MediaDefender Denies Entrapment Accusations 104
Ortega-Starfire writes "We've previously discussed the subject of MediaDefender setting up a site to catch movie pirates. Ars Technica covers the response from MediaDefender, which basically states the entire thing was a mistake and was only an internal site they forgot to password protect, and that they were not using this with the MPAA. The article asks: 'If this is true, why did MediaDefender immediately remove all contact information from the whois registry for the domain? Saaf said that after everything hit the fan, the company decided to take everything on the site down because it was afraid of a hacker attack or "people sending us spam." Yes, spam. The MPAA's Elizabeth Kaltman also chimed in to say that they had no involvement with MiiVi: "The MediaDefender story is false. We have no relationship with that company at all," she told Ars.'"
You smell something? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
That is true. That is not bullshit -- nor bull, nor shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But at the level of delusion they're operating at, can you consider them sane?
Also, make no mistake, people who are profoundly insane have existed at the highest levels of power throughout history. Ronal
For Sale (Score:5, Insightful)
As PT Barnum said, there is a sucker born every minute. Sadly for the MPAA, this got covered too widely and we aren't all suckers. I certainly hope some Attorney General somewhere is looking at this.
Re: (Score:1)
While IANAL, the wikipedia article claims that a test against entrapment is that "police or other investigators would catch only those "ready and w
playing that card are we? (Score:3, Funny)
Next victim - MediaDefender (Score:5, Interesting)
Something fishy here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Riiiiiight (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I do not really know... when Sony made available their Rootkit encumbered CDs I am sure they had it very well planned, of course when the thinks go bad the corporations just wash their hands. I think in this case is even worst as such corporations (Sony, Universial, BMG, etc) are hiding behind the RIAA name *and* then paying companies such as Media Defender to do the dirty work...
Beautif
Legal Dept.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Advice a bunch of us received form an employment lawyer regarding (ex)substance abusers and the American with Disabilities Act:
What would you rather have: sitting across the table from the drunk being sued for at most $50,000 for not hiring him; or sitting at the same table because he was drunk or high and killed a little kid while on the job. Your choice.
Legal departments only gives legal
Re: (Score:2)
Legalities aside, this should very well be a public relations nightmare for them, and so of course they want to distance themselves. The fact they're likely to get away with it only irks me slightly less than the original story.
Re: (Score:2)
There is currently a file sharing case in which the defendant has counter-sued the MPAA (or it might have been the RIAA) because they were using unlicensed private investigators. Private investigators must be licensed in the state where they are doing their investigation. I somehow doubt that Media Defender is licensed as a private investigator in all 50 states, let alone anywhere.
Basically, this is opening up the MPAA to an avalanche of suits. One doesn'
Would LOVE to have a look at the cache/source (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
One thing is for sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank god Google doesn't have the balls (or rather lack of them) when running YouTube!
Either MediaDefender is among the most spineless IT organizations I've ever been unfortunate to hear of, or they're big fat liars.
Actually, given the sequence of events, it seems they're both.
I wish I had saved some screenshots of the site while it was up and I could access it. Is there any caches? It was advertised even more heavily than The Pirate Bay. I'll leave it at that.
Re: (Score:2)
Suddenly an image formed in my mind: Thousands of netizens gathering and yelling "HACK POWER!".
Companies have more power than citizens (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want proof, look at the quality of their backpedaling.
Riiiiiight. I'd love to use that the next time the RIAA comes knocking. "Honest! I thought that P2P application was only on my local net. I forgot to password protect it."
Notice how that works for them but would be insufficient for us.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, I'm wondering what happens if the owners of the copyrighted works don't go after this company for sharing their works. Any freebees there for us?
Re: (Score:2)
that's with trademarks [wikipedia.org]. AFAIK, no such thing exists with patents or copyrights, though i believe the right to sue over a patent may fade (cases may get tossed) if they basically cherry-pick only large, profitable-to-sue infringers (even application of the law or something), though i'm not entirely sure.
the REAL conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Anyone consider that they set it up on purpose with the intention of getting caught and sued for the overall goal of having nobody trust new sharing sites?
Since most decent sites i've seen rely on torrents, and not on specific software for that site only, it would be a very useless attempt ^^ :)
Everyone would just stick to torrent sites, as most are doing now anyways
It gives you freedom of choice for software, platform, etc, so why trust a shade site that requires some 'special' software ?
Not to mention the fact that getting caught with this would be a serious scandal imho, even if the mp3 police denies any involvement, IANAL but I would expect this
Re: (Score:2)
This is simply a sting. A really, really poorly thought out one.
From a legal perspective, can they sue for copyright infringement if the license holders are the ones distributing the media?
That would be like writing a song, singing it, recording it to disk, offering the disk for free to anyone who wants it, then sueing everyone who picks up a free copy for infringing your copyright.
