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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.'"
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MediaDefender Denies Entrapment Accusations

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  • by sizzzzlerz ( 714878 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:27PM (#19783947)
    Sort of like the smell that comes from a whole barnyard of male bovines?
    • Personally, I enjoy the smell of dairy air.
    • by Myopic ( 18616 )
      Interestingly, the word "bullshit" does not derive from the excrement of a cow. Etymologically, it derives from the word "bull", or some homophone of that, which people uttered to mean what we now mean when we say bullshit. Think, "bullocks" or something. "That's bull!" Then, at a time when people also used the word "shit" to mean a similar thing, people began concatenating the two words, for effect, and it became very popular indeed.

      That is true. That is not bullshit -- nor bull, nor shit.
    • A war?
  • For Sale (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:28PM (#19783957) Homepage Journal
    A slightly used bridge in Brooklyn. I'll sell it cheap, I promise.

    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.
    • How is this entrapment? [wikipedia.org] Entrapment is only when the facilitation of the crime is created through actions of the police. While I dislike the MPAA and generally any XXAA, this isn't by the police. Even if it was, it would be a fairly weak claim, as it isn't terribly different than claiming that a sidewalk sale was entrapment because it made it easier to shoplift.

      While IANAL, the wikipedia article claims that a test against entrapment is that "police or other investigators would catch only those "ready and w
  • by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:31PM (#19783977) Journal
    [clinton]I'm only going to say this once, I did not have relations with that company, MediaDefender. {/Clinton]
  • by Karem Lore ( 649920 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:31PM (#19783979)
    If MediaDefender have an "internal" website, password protected or otherwise, with copyright content and the MPAA swears blind that they have no working relationship with MediaDefender, can we we to expect the MPAA to charge MediaDefender with copyright theft?

    Something fishy here.

  • Riiiiiight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chuckymonkey ( 1059244 ) <charles.d.burtonNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:33PM (#19783999) Journal
    Honestly I don't think they expect anyone to believe them. What probably happened is they thought that they had a great idea and didn't bother to run it through the legal dept. (if they even have one) and realized now that they really screwed the pooch. So they issue a statement like this to hopefully stave off the eventual and inevitable legal actions that are going take place.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xtracto ( 837672 )
      What probably happened is they thought that they had a great idea and didn't bother to run it through the legal dept.

      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)

      What probably happened is they thought that they had a great idea and didn't bother to run it through the legal dept.

      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

      • by Khaed ( 544779 )
        That situation is hardly comparable to "program that searches users hard drives."

        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.
        • They're actually screwed on this one. Really screwed.

          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'
  • by jtok202 ( 1115835 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:38PM (#19784035)
    If anyone has a record of the site Anywhere could they please email, or host so that it can be viewed by the community if this falls into obscurity through lack of evidence then nothing will ever get done. PLEASE
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 )
      Or their downloader application that was in fact a trojan acting as spyware. Imagine the can of worms THAT would be if disassembled. Seeing servers contacted and what it reported, what user information it might have got from the Windows registry for more than the IP address (must have been a reason they wanted to run it locally), etc. No wonder they started to sweat.
      • If this does end up in court (not real likely, when you get down to it) you can bet the discovery phase will be veeerrrry interesting.
  • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:46PM (#19784091) Journal

    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."

    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. :-p Speaking of which, it would be very interesting if someone have still saved their download client / spyware. Please please let someone have it and be skilled enough to disassemble what it did!
    • ...because it was afraid of a hacker attack or "people sending us spam."

      Suddenly an image formed in my mind: Thousands of netizens gathering and yelling "HACK POWER!".
      ... nah.
  • by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:52PM (#19784155)

    If you want proof, look at the quality of their backpedaling.

    ...the entire thing was a mistake and was only an internal site they forgot to password protect...

    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.

    • Does someone have a list of the works they were offering? I ask, because (and it's pre-coffee and I don't know a ton of patent/copyright details) if the copyright owner doesn't pursue violations, does that not negate the copyright? Or is that patents?

      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?
      • does that not negate the copyright? Or is that patents?

        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.
  • by ILuvRamen ( 1026668 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:53PM (#19784159)
    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? Then they knock out the good old current ones and everyone's too scared to go anywhere else. Yes I know that's ridiculous and will never work but I think that's what they're doing.
    • 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

    • You give the MPAA too much credit.

