MediaDefender's BitTorrent-Based DOS Takes Down Revision3

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."

Criminal investigation?

[mrbah]

Looks to me like MediaDefender is in clear violation of at least two subsections of 18 USC 1030 [cornell.edu]. Where is the federal criminal investigation?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[SpooForBrains]

Exactly. If a normal member of the public did something like this, they'd be facing jail time.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[HalAtWork]

Corporations aren't normal members of the public. Except they're treated as such in court. So that the people who run them don't get treated like normal members of the public.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[jd]

Your argument contains one common fallacy. Corporate executives aren't even remotely normal.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[ePhil_One]

Your argument contains one common fallacy. Corporate executives aren't even remotely normal.

The executives aren't being sued, the company is. This sort of "Take-down" company is treading on thin ice legally, one such misfire as this and they can lose the company.

Trick is, they are well aware and have likely structured the company to allow a simple simple collapse w/ minimal loss, after which MediaProtector will be reborn from the ashes, a completely different company w/ the exact same staff and an identical client list.

Best bet is to go after the company that hired them; prove they paid this company to break the law for them. The RIAA/MPAA will have a harder time collapsing and reforming...

Good point.

[jd]

Although not a similar case, Clive Sinclair structured his company with an eye to surviving collapse. He split it into "Sinclair" (which carried all of the losses) and "Sinclair Research" (which carried all of the profits, intellectual property, et al). After the Sinclair C5 fiasco, "Sinclair" was sold to Amstrad for a small fortune (ie: he sold off the debt) and "Sinclair Research" (which had all the useful stuff and was now considerably richer) remained in his hands.

The idea MediaDefender is nothing more than a disposable front-end, therefore, is entirely possible and would make a lot of sense.

Re:Good point.

[mollymoo]

That wasn't the greatest deal ever. Alan Sugar[1] sold Sinclair's existing stock of Spectrums for more than he paid for the company. Clive Sinclair hasn't made billions since then, I'm not sure if he even made millions, but Alan Sugar has made billions[3] - though not all of the back of that purchase.

[1] Who happens to be the boss in the UK version of The Apprentice - the UK's Donald Trump[2], in that sense.
[2] When initially writing this post I couldn't remember his name, so it originally read "that guy with the tall buildings and bad hair".
[3] In US dollars at least. His net worth was a bit shy of a billion quid last time I looked.

Re:Good point.

[Tycho]

W.R. Grace and Company is the company responsible for 90% of the world's production of Vermiculite until the early 1990's. All of the vermiculite that W.R. Grace mined was mined from open pit mines located near Libby, Montana. All of the vermiculite from Libby had tremolite asbestos present in sufficient quantities to be carcinogenic to those who handled it. However, not all deposits of vermiculite have tremolite asbestos present. Unfortunately, the tremolite asbestos present in the vermiculite cannot be separated out. The dangerous types of asbestos are reasonably benign and of no immediate danger unless handled or disturbed in some way. Handling materials with asbestos will release asbestos fibers, which is surprisingly dangerous. Unless you are trained and have the proper equipment handling asbestos contaminated materials is a bad idea. Besides government standards allow for a reasonably high acceptable concentration of asbestos fibers in air. The asbestos fibers are released during natural weathering processes of natural rocks and soil and the fiber concentrations in the air should not normally be considered an issue.

Anyway, back to W.R. Grace and Company. The executives at W.R. Grace appear to have known about the toxicity of their vermiculite product since at least the 1970's and ignored the warnings. Additionally the executives appear to have covered up the information about the toxicity of their product as well. In 2000, W.R. Grace transfered assets worth about 4 to 5 billion dollars to spin-off companies. Shortly there after W.R. Grace filed for bankruptcy. This move appears to have been done to shelter assets from ongoing liability lawsuits brought against W.R. Grace from the sale and manufacture of asbestos contaminated vermiculite. Filing for bankruptcy could have ended any ongoing or new lawsuits for W.R. Grace. However the asset transfer scheme was discovered and now the current executives from W.R. Grace are now in even more trouble. This new trouble for the executives of W.R. Grace is of the criminal law type.

I think that in the case of W.R. Grace, the events seem to show that not all schemes of this type work.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Chris Burke]

Trick is, they are well aware and have likely structured the company to allow a simple simple collapse w/ minimal loss, after which MediaProtector will be reborn from the ashes

Well that seems perfectly normal to me. Don't you do that when you're caught doing something you're not? Why I had to collapse and reform the other day to get out of a reckless driving charge. The cop did seem pretty surprised, though. Hm.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[afaik_ianal]

Don't you do that when you're caught doing something you're not?

Is that even possible?!?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Chris Burke]

Is that even possible?!?

