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MediaDefender Denies Entrapment Accusations
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jul 07, 2007 07:24 PM
from the all-above-board-of-course dept.
from the all-above-board-of-course dept.
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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Technology: MPAA Sets Up Fake Site to Catch Pirates 617 comments
thefickler writes "Media Defender, a company which does the dirty work for the MPAA, has been caught setting up 'dummy' websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos. The site, MiiVi.com, complete with a user registration, forum, and "family filter", offered complete downloads of movies and "fast and easy video downloading all in one great site." But that's not all; MiiVi also offered client software to speed up the downloading process. The only catch is, after it was installed, it searched your computer for other copyrighted files and reported back."
[+]
IT: Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked 427 comments
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."
[+]
Leaks Prove MediaDefender's Deception 230 comments
Who will defend the defenders? writes "Ars Technica has posted the first installment in their analysis of the leaked MediaDefender emails and found some very interesting things. Apparently, the New York Attorney General's office is working on a big anti-piracy sting and they were working on finding viable targets. It also discusses how some of the emails show MediaDefender trying to spy on their competitors, sanitize their own Wikipedia entry, deal with the hackers targeting their systems, and to quash the MiiVi story even while they were rebuilding it as Viide. Oh yes, they definitely read "techie, geek web sites where everybody already hates us" like Slashdot, too."
[+]
MediaDefender's BitTorrent-Based DOS Takes Down Revision3 426 comments
Sandman1971 writes "Over the long Memorial Day weekend, Revision3 was the target of a malicious Denial Of Service Attack which brought R3 to its knees. After investigating the matter, it was discovered that the source of the attacks came from MediaDefender, the famed company hired by the MPAA and RIAA to try and stop the spread of illegal file sharing. The kicker? Revision3 was taken down for running a bittorent tracker to distribute its own legal content."
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You smell something? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
playing that card are we? (Score:3, Funny)
Next victim - MediaDefender (Score:5, Interesting)
Something fishy here.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Would LOVE to have a look at the cache/source (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
the REAL conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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)
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: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: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)