corporate officers from Jeep commercials.
Me, I learned it by interacting with them personally and professionally way more than I ever wanted to on a day-to-day basis over the majority of my career, and my experience is that the grandparent is dead-on. The whole system is some screwed-up incompetence engine fueled by narcissism bathed in the infinite oxidizer of a personality almost entirely driven by a super-ego that hasn't matured a day since puberty stopped.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally parodying those who blame all of the world's woes on this supposed elite that nobody can name or place, but you're doing a great job of it. If you're not then your worldview is incredibly warped and I prescribe one dose of leaving the basement and seeing the real world.
Real world? Basement? These goofuses are actually my long-time customers and I deal with them daily. That is how my worldview got "warped" as a result of what I know first-hand. And that is how you do not know, apparently. Not only can I place them and name them, I can even name their boats. And that is why I post here under a handle. If they knew that I know many of them for what they are, they would no doubt try to retaliate and that would be rather inconvenient. I can fix the overpaid stuckup buffoons' mistakes for top dollar when they believe all their screwups are the wisest moves ever and only need "little touchups", but it is impossible to do so when they know that I know what those turds of their making really are. It bruises their fragile egos and makes them very uncomfortable. I like to call this: "Customer Relations". The way the world works, kid. Smile and shovel. Your reward is laughing all the way to the bank.
And if you are one of those MBAs - keep in mind that this grinning consultant on whom you offload all your real work and who says "That would be no problem!" or "I can work within the framework of your plan!" and the like, might be someone like me and hold the same opinion of you as I do. You can tell by how skillfully he actually does what he needed to do to make it work, as opposed to what you told him to do, even though he agreed and nodded his head all the way. That and the fact that his bills keep going up the more your fuckups pile up, even though you did your darnest to hide them. But he never stops smiling and being nice to you, does he? It is so fortunate that you cannot read his mind. You would spend the rest of your days under your bed shivering.
PS - Nobody even plays golf anymore. Try adventure sports. That's where you'll find today's executives.
Muahahahahahaha! Hahahahaah! Ehrm.
"Adventure sports" would require these farts to actually exert themselves. Although some few do that, there are very good reasons why golf (followed by far distant second: squash) is king, which you do not seem to grasp: 1) one can do this in an exclusive, exorbitantly-priced, invitation memebership only, bar-equipped course right in or very near the city, which also provides an opportunity to flaunt one's wealth to all the peons 2) most execs are lazy farts who talk a storm about "sports" but usually restrict themselves to swinging clubs and copiously drinking and 3) one can discuss business deals in comfort while golfing, which is rather hard when, say, hand-gliding and what not. "Adventure sports" are what most of them would, without batting an ayelid, label a posh trip to, say, Africa or some other poor but picturescue place, where they ride around in well guarded and very luxurious RVs, once every decade or so.
I get cold sweat when I think on my days of youth, when I actually believed the same sanitized, propagandistic crap you seem to believe. But I don't blame you for your naivette. Unless you were born into this rarefied socialite club or are grudgingly admitted to it via marriage or some astronomically unlikely random coincidence (which you will prompty ascribe to your own infallable iron wit of which the mere peons are bereft of, as is the prevailing custom in those circles), you will learn eventually.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday September 16 2007, @07:55AM (#20624677)
I get cold sweat when I think on my days of youth, when I actually believed the same sanitized, propagandistic crap you seem to believe. But I don't blame you for your naivette. Unless you were born into this rarefied socialite club or are grudgingly admitted to it via marriage or some astronomically unlikely random coincidence (which you will prompty ascribe to your own infallable iron wit of which the mere peons are bereft of, as is the prevailing custom in those circles), you will learn eventually.
This comment is like the GBU-28 bunker buster of reality. Man I wish you weren't right, but you are.