How can they possibly sue you for infringing copyright if they hold the copyright and they
Whois history is available, for a price. (Score:5, Informative)
The site's Whois history [domaintools.com] information is available from a site that archives that info. It costs $15 per month.
They show Whois changes on 2007-03-11, 2007-07-03, 2007-07-04, 2007-07-05, and 2007-07-06. So if anybody needs to prove anything, the truth is out there.
miivi.net info still available (Score:2, Informative)
Registrant:
Miivi, inc.
2461 santa monica blvd
d-520
santa monica, CA 90404
US
310-954-3300
Administrative Contact:
Chang, Jonathan info@miivi.com
2461 santa monica blvd
d-520
santa monica, CA 90404
US
310-954-3300
Technical Contact:
Chang, Jonathan info@miivi.com
2461 santa monica blvd
Did Anyone Download The Software?!? (Score:1)
Google cache (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The robots file can tell spiders to ignore it -or- to index it just not to cashe it. Google's spiders respect the "don't cashe" option.
I can spell cache... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"flexible" ethics (Score:2)
Haha... (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF? Hacker challenge!
Strangely enough I got there when going to mediadefender.com, then P2P Marketing (LOL), and then "Successful campaigns".
What a weird name for an FTP though. Note this though:
Maybe it's that FTP? But why would it be linked to like that on their site?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So it really could be an FTP of warez? Haha.
mivii.com -- firstload.de? (Score:5, Informative)
Firstload.de has been online since October 2005, it's registered to "Verimount FZE LLC" which seems to have no connection to MediaDefender or any other such anti-p2p company. Perhaps the purpose of MediaDefender's miivi.com had something to do with firstload.de? A phishing scheme in progress? miivi and mivii would be easy to confuse...
I leave the speculation to you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, a quick look around the site suggest this is actually a legitimate newsgroup host. They don't seem to directly promote piracy (not more than giganews anyway), so I don't think this is another entrapment thing.
With all the news coverage, I'm betting miivi.com got a lot of hits and that german company bought it from a broker or somthing like that. Can never be sure though, and since there are better newsgroup hosters out there: who cares.
emails (Score:2)
Response and analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
"MediaDefender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn't realize that people would be trying to go to it and so we didn't password-protect the site," Saaf said. "It was just an oversight from that perspective. This was not an entrapment site, and we were not working with the MPAA on it. In fact, the MPAA didn't even know about it."
So let me get that right. They register a short catchy domain name, for that "internal-only project", host the site on that domain, a site that loudly advertises full free movie downloads.. and they didn't expect anyone to come by!
Imagine their shocked faces when one morning they checked the logs and saw hundreds of people from outside visiting their site! Surprise! And so, what they did? Nothing, they left it running.. that is, until someone wrote the investigation of who's behind the site.
So what was that internal project about anyway? Was it movie server for them to watch movies during lunch breaks? Isn't this violating copyrights in some sort? And why would they produce an application that scans your harddrive and reports media files back to mothership. I mean, do they SO lack control of their own employees?
Bottom line is: jesus, they aren't even TRYING to fool us. Idiots.
Re: (Score:2)
Which indicates (as others have said here) that this outfit is either a. run by fools or b. into something a bit more devious. Personally, given the caliber of their employers, I'd vote for the latter.
Re: (Score:2)
What bothers me, they obviously have no problem with this idea, and they may try again (but covering their tracks better). I wonder how they'll use the collected evidence in court that way though.
There's something wrong when you offer "full movie downloads!" on your site, and just checking it out constitutes a
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
1. The company (Media Defender) was offering a program containing spyware.
2. The alleged available films where uploaded by them, hence *they* where committing the crime (illegally distributing copyrighted content... unless they had the right to do it).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because something is made law does not mean that the problem of whether it is a "moral" thing to do suddenly disappears.
I mean, just slavery and women's rights are pretty obvious examples (to most) of laws that were morally wrong, but still the law of the land -- it didn't suddenly become wrong when the law was changed, it was always wrong, but the law was a bad law.
As far as comparing this situation to honeypots in the security realm -- that's utterly hilarious. Crackers steal data, deface web pages
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not even. It would be a service if it was something that isn't simply consumed... like cleaning my house, or shoveling my driveway. This is simply creating a copy of some data.
Nope. Again, it is simply copying some data -- if it were being taken,
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
No, you haven't been baited, and no, I haven't seen the points debunked ever... especially not here.
You mention that it's just copying data, which is the only point I've really seen parroted by slashdotters. Yes, I have conceded that you are not taking a physical object of definite mass and shape. But you argue that entertainment (I'll let this encompass music and movies) is merely consumed, rather than providing the service of entertaining you. I know it may seem like semantics, but let me attempt an ana
Re: (Score:2)
Ultimately, though, you want your house cleaned and decide to rent a robot. Afterwards, you refuse to pay,
Here's where I'd say the analogy breaks down (and, please note, I'm not addressing the larger issue here). In your analogy, you enter into a rental agreement, then break the deal that you've agreed to. In the movie situation, no agreement exists between the parties to break.
