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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."
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Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked

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  • Distance? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:26PM (#20618525) Homepage
    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?
    • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <wrosecrans@gm a i l .com> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:31PM (#20618563) Homepage

      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.
      • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:45PM (#20619181) Homepage
        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.
    • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Atlantis-Rising ( 857278 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:33PM (#20618581) Homepage
      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.)
    • Re:Distance? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ctishman ( 545856 ) <ctishman@mac. c o m> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:34PM (#20618583)
      Regular people (like you or me or, in the court's eyes, the RIAA) can't commit entrapment. It's a police-only crime.
    • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Abalamahalamatandra ( 639919 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:39PM (#20618633)
      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.
    • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Wordplay ( 54438 ) <geo@snarksoft.com> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:46PM (#20618709)
      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.)
      • Re:Distance? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:22PM (#20618995) Homepage Journal

        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.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )
        though with artist contracts in RIAA member companies, who knows--maybe they have the right to give it all away for free.

        Well, if you look at iTunes etc. it mostly says Copyright (2006) Universal, Inc. or somesuch. So I figure they sell the copyright outright in return for royalties, though I suppose it could have some limitations on how they sell it and such.
      • Re: (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

      • I imagine the file have some sort of coruption that makes them unplayable rather than live content.
    • by ubrgeek ( 679399 )
      OK, so not entrapment, but what about violating FTC laws if they lied on their charter of incorporation (is that the term of the paperwork compiled for incorporate a company?)
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Goaway ( 82658 )
      Now, I did not read the actual emails yet beyond the summary, but that contains a hint most people are missing. The goal of this isn't to entrap people for downloading material. That idea is dumb, everybody knows it, and these people aren't so dumb they think that would work.

      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,
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:27PM (#20618527)
  • If so, then riaa is in knee deep s*it
  • they just got sick of trapping people for the RIAA and the RIAA getting to shake them down for cash.
    Let torrent stuff you have copyright on (for example emails that've been stolen from you) and sue for cash yourself...
  • by Aim Here ( 765712 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:33PM (#20618575)
    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.
    • by cnettel ( 836611 )
      Well, what would stop them from keeping an older version if that's somehow beneficial to them (or make minor changes to a client to disturb the protocol)?
      • by Aim Here ( 765712 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:11PM (#20618919)
        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!

        • Interdiction (Score:5, Informative)

          by E IS mC(Square) ( 721736 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @05:03PM (#20619321) Journal
          From ARSTechnica article in the "News" section of Mediadefender.com - http://www.mediadefender.com/news/20070318_ARSTechnica.pdf [mediadefender.com])

          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.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by jandrese ( 485 )
            Don't Bittorrent clients do a checksum against every block downloaded? How can the swarming work? I know I have seen my client report that a chunk has a bogus checksum and re-download it. It's pretty rare but it does happen. It doesn't even have to be malicious, some people have dodgy computers that will silently corrupt data or frankly the TCP checksum isn't all that strong and it's not impossible for corrupt data to get through it.
    • Interdiction means that they're screwing up your download or otherwise hosing the torrent.

      I don't have a copy of the emails, but were they very specific about when it allows them to interdict the torrent? It'd be interesting to know, because uTorrent is closed-source and it's now merged with BitTorrent, Inc.
    • by Rufus211 ( 221883 ) <rufus-slashdot@h ... g ['kis' in gap]> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:12PM (#20618927) Homepage
      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.
      • by Aim Here ( 765712 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:18PM (#20618975)
        Not the whole story. They must have made it work again, because this one is dated September 7th, later than the email you quote:

        Subject: RE: utorrent
        From: Daniel Lee
        To: Randy Saaf , qa ,
                        torrents
        Cc: Ty Heath , Jay Mairs

        Yep, we checked yesterday and interdiction still works on the latest
        version.