You should see defense contracting, with its own little circle jerk of mutual admiration with the goal of making lots of bucks while doing as little as possible. And it works! A bunch of ex-flag officers running the show with some so-called "engineers" in the mix performing "software maintenance" (in other words, working on shit that doesn't work, never will, and even if it did it performed a task that was appropriate in the chill of the cold war 70s).
Its a pity we can't see what these paracites earn. I bet they earn more than us sysadmins:( Why hide what this scum thinks its worth.
dev-salaries-18june2007.xls
Sergio A. Alvarez 2,916.67 $70,000.00 Linus Aranha 2,708.33 $65,000.00 Dylan C Douglas 2,916.67 $70,000.00 Benjamin Ebert 3,541.67 $85,000.00 Norman T Heath 4,791.67 $115,000.08 Sujay S. Jaju 2,708.33 $65,000.00 Andrew H. Kim 2,291.67 $55,000.00 Ivan Y Kwok 4,166.67 $100,000.00 Jed Z. Levin 2,291.67 $55,000.00 Gerald E. Rode 2,291.67 $55,000.00 Sheetalkumar Shah 2,708.33 $65,000.00 Nainesh N. Solanki 2,708.33 $65,000.00 Daeyoung Song 2,375.00 $57,000.00 Jeffrey W. Wang 2,375.00 $57,000.00
That is laughable given what many in the slashdot crowd consider evil. Developing closed source software for example.
"Evil" is an exaggeration. This dislike of closed-source comes from the fact that many here instinctively realize that information, such as computer programs, some forms of art, thoughts in people heads, large integer numbers etc, do not fall under the simplistic, inane attempts to mis-apply an economic model of a "market" to things which do not have the required attributes to become "private property" and thus are not subject to "trade".
This does not mean that we believe that artists and software developers have to go hungry, but it does mean that the method by which various misguided businessmen (usually the middle-men peddling the art/science and not creating it themselves) expect to make their living is fatally flawed (primarilly because it was constructed by businessmen for businessmen, with no regards to anything else) and, in order to be "successful", demands positively immoral and dangerous to society activities, such as attempts at truly totalitarian measures in efforts to control the flow of information in society.
As more and more people realize this, it is my hope that some time in the future this idiotic "copyright" regime will be replaced with something that actually reflects the nature of the information and the needs of the society.
My personal favourite for art, for example, is a modernized "patronage" system, with direct transfer of donations by patrons of art to artists themselves. Sicence is, as it should, funded by academia and as soon as the for-profit scientific journals are dispised of (efforts in this direction are under way) it will be free from this nonsense. Performance arts have no problem whatsoever since the performers are expecting payment for their labour at the gate. Etc and so on.
It is quite possible however that a better model exists. If so I am sure someone will come up with it. Whatever it is, the notions of "copyrights" and "patents" as they stand are... well... patent absurdities! And what we see is simple human reaction to that undeniable fact, particularly among the younger generation whose indoctrination in these mattters is not yet effective.
Quite succinctly put. Specifically with regard to music, I find major fault with those who seem so up in arms about artists losing money due to p2p or torrent sites. Being a musician, I understand quite well that true artists do not create their music for money. Those who do are not musicians, they are simply business people hijacking an art form for personal profit. If we did away with copyright, and instituted a system such as the one you have mentioned, music would not disappear. Rather, as an art form it would become confined to those who love it for what it is.
Creating music is not a chore. It is something done out of necessity, more often than not. I liken it to an addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms if neglected. In short, if a system like yours was implemented, music would not cease to exist. On the contrary, the trash would be weeded out and we would all be better off for it.
Somewhere along the way, or maybe it has been this way the whole time, people started using laws as ethics. Most people seem to think that if something is illegal then it must be wrong and if it's not illegal then it's probably fine.
I don't think anyone here is jumping for joy that a gmail account got hacked. Instead I see a bunch of people jumping for joy because a company that is seeming violating the law might actually have to suffer for its actions.
I think what happened here is for the greater good. Sometimes breaking the law draws attention to a problem few realized existed.