I, er... *collapses*

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Dr Caleb]

"Technically possible, though illigal... Unless you happen to be a "person" that contains no flesh/blood/"soul"/etc."

Ahhh, Lawyer. Gotcha.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[jd]

Why I had to collapse and reform the other day to get out of a reckless driving charge.

You wasted one of your 12 regenerations to get out of a reckless driving charge? What are they teaching in the Time Acadamy these days?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[NotBornYesterday]

Best bet is to go after the company that hired them; prove they paid this company to break the law for them. The RIAA/MPAA will have a harder time collapsing and reforming...

Didn't Tanya Anderson sue them under RICO laws? What you describe is the kind of shell-game asset preservation that RICO was designed in part to thwart. IANAL, and can't say whether those particular laws would apply in this case, but I'd love to see the poetic justice of the mafIAA brought down by laws designed to take down the original mafia.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[mishehu]

Actually, the corporate shield doesn't provide complete immunity. This being a criminal offense being committed by the company, I highly doubt that the heads of the company could simply say "oh gee, so and so wanted us to do it, and we have this agreement with them that absolves us of all wrongdoing." IANAL but my lawyer has advised me of such in the past when I was asked by previous employers to sabotage clients' networks to generate more income for the company - I would have no legal shield saying "my boss said to do it so I did like a robot." He also reiterated that the same goes for the officers and board of a corporation along with its employees.

The more likely scenario is that they had some patsy of theirs perform this attack, and they'll feed him straight to the feds to save their asses.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Em Adespoton]

I take it you didn't RTFA; the FBI is currently investigating the issue with R3's assistance.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Penguinisto]

Hella nice! (TFA is 404'd here too).

So... how long until we see MediaDefender's board get perp-walked? (too much to hope for seeing the RIAA board getting arrested, but hey...)

*sigh*... I know, I know. MediaDefender will likely claim that some poor (scapegoated) bastard employee of theirs did it without authorization, yadda yadda... then said poor bastard will get to watch in horror as his entire life goes down the toilet.

Then again, if it does go down like that, it would stand as a prime example of how one should always give priority to personal ethics before accepting a job offer...

/P

Re:Criminal investigation?

[scubamage]

Yup, just like every single contractor on the second death star - every mediadefender employee knows what they're doing. F*ck 'em.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[mabhatter654]

Wait until tomorrow afternoon and lock all the employees and directors in their offices under "house arrest" until this is settled. if this was really a corporate sponsored attack they need to find a way to arrest the ENTIRE company just to make a point that this won't be tolerated. In some ways it's economic vigilante terrorism.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[s4m7]

Cops who arrest pot smokers should be aware of this.

On the other hand, do you really want the police to be selectively enforcing the laws they feel are "moral?"

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Hatta]

I think the world would be a better place if every individual acted according to their conscience. Why else have a conscience?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[afaik_ianal]

You have to be kidding. I've seen enough crooked cops to know that can not be a good thing.

If your morals say that smoking pot is fine, then you should lobby to have the law changed, because I can assure you there's a cop out there somewhere whose morals say it's fine to turn a blind eye while his buddy has his way with you, before planting a few grams of heroin in your car because you didn't pay him for the privilege.

Will you accept a collect call from reality, Hatta?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Hatta]

I can assure you there's a cop out there somewhere whose morals say it's fine to turn a blind eye while his buddy has his way with you, before planting a few grams of heroin in your car because you didn't pay him for the privilege.

Such a person isn't going to care what the law says, they will victimize people regardless. Think harder about it. You are making a fundamental mistake when you place the law above a persons conscience, where do you think the law comes from? It is (ideally) an expression of our collective conscience. If our consciences are so unreliable, then the law is even more so.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't RTFA. They're slashdotted.

Where is the federal criminal investigation?

Re:slashdotted

[Sponge Bath]

Browsing and posting to Slashdot?

Here's the blog post

[eddan]

I was able to grab the blog post:

As many of you know, Revision3's servers were brought down over the Memorial Day weekend by a denial of service attack. It's an all too common occurrence these days. But this one wasn't your normal cybercrime - there's a chilling twist at the end. Here's what happened, and why we're even more concerned today, after it's over, than we were on Saturday when it started.

It all started with just a simple "hi". Now "hi" can be the sweetest word in the world, breathlessly whispered into your ear by a long-lost lover, or squealed out by your bouncy toddler at the end of the day. But taken to excess - like by a cranky 3-year old-it gets downright annoying. Now imagine a room full of hyperactive toddlers, hot off of a three hour Juicy-Juice bender, incessantly shrieking "hi" over and over again, and you begin to understand what our poor servers went through this past weekend.