  • What's the legality? Obviously, I doubt highly these emails can be used at a trial for any wrongdoing or unlawful behavior (say, for Miivi), but will I get into trouble just for downloading them?
  • by BlueParrot ( 965239 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:35PM (#20618593)
    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...
  • by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:35PM (#20618595) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • by daeg ( 828071 )
      I read somewhere that the mailbox password was something like "blahbob". Really, though, if your organization is so delicate, why are your IMAP/POP3 servers publicly available?
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by CharonX ( 522492 )
      According to the .nfo one of their employees had the presence of mind to forward all e-mail to their Gmail account. I guess all that e-mail protection stuff got in the way or something.
      And the password of said account was *drumroll* blahbob.
    • 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.

      Well it will for one hour a day when he is taken from his cell to the prison yard for exercise. Intentionally disclosing social security numbers and other personally identifiable information probably violates several statues regarding information security and privacy.

      And lets not forget the civil lawsuits that will result against this person. Those RI
    • by Mex ( 191941 )
      " 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"
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by c ( 8461 )
      Nice. Real subtle. While you're at it, why not ask god to slap an "I did it!" tattoo on their forehead, too.

      c.
  • by kwabbles ( 259554 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:36PM (#20618605)
    I can't stop laughing. Oh hoh... my stomach. LOL
  • Inflation (Score:5, Funny)

    by athdemo ( 1153305 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:37PM (#20618607)
    I thought these two were some of the best.

    >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.


    >From: "Octavio Herrera" >
    >To: "torrents"
    >Cc: "Gilberto Vargas" >, "Ben Grodsky" >, "Rick Moreno" >
    >Subject: Fw: # LP illegal album downloads
    >Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 15:24:59 -0700

    >Torrent team, can you give us a sense of how many dowloads of tis album there has been off bt. We are not protecting on bt so the bigger the better.


    I really hope Warner reads this gold.
    • provided, my soul begs that the answer came back as:
      "Zero. Should suggest to WB that they pay people to take it."
    • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @07:07PM (#20620343) Journal
      I nominate this one:

      Dylan,

      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.
      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.
      • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @07:11PM (#20620385) Journal
        NO WAIT. Oh my lord, this one is even better. There was a follow up, and this time I'll just include the headers. Disgusting! :-X

        -----Original Message-----
        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 :p

        cool. no worries though. it just freaks me out when key words couldn't do anything at all.
    • Oh my god, this will be awesome. My spider sense hasn't tingled like this since the Windows 2000 source code was partially leaked!
  • Unclean Hands (Score:3, Informative)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:51PM (#20618761)
    It was only a matter of time. Heh. Not a honeypot, eh? Rrrrriiight.

    I just had to dig up an old post of mine that needed reposting...

    Msg: 35175 of 43019 7/9/2007 4:27:06 AM Recs: 32 Sentiment: Not Disclosed
    By: Boyle M. Owl Send PM Profile Ignore Add To Favorites
    Legal Crows Come Home To Roost. Media Defender Says "We Didn't Mean It"

    Media Defender backtracks on 'entrapment site'

    It was all a terrible mistake

    By Nick Farrell: Monday 09 July 2007, 07:14

    THE MOVIE industry's private dick division has denied that it set up a P2P site designed to catch people pirating.

    Media Defender admitted that it set up a site, called MiiVi, which looked exactly like a P2P site but claimed it was never meant to go live and was not designed to entrap pirates.

    According to Ars Technica, Media Defender claimed the story has been blown far out of proportion and was started by sites like The Pirate Bay and TorrentFreak. MediaDefender's Randy Saaf told Ars Technica the story was "completely made up".

    Well, not completely made up. He said Media Defender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn't realise that people would be trying to go to it and being a security company it didn't password-protect the site.

    Saaf said that it was not an entrapment site, and Media Defender was not working with the MPAA on it. He claimed that the MPAA didn't even know about it.

    However Ars asked theme why MediaDefender immediately removed all contact information from the whois registry for the domain if the site was so innocent. Saaf said that it was afraid of a hacker attack or people sending it spam.

    It is not clear what Saaf was planning to do with all the details of would-be P2P users who might have logged into the site while it was accidently online or if anything was collected.

    -------

    Not an entrapment site? Walks like a duck...