Distance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Distance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally speaking, entrapment only applies to law enforcement and the government. RIAA still isn't there yet, thankfully. OTOH, a good lawyer could probably spin it as morally equivalent in principle for a jury.
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Re:Distance? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the civil arena, I believe unclean hands [wikipedia.org] would be more applicable, especially if you can trace Media Defender back to the RIAA via contracts and such.
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Re:Distance? (Score:5, Interesting)
A -really- clever lawyer could point out that since the RIAA has been documented as giving their stuff away, that anyone downloading from anywhere might have a reasonable belief that it was coming from the "authorized" source in disguise. I don't know that it would fly, but seems like there'd be a non-zero chance of diluting RIAA's argument in the entire body of cases.
On a side note, seems like this would give the artists cause to sue the RIAA, for distributing their work in a manner that's likely not covered by their contract (though with artist contracts in RIAA member companies, who knows--maybe they have the right to give it all away for free.)
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Re:Distance? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad you pointed that out. If this company, acting as an agent for the plaintiff (a movie company, for example), participated in the distribution of this content via P2P, then that constitutes a tacit approval of P2P distribution of the content by the plaintiff, thus making any further P2P distribution of that content potentially authorized by the copyright holder, and thus not a copyright violation.
Further, even if the person did not actually get it directly from an agent of the copyright holder, the rights holder distributing in such a way that causes it to be automatically redistributed by anyone who receives it (P2P) could constitute deliberate abandonment of the copyright (at least for the purposes of personal, noncommercial use) by the copyright holder.
I'm not saying that argument would necessarily hold up in court, but if I were in charge of a media company, I would not be doing anything nearly this stupid and reckless.
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If they hadn't set up the website, this specific "crime" COULDN'T have happened.
Think about what you said, with respect to, for example, VICE squads:
"Would Joe have been busted for possession of marijuana if the cop didn't sell it to him? In all probability he would have; it would just have happened elsewhere."
This is incorrect. It would NOT have happened; he MIGHT have been busted for possession of OTHER marijuana sold by someone else. On the other hand, he might not.
All of this is moot anyway, as you can't be entrapped in civil court. If they passed federal charges (under the DMCA), then an entrapment suit might possibly be in order if those entrapping were operating "above the law". Otherwise, either THEY were committing a crime by distributing the content, or those downloading weren't committing a crime as they would have been given legal permission to download the data. The worst thing they could be asked to do if those distributing the data didn't have permission to do so would be to remove their copy from their computer by the court. Of course, in most sane countries, possession of copywritten data isn't a crime, infringement, or anything similar; only distribution is. All you can be sued for is breach of contract in civil court (assuming there was some sort of contract).
Parent
Torrent or it didn't happen (Score:5, Informative)
http://thepiratebay.org/search/mediadefender [thepiratebay.org]
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3806944/MediaDefender.Mail.200612.200709-MDD.3806944.TPB.torrent [thepiratebay.org]
enjoy !
Re:Torrent or it didn't happen (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Torrent or it didn't happen (Score:5, Funny)
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They seemed to appreciate utorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and the rumors of them being behind the spyware-encrusted ziptorrent were false; that one seems to have been MediaSentry's doing.
Re:They seemed to appreciate utorrent (Score:5, Informative)
It seems like it's basically a distributed network of clients that feed garbage data, trying to slow down everyone's downloading. Sadly for them it seems that uTorrent defeated [utorrent.com] their work:
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Re:They seemed to appreciate utorrent (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:They seemed to appreciate utorrent (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know exactly what interdiction involves (it's a military term so I can make a guess) , but it seems to be an exploit in utorrent that they use to disrupt downloading of utorrent users. The less people use utorrent, the harder it is for MediaDefender to practice this 'interdiction'. MediaDefender seems to be quite worried every time a new version comes out, and they do try to get their customers to use utorrent when checking torrent sites to see that their files are being spoofed properly.