Re: (Score:1)
Sure there is. The agreement is to consume the product of the movie studio in one of the formats they choose (at the theater, DVD, etc.) at the price they set. And as their actions have made clear, the agreement also includes NOT consuming their product through piracy. Just because modern technology makes it trivially easy to bypass this agreement doesn't negate the fact that the agreement exists.
This agreement is, of course, implicit, but it is the basic tenet of a capitalistic-- or, indeed, any barter-b
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This agreement is, of course, implicit, but it is the basic tenet of a capitalistic-- or, indeed, any barter-based-- society; unless the product is EXPLICITLY provided free of charge, you are assumed to have to pay for it.
I've not seen any signs explicitly saying that air is free, but it is. I think you'll find that everything that is for sale has an explicit price attached, rather than the other way round. It seems like you're using a circular argument here: we say that it's stealing because "we" defin
Re: (Score:1)
(Sigh). Air is not a product; yes, it is technically a product of naturally-occurring chemical reactions, but I didn't realize the Semantic Police were out in full force. What I meant by "unless the product is EXPLICITLY..." was: a product derived from the effort-- either physical or mental or a combination thereof-- of a member of the species Homo sapiens, and not with the sole intent of self-consumption. Do I also need to define what "is" is ? :-P
It's not a circular argument either: every thing is what
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So when various companies set up honeypots to catch crackers, that's cool.
But the MPAA sets up a honeypot to catch thieves, that's bad?
What did this have to do with theives? This was a (very poor) attempt to catch people copying specific bits. Copying bits from one place to another has nothing to do with theft...
And don't moralize to me about "sharing" of content.
"Don't moralize to me..." (Insert moralizing to reader right after)
See any irony here? Mmmhmm...
The law of the land says you can't do it. Until the law is changed, that's the way it is.
Yes, and the law is ALWAYS morally sound, of course. Business interests would NEVER enter into it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
If anything it's like going on haxor safari to observe and learn.
Re: (Score:1)
This, on the other hand, is a site designed to get security violation software onto the visitor's site, rather than vice versa. Media Sentry don't need to learn about P2P because they're the ones offering it.
No Business Dealings (Score:2)
OK folks, you heard it from the MPAA, they have no business dealings with these people AT ALL. Does this hold up to scrutiny of fact?
Not much to deny (Score:1)
Internal illegal sharing site ? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This story (and the ones preceding it on the topic of this MediaDefender company) tell of somebody who made an investigation on their sting site with fake downloads, which the site in question stated you had to "download their *special* software to download the full length movies, music, and generally other c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
and in this case that defense would work because it was an MPAA site
Lies on both sides (Score:1)
"MediaDefender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn't realize that people would be trying to go to it and so we didn't password-protect the site... it was just an oversight from that perspective. This was not an entrapment site, and we were not working with the MPAA on it. In fact, the MPAA didn't even know about it."
Lies of (some) DRM evaders:
"I'm not circumventing the DRM to share the movie on the internet. I just want to make a backup of my legally pur
Re: (Score:2)
But yes, some of us do actually follow the laws on such things.
Spy films, anyone? (Score:1)
"As of this moment we have no secret agent. He has acted alone and is trained to claim so to his bitter death. Fetch me some muffins now."
Nothing to see here, move along.
Actually, STOP P2P and piracy and they'll wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, stop going to the source.
I say lets declare an embargo on the **AAs products for three months.
They'll be SCREAMING for us to go out and buy their shit...
Re:Actually, STOP P2P and piracy and they'll wonde (Score:1)
Yeah, yeah, yeah...Right after Spiderman 3, or Transformers 2...We're still waiting for another Harry Potter, right? Okay, right after that. Have you seen the numbers? They're rakin' it in. No boycotts anytime soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Completely Reasonable Explanation (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm..
"And we're not even an IT company!" (throws down smoke bomb, the smoke clears)
"Look! We're a pet shop, selling fluffy bunnies and puppies for happy people to take home. Look at the fluffy bunny, so cute!"
Re: (Score:2)
sales@mediadefender.com (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No suprise here (Score:2)
What it smells like to me (Score:2)
Am I the only one who believes them? (Score:2)
First, there was supposed to be a program that scanned your computer for "copyrighted media", when the majority of media on any computer is copyrighted. Just because I have a copy of some album or a movie does not make it illegal. Music can be legally ripped to your computer from CDs, and movies can be downloaded through services like iTunes (generally with DRM) or recorded when they
Internal site? Publicly available? DMZ? (Score:2)
This is completely retarded on more than one level. First of all the fact that this domain name has been 'in the air' for 4 months before something got done. Second and I think most telling: Why the HELL is an internal site even accessible from outside the company? Don't they have a decent DMZ/Firewall structure in place? And if not, why the hell not?
So we're led to believe that they were working on an internal project, on an internal site, developing
Re: (Score:2)