    Yeah, uh, Media Defender (nee Sentry) is in a heap of trouble because it gives the MPAA two things:

    An unclean left hand and an unclean right hand. Media Defender's software installed a secret scanner that uploaded data on any "copyrighted files" to MPAA goons that may have resided on the computers of the dupes who went there.

    You can't be breaking into people's computers and violating things like RIGL 11-52-3 by installing nefarious software. Many states have similar laws, and some states have laws specifically against spyware. "Evidence" gathered with unclean hands (this is an actual legal term and concept) angers judges to no end. Any "evidence" by the MPAA shown to be gathered by Media Defender now is under a very dark cloud.

    That's why Media Defender is in deep shit. They committed felonies _and_ screwed their client. Thus all the "we didn't know people would actually _go_ to our honeypot"

    Whoops.

    --
    BMO

    -------

    Fast forward to today...

    http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3806944/MediaDefender.Mail.200612.200709-MDD/ [thepiratebay.org]

    And now it's proven that they really _did_ set it up as a honeypot. This weekend has turned out pretty good so far.

    Hats off to the leaker. Now the _feds_ might have something to go after MediaDefender and the MPAA with. Oh, what delicious irony, with cream and sugar.

    --
    BMO
  • to the real world.

    pawned by piracy, or should I call, theft of emails?
  • Torrent Comments (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dubpal ( 860472 ) * on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:54PM (#20618775) Homepage
    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.

    • A lot of comments here seem to be talking about what might happen to whatever MediaDefender employee leaked the email and soforth. This info suggests that it's not actually a renegade employee at all, just a stupid one who's gmail account got cracked.
    • by Animaether ( 411575 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @05:27PM (#20619457) Journal
      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.?
  • by none295 ( 521820 ) <pl1x@ e a rthlink.net> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:57PM (#20618801)
    Hello, my name is %20 and I collect interdicting spoofing noise files created by entities like Overpeer and MediaDefender. They are important 'art' objects which are in dire need of preservation. I had thought the methods and products died out when Overpeer went kaputz, but there are several e-mails in this collection which revive my search and preservation of these outstanding works of questionable merit. So if you happen to get a files from these folks which seems a little off, read this blog: http://noneinc.com/RIAAEM/RIAABlog.html [noneinc.com] and we'll host them for everyone to enjoy.

    TIA!
    %20
  • nice (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wwmedia ( 950346 )
    its a very nice business model they have, one arm of the company spreads/facilitates illegal downloads the other arm collects protection money from media companies

    them media companies are the bigger fools for doing business with this crowd, mediadefender's whole business model depend on piracy always being there
  • by BlueParrot ( 965239 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:15PM (#20618941)
    From: Randy Saaf
            Sent: Wed 11-Apr-07 21:24
            To: Jay Mairs; Ben Grodsky; Ty Heath; Ivan Kwok; Ben Ebert
            Subject: Fw: .edu filtering

            Team

            Universal is curiouse if we have any historical data over the last 3 months that show whether .edu IP addresses on p2p have gone down.

            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: .edu filtering

            How are you doing with this?
            Thanks
            db
  • Intentional? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 )
    Perhaps this was actually intentional, and the are using this team as a sacrificial lamb, so to speak.

    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'?
  • by samwh ( 921444 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @05:51PM (#20619659)
    I see a .mbox file... how do I open it?
  • by glindsey ( 73730 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @05:53PM (#20619681)
    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.
    • You're right that you couldn't directly use these emails in court, but that's more because it's hearsay than because it's stolen. However, during discovery, you could subpoena these particular emails to get legally sanctioned copies then use those in court. MediaDefender would have a hard time proving that they don't exist or that the requested emails are irrelevant.

      warning: I'm not a lawyer.
  • Gold Jerry, Gold! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MtlDty ( 711230 ) on Saturday September 15, 2007 @08:22PM (#20620913)
    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.
  • HTML Format :) (Score:5, Informative)

    by jrwr00 ( 1035020 ) <jrwr00 @ g mail.com> on Saturday September 15, 2007 @11:39PM (#20622187) Homepage
    Ive Converted the emails into HTML (With attachments)

    http://jrwr.hopto.org/ [hopto.org]

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.

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