Some of this stuff could conceivably be used by MD's customers to sue MediaDefender for deliberately misleading them as to the effectiveness of their spoofing, like this one, when Amy Winehouse' record company wants to come and see how well they're doing:
Oh, and their emails do show them avidly reading slasdot and Digg and the like whenever a scandal affects them. So hello and welcome, to all you grifters taking the piss out of corporate record executives in ineffective-but-lucrative-peer-to-peer-spoofing land!
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Interdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Four main methods
Decoying. This, in a nutshell, is the serving of fake files that are generally empty or contain a trailer. The goal is to make legitimate content a needle in a haystack, so MediaDefender works hard to ensure that its copies of files show up in the top ten spots when certain keywords are searched for. Everything about the file is tailored to look like the work of pirates, from the file size (movies are often compressed enough to fit on a CD) to the naming conventions to the pirate scene tag. With massive bandwidth and plenty of servers, the company has little trouble in getting these decoy files to appear at the top of search results, but decoying has a down side: the bandwidth. Because MediaDefender actually serves these large but bogus files, it incurs a significant bandwidth bill by using this technique.
Spoofing. Spoofing sends searchers down dead ends. MediaDefender coders have written their own software that interacts with the various P2P protocols and sends bogus returns to search requests, usually directing people to nonexistent locations. Because most people only look at the top five search results, MediaDefender tries to frustrate their first attempts to download a file in hopes that they will just give up.
Interdiction. While the first two techniques try to prevent searchers from locating files, interdiction prevents distributors from serving them. The tool is generally used when media is leaked or newly released; the goal is to slow its spread in those crucial first days. MediaDefender servers attempt to create constant connections to the files in question, saturating the provider's upstream bandwidth and preventing anyone else from grabbing the data.
Swarming. Though he acknowledges the BitTorrent networks can be hard to disrupt, Lee points out that MediaDefender can use "swarming" to make life more difficult for users trying to download copyrighted content. BitTorrent works by using a hash file to reassemble a file from many pieces, each of which may have been downloaded from a different user. MediaDefender simply serves up its chunks of these files, but instead of providing the proper data, its chunks contain static or nothing at all. When the file is eventually reassembled by the user, it may contain clicks, silent spaces, or odd skips. This can make the viewing/listening experience less pleasurable, but it's most effective with software downloads since even small errors can prevent programs from running.
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Oh please DMCA this... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh please DMCA this... (Score:4, Funny)
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I wonder who did it (Score:5, Funny)
Oh man it hurts. (Score:5, Funny)
Inflation (Score:5, Funny)
I really hope Warner reads this gold.
Re:Inflation (Score:4, Funny)
I wouldn't normally e-mail you directly about MiiVi stuff, because a lot of what I say about this is total crap (so keep that in mind) and Jay filters the crap from the important stuff for you. Is there a way to add this hash/title to the porn filter explicitly?
hash=30755326A4E4B28E678BFF8CB2AF5FC4A4FBF710&i=3 (the title is Celebrity deathmatch: Korn vs slipknot and the exact URL is http://129.47.9.160/zonie/media.php?hash=30755326A4E4B28E678BFF8CB2AF5FC4A4FBF710&i=3 [129.47.9.160])
I just flagged it as Other Terms of Use violation. It's a warthog (or maybe it's a big bushy dog, I can't tell) having sex with a woman and NOT a Korn vs. Slipknot mash-up video.
If this is a big deal, don't worry about it for now. But eventually this would probably need a tool of some kind for a Super User account to remove files from our indexing system all together.
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Re:Inflation (Score:4, Funny)
From: "Ben Grodsky"
To: "Jay Mairs" ; "Dylan Douglas"
Sent: 5/11/07 10:39 AM
Subject: RE: naughty miivi hash for filter
it's the first bestiality vid i've gotten that didn't have any porn or bestiality key words.
i'm not offended by bestiality in the least and actually have seen a few of the horse and dog fucking videos already
cool. no worries though. it just freaks me out when key words couldn't do anything at all.
