Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked 427
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."
I have looked into the news, and i just felt that (Score:1, Interesting)
real big.
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: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.
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.)
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...
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!
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?
Intentional? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you read thru the emails and get a idea of the potential scale of the operation, it might scare you away from p2p if you dont have any balls.. Perhaps thats the idea, to weed out the 'little people'?
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.
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
Re:Distance? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes I can see a prosecution of downloaders might be hampered by how they were caught, if they were handed (corrupted) files by copyright holders themselves (RIAA/MediaDefender or allies). But 2 points you may have missed:
1) On a Windows system I've once seen a URL being opened as a direct result of playing some video file. Maybe there still exist similar leaks on many (unpatched) client systems out there, that allow arbitrary code execution. In that case: install some monitoring software, gather system info, identifiable data an so forth, and voila: you might proceed to prosecute that person not for sharing the video you handed him/her, but for all other illegal activity done using that computer. Failing that, an inside look in a file sharer's machine could be very helpful for rights holders.
2) By feeding corrupted downloads to users, you make their experience less satisfying, so that said users may turn away from using things like BitTorrent. Or give BT / file sharing in general a bad reputation (as in: works difficult, downloads often crap). That would also serve your purpose (although I expect the result to be minimal unless you succeed in causing mayor disruption of the file sharing network).
--Don't tell me this sounds good, and you won't me on your team. Up yours! File sharing may be illegal in some cases, but in general I don't feel it's unethical, or that it helps society at large to prevent it. Try and convince me otherwise, with solid arguments.
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.?
Re:Torrent Download (Score:2, Interesting)
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3808220/Gnutella.Tracking.Database.Leak.INDEPENDENT [thepiratebay.org]
Gold Jerry, Gold! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Distance? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, what I see hints of is that their client would contain code to disrupt OTHER P2P networks. Their efforts to disrupt traffic are easily thwarted by blocking their IP ranges. What they might be going for is creating a botnet of sorts, so they can attack from entirely random IPs.
And that's the thing they don't want getting out at any cost.
Re:Distance? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you missed the point. The movie company knows that the very act of downloading it causes you to redistribute to other people. Therefore by distributing it in that fashion, they are agreeing to allow the content to be obtained with the knowledge that doing so will cause you to redistribute the content, and therefore they are effectively agreeing to allow you to redistribute the content.
You get the email from discovery (Score:3, Interesting)
warning: I'm not a lawyer.
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.
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).
Re:this is in the wild now (Score:1, Interesting)
Right on, you hit that on the mark, but I wouldn't limit that to just execs. I am surround by neighbors who try to relive their glory days of high school JV football every day by shouting at the TV screen on the weekend while downing Coors Light in their sweater vests. Ironically as much "sports" as they talk, the only sport they do play is golf.