      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
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @07:59PM (#19784213) Homepage

    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 is still available on whois. The contact points to a miivi.com email address and the same snail-mail address:

      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
  • I totally want to sandbox it and find out what the software actually did. If you have it please please give me a shout.
  • I have tried searching google cache for it, but nothing seems to be there .. anymore at least. Google still lists it when u search for it, with the usual few lines of text from the site. Can anyone explain to me why it shows up in the resultset but not in the cache ? don't really see the logic behind it tbh. If it's crawled by a spider, doesn't it automatically gets cached ? if not, why ? Any insights would be appreciated :)
  • This is the sort of behaviour you can expect from people who believe that the ends justify the means. I've noticed similar thinking in a few authority figures, too...
  • Haha... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @08:24PM (#19784381) Journal
    ftp://leaksftp.mediadefender.com [mediadefender.com]

    WTF? Hacker challenge! ;-)

    Strangely enough I got there when going to mediadefender.com, then P2P Marketing (LOL), and then "Successful campaigns". :-S

    What a weird name for an FTP though. Note this though:

    In addition to anti-piracy solutions, MediaDefender also offers a Leak Alert service. Our industry leading Leak Team scours Newsgroups, Usenet, and BitTorrent sites to see what cracked/pirated content has most recently leaked. Upon discovery, MediaDefender will download the leak and either send it or provide a secure ftp login for customers to sample the pirated material.

    Maybe it's that FTP? But why would it be linked to like that on their site?
    • Meh, better hurry - they'll probably turn that address into a honeypot.
  • by Xelios ( 822510 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @08:25PM (#19784391)
    Interesting that the domain mivii.com [mivii.com] (not miivi.com) redirects to firstload.de, which seems to be a service very similar to the now defunkt miivi.com, except in German. You download their client software which is proported to "speed up downloads", while they offer terabytes of movies, games, software, music and more.

    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.
    • Wow... Um, never ever sign up for that site, at least not to download stuff! :S
    • 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.

  • They must have tired of me sending them links to lemonparty.org and tubgirl
  • by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @08:35PM (#19784455)
    The full response was:

    "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.
    • Bottom line is: jesus, they aren't even TRYING to fool us. Idiots.

      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.
      • by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        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.

        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
    • I'm sure it was innocent, the application was probably still beta, and not meant to be released yet.
  • "The MediaDefender story is false. We have no relationship with that company at all," she told Ars.'"

    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?

  • Unless MediaDefender or the MPAA has become a law enforcement official in the past week without me noticing, there's not much difficult about denying entrapment claims. In fact, it's impossible not to.
  • I'm confused, does this mean Media Defender just got busted sharing music ?
    • No - it means they're a **AA dog, and are the type who will post fake downloads on P2P sites so that the **AA's have what they would call evidence that you had the willful intent of pirating content.

      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
      • by Joebert ( 946227 )
        I know, but if we took their words for it, wouldn't that mean that they had an illegal sharing site setup & the lawyers should be going after them ?
        • First off, there is absolutely *no* reason to take their word for it at all. MediaDefender [wikipedia.org] and companies like them do this for a living - set up sting sites where "Hey, naive kid, you can legally download movies here that just came out in theater" statements are common. Their only objective is to be able to say that you illegally download copyrighted content. These companies aren't something new - they've been around at the least since FTP was the common way to pirate things, and anybody with more than a pa
          • by iainl ( 136759 )
            "M'Lud, I'm not completely naive. Free movies to download legally seemed rather unlikely. But I checked the WHOIS information for the site and confirmed that it belonged by a company paid by the film studio to handle their online side, so I thought it was legit after all".
      • "but i thought it was an MPAA site so therefore it was legal to download from them"

        and in this case that defense would work because it was an MPAA site ;)
  • Lies of MediaDefender:
    "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
    • Some of us actually do that: It's often faster and easier to grab the ISO on-line than for me to try and repair a damaged CD or DVD, and they do get damaged. It does leave the risk of viruses being implanted on the CD or DVD image: that's important to scan. with good quality anti-virus software.

      But yes, some of us do actually follow the laws on such things.
  • "Commander, our secret agent has blown his cover!"

    "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.

  • by crovira ( 10242 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @10:14PM (#19785127) Homepage
    what the fuck is wrong with their product?

    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...
    • I say lets declare an embargo on the **AAs products for three months.

      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.
    • It doesn't work like that. You see, piracy numbers have been going way down in recent months, but MAFIAA is still blaming their falling sales on piracy. If you want them to stop cracking down on piracy buy from them.
  • by GaryPatterson ( 852699 ) on Saturday July 07, 2007 @10:19PM (#19785153)
    "We're not running an entrapment program. And this was an internal website. And there was no spyware."

    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!"
  • Why do they need a sales office? They've already sold their asses to the highest most convenient bidder.
  • They've been making their money through fraud for years now; why expect them to suddenly grow a sense of ethics now?
  • To me, this smells like MediaSenty working on a new concept/service that they were going to try to sell to the MPAA for beaucoup bucks.
  • To start, I'm no fan of Media Defender, or the **AA, but none of the accusations here made sense to me in the first place.

    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

  • As a disclaimer: Yes. I have worked in network security.

    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

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