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Torrent Comments (Score:4, Informative)
What's interesting about that (to me) is... (Score:4, Interesting)
However... assume the the group/person releasing this did at least have a gmail e-mail address for this guy, he still wouldn't have the password.
Now, it's not a very strong password - it can certainly be cracked easily by a dictionary or even a brute force attack.
But if either of those methods are what were used - then what's up with Google apparently not stopping this in one way or another? E.g. maximum of N login attempts in a given time, notifying the rightful account holder of the attempts, etc.?
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Re:What's interesting about that (to me) is... (Score:5, Informative)
The info on the intertubes is that Mr. Maris, otherwise known as The Putz of the Century, after having forwarded all his corporate mail to his Gmail account, signed up for one of the p2p forums he was "investigating" using that very Gmail address and the same password as his gmail account had.
And he did so from an IP address already known to belong to Media Defenders.
You figure out the rest.
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Re:What's interesting about that (to me) is... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Student lawsuits... (Score:5, Funny)
Sent: Wed 11-Apr-07 21:24
To: Jay Mairs; Ben Grodsky; Ty Heath; Ivan Kwok; Ben Ebert
Subject: Fw:
Team
Universal is curiouse if we have any historical data over the last 3 months that show whether
They want to see if their lawsuits are getting students to stop using p2p (take a moment to laugh to yourself).
Let me know if anyone has any ideas.
R
--- Original Message ---
From: Benjamin, David
To: Randy Saaf
Sent: Wed Apr 11 18:11:50 2007
Subject:
How are you doing with this?
Thanks
db
It'll never be admissible in court. (Score:4, Insightful)
IANAL, so I'd like to hear from somebody with real law experience either confirming or denying this, but that's my gut feeling.
Gold Jerry, Gold! (Score:5, Interesting)
HTML Format :) (Score:5, Informative)
http://jrwr.hopto.org/ [hopto.org]
Hahahaha, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hahahaha, no. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Hahahaha, no. (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you sure? (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, you may remember how MediaDefender paid someone to hack into TorrentSpy's email. I'd call this turn-about...
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Re:Are you sure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I'm in awe of him. I read the deposition he conducted earlier in the year against an RIAA "expert" witness yesterday (yeah, yeah mod me down for violating
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Re:Hahahaha, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their "vigilante" tactics have inspired a vigilante response, for better or for worse. It's the old "well, they started it" defense.
It's almost a little disgusting to see intelligent Slashdot readers encouraging identity theft and other federal crimes because they don't like the work that MD does. Obviously the vast majority of readers aren't doing so, but there have been full names of low-level programmers already posted in this thread and I'm sure far worse on other sites.
Do the ends (stopping MD's work) really justify the means? If this were the internal emails of an abortion provider we would all be disgusted if a pro-life group sent the names, addresses, and social security numbers of clinic secretaries and janitors around. But when it's the low-level functionaries of a hated technology group it's apparently OK and to be commended.
Just because a large number of people disagree with their work it shouldn't be OK to break federal law to discourage them. Yes, they may have broken federal law first, but the answer is not to raise the ante.
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Re:Hahahaha, no. (Score:5, Funny)
Does there have to be a CowboyNeal option in every poll?
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this is in the wild now (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:this is in the wild now (Score:5, Funny)
You can't submit to them, that's why they're credible :P.
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Re:this is in the wild now (Score:5, Insightful)
You assumed that the narcisstic, vain, executive types, having landed in their positions straight from their MBA mutual-adoration "schools", actually have an ounce of a clue. That is a very dangerous assumption. These people are the new artistocracy. Their time is spent in adoring each other's golf swing on exclusive golf courses and a byzantine dance of trying to ingrate themselves with the "right" coctail party crowd, which then, if successful, leads to their occupation of new, ever more obscenely overpaid, musical seats on various boards of directors, finally ending in a massive "golden parachute" payout.
Well being of the companies, competence and the financial gains of shareholders have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.
Returning to the case in point: the overpaid clowns, not having a dimmest idea as to what they are doing (as the leaked emails plainly and painfully show), did what their kind usally does: played and postured at being "rent-a-cops" for their objects of adoration, the much better paid, and even more clueless, executives of various media conglomerates.
It is a little wonder that other buffoons would pay millions (usually comprised of some blue-collar worker's pention fund money) for this glorified circle jerk of "serious businessmen crime fighters".
One of the dimwits, seeing himself so much more competent that mere "techies", then proceeded to bypass all of the security measures of their email system by forwarding all of his mail to Gmail, and then used the very same account, with the very same password of "blahbob" to "investigate" one of the p2p sites.
In short, everything that is happening here is merely a sympthom of the state of total corruption to which the modern corporate world has descended, other indicators being known under the names of Enron, WorldCom, Haliburton etc.
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Re:this is in the wild now (Score:5, Interesting)
And you, sir, are a walking, talking, slashdot-posting parody of yourself, who apparently learned everything he knows about the mindset and behavior of corporate officers from Jeep commercials.
Me, I learned it by interacting with them personally and professionally way more than I ever wanted to on a day-to-day basis over the majority of my career, and my experience is that the grandparent is dead-on. The whole system is some screwed-up incompetence engine fueled by narcissism bathed in the infinite oxidizer of a personality almost entirely driven by a super-ego that hasn't matured a day since puberty stopped.
P.S.
They all play golf.
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Re:this is in the wild now (Score:5, Insightful)
Real world? Basement? These goofuses are actually my long-time customers and I deal with them daily. That is how my worldview got "warped" as a result of what I know first-hand. And that is how you do not know, apparently. Not only can I place them and name them, I can even name their boats. And that is why I post here under a handle. If they knew that I know many of them for what they are, they would no doubt try to retaliate and that would be rather inconvenient. I can fix the overpaid stuckup buffoons' mistakes for top dollar when they believe all their screwups are the wisest moves ever and only need "little touchups", but it is impossible to do so when they know that I know what those turds of their making really are. It bruises their fragile egos and makes them very uncomfortable. I like to call this: "Customer Relations". The way the world works, kid. Smile and shovel. Your reward is laughing all the way to the bank.
And if you are one of those MBAs - keep in mind that this grinning consultant on whom you offload all your real work and who says "That would be no problem!" or "I can work within the framework of your plan!" and the like, might be someone like me and hold the same opinion of you as I do. You can tell by how skillfully he actually does what he needed to do to make it work, as opposed to what you told him to do, even though he agreed and nodded his head all the way. That and the fact that his bills keep going up the more your fuckups pile up, even though you did your darnest to hide them. But he never stops smiling and being nice to you, does he? It is so fortunate that you cannot read his mind. You would spend the rest of your days under your bed shivering.
Muahahahahahaha! Hahahahaah! Ehrm.
"Adventure sports" would require these farts to actually exert themselves. Although some few do that, there are very good reasons why golf (followed by far distant second: squash) is king, which you do not seem to grasp: 1) one can do this in an exclusive, exorbitantly-priced, invitation memebership only, bar-equipped course right in or very near the city, which also provides an opportunity to flaunt one's wealth to all the peons 2) most execs are lazy farts who talk a storm about "sports" but usually restrict themselves to swinging clubs and copiously drinking and 3) one can discuss business deals in comfort while golfing, which is rather hard when, say, hand-gliding and what not. "Adventure sports" are what most of them would, without batting an ayelid, label a posh trip to, say, Africa or some other poor but picturescue place, where they ride around in well guarded and very luxurious RVs, once every decade or so.
I get cold sweat when I think on my days of youth, when I actually believed the same sanitized, propagandistic crap you seem to believe. But I don't blame you for your naivette. Unless you were born into this rarefied socialite club or are grudgingly admitted to it via marriage or some astronomically unlikely random coincidence (which you will prompty ascribe to your own infallable iron wit of which the mere peons are bereft of, as is the prevailing custom in those circles), you will learn eventually.
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Re:this is in the wild now (Score:4, Interesting)
This comment is like the GBU-28 bunker buster of reality. Man I wish you weren't right, but you are.
You should see defense contracting, with its own little circle jerk of mutual admiration with the goal of making lots of bucks while doing as little as possible. And it works! A bunch of ex-flag officers running the show with some so-called "engineers" in the mix performing "software maintenance" (in other words, working on shit that doesn't work, never will, and even if it did it performed a task that was appropriate in the chill of the cold war 70s).
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OH RLY? (Score:5, Interesting)
dev-salaries-18june2007.xls
Sergio A. Alvarez 2,916.67 $70,000.00
Linus Aranha 2,708.33 $65,000.00
Dylan C Douglas 2,916.67 $70,000.00
Benjamin Ebert 3,541.67 $85,000.00
Norman T Heath 4,791.67 $115,000.08
Sujay S. Jaju 2,708.33 $65,000.00
Andrew H. Kim 2,291.67 $55,000.00
Ivan Y Kwok 4,166.67 $100,000.00
Jed Z. Levin 2,291.67 $55,000.00
Gerald E. Rode 2,291.67 $55,000.00
Sheetalkumar Shah 2,708.33 $65,000.00
Nainesh N. Solanki 2,708.33 $65,000.00
Daeyoung Song 2,375.00 $57,000.00
Jeffrey W. Wang 2,375.00 $57,000.00
You were saying?
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Re:You are taking it the wrong way (Score:5, Interesting)
"Evil" is an exaggeration. This dislike of closed-source comes from the fact that many here instinctively realize that information, such as computer programs, some forms of art, thoughts in people heads, large integer numbers etc, do not fall under the simplistic, inane attempts to mis-apply an economic model of a "market" to things which do not have the required attributes to become "private property" and thus are not subject to "trade".
This does not mean that we believe that artists and software developers have to go hungry, but it does mean that the method by which various misguided businessmen (usually the middle-men peddling the art/science and not creating it themselves) expect to make their living is fatally flawed (primarilly because it was constructed by businessmen for businessmen, with no regards to anything else) and, in order to be "successful", demands positively immoral and dangerous to society activities, such as attempts at truly totalitarian measures in efforts to control the flow of information in society.
As more and more people realize this, it is my hope that some time in the future this idiotic "copyright" regime will be replaced with something that actually reflects the nature of the information and the needs of the society.
My personal favourite for art, for example, is a modernized "patronage" system, with direct transfer of donations by patrons of art to artists themselves. Sicence is, as it should, funded by academia and as soon as the for-profit scientific journals are dispised of (efforts in this direction are under way) it will be free from this nonsense. Performance arts have no problem whatsoever since the performers are expecting payment for their labour at the gate. Etc and so on.
It is quite possible however that a better model exists. If so I am sure someone will come up with it. Whatever it is, the notions of "copyrights" and "patents" as they stand are ... well ... patent absurdities! And what we see is simple human reaction to that undeniable fact, particularly among the younger generation whose indoctrination in these mattters is not yet effective.
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Re:You are taking it the wrong way (Score:5, Insightful)
Creating music is not a chore. It is something done out of necessity, more often than not. I liken it to an addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms if neglected. In short, if a system like yours was implemented, music would not cease to exist. On the contrary, the trash would be weeded out and we would all be better off for it.
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Re:This is NOT good news (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone here is jumping for joy that a gmail account got hacked. Instead I see a bunch of people jumping for joy because a company that is seeming violating the law might actually have to suffer for its actions.
I think what happened here is for the greater good. Sometimes breaking the law draws attention to a problem few realized existed.
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