On the internet, computers say hi with a special type of packet, called "SYN". A conversation between devices typically requires just one short SYN packet exchange, before moving on to larger messages containing real data. And most of the traffic cops on the internet - routers, firewalls and load balancers - are designed to mostly handle those larger messages. So a flood of SYN packets, just like a room full of hyperactive screaming toddlers, can cause all sorts of problems.

For adults, it's typically an inability to cope, followed either by quickly fleeing the room, or orchestrating a massive Teletubbies intervention. Since they lack both legs and a ready supply of plushies, internet devices usually just shut down.

That's what happened to us. Another device on the internet flooded one of our servers with an overdose of SYN packets, and it shut down - bringing the rest of Revision3 with it. In webspeak it's called a Denial of Service attack - aka DoS - and it happens when one machine overwhelms another with too many packets, or messages, too quickly. The receiving machine attempts to deal with all that traffic, but in the end just gives up. (Note the photo of our server equipment responding to the DoS Attack)

In its coverage Tuesday CNet asked the question, "Now who would want to attack Revision3?" Who indeed? So we set out to find out. Internet attacks leave lots of evidence. In this case it was pretty easy to see exactly what our shadowy attacker was so upset about. It turns out that those zillions of SYN packets were addressed to one particular port, or doorway, on one of our web servers: 20000. Interestingly enough, that's the port we use for our Bittorrent tracking server. It seems that someone was trying to destroy our bittorrent distribution network.

Let me take a step back and describe how Revision3 uses Bittorrent, aka BT. The BT protocol is a peer to peer scheme for sharing large files like music, programs and video. By harnessing the peer power of many computers, we can easily and cheaply distribute our huge HD-quality video shows for a lot less money. To get started, the person sharing that large file first creates a small file called a "torrent", which contains metadata, along with which server will act as the conductor, coordinating the sharing. That server is called the tracking server, or "tracker". You can read much more about Bittorrent at Wikipedia, if you really want to understand how it works.

Revision3 runs a tracker expressly designed to coordinate the sharing and downloading of our shows. It's a completely legitimate business practice, similar to how ESPN puts out a guide that tells viewers how to tune into its network on DirecTV, Dish, Comcast and Time Warner, or a mall might publish a map of its stores.

But someone, or some company, apparently took offense to Revision3 using Bittorrent to distribute its own slate of shows. Who could that be?

Along with where it's bound, every internet packet has a return address. Often, particularly in cases like this, it's forged - or spoofed. But interestingly enough, whoev

Re:Here's the blog post

[ChuckSchwab]

hi

Re:Here's the blog post

[nuzak]

hi

Re:Here's the blog post

[indraneil]

hi

ACK!! :-) sorry, could not resist!

First WTF

[SanityInAnarchy]

MediaDefender claims that they have taken steps to ensure this won't happen again. "We've added a policy that will investigate open public trackers to see if they are associated with other companies", promised Grodsky, "and first will make a communication that says, hey are you aware of this." Since when is being a "company" required to legally run a BitTorrent tracker?

Try this instead: Determine if the tracker belongs to you. No? Then you don't have the right to abuse it in this way.

Re:First WTF

[cheater512]

Maybe we should just make some honeypot trackers and see what they do about it.

Re:Here's the blog post

[jocknerd]

MediaDefender is just the messenger. The FBI needs to go after the source of their money. The MPAA and RIAA companies.

Re:slashdotted

[JK_the_Slacker]

"(Mirrordot seems to have died and the wayback machine doesn't have it.)"

The wayback machine doesn't have it? You mean this is fresh news!?!?

Re:slashdotted

[Kalriath]

Ironic. A Slashdot article about someone else DoS'ing a site gets it DoS'ed.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[blhack]

And what's the betting the FBI's interest is more in obtaining a copy of the DDoS attack software, rather than prosecuting?

If the FBI is so incompetent that they actually would need to raid a company to find software capable of a syn flood....well then I'm pretty sure most of us can stop using strong encryption and just start hiding all of our files on floppy disks in the air conditioning vents behind the couch.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[ozamosi]

According to this [readwriteweb.com], it's on the way.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[s4m7]

This appears to fall under the definition of cyberterrorism under the same section, as proscribed by the USA PATRIOT ACT as well.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[_KiTA_]

Looks to me like MediaDefender is in clear violation of at least two subsections of 18 USC 1030 [cornell.edu]. Where is the federal criminal investigation?

Corporations, and their cronies, do not face criminal investigations unless their bri... political contributions run out. Or unless they're stupid.

Are these guys stupid enough? We'll see.

This does explain those fake torrents I see every so often that have fake trackers and like 90,000 peers, though.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Joebert]

It's sitting on the bench right next to the investigation as to whether Mediadefender being the originator of the attack was due to spoofed information or malicious software that somehow made it onto their network.


The legal system should really be left out of the show being put on by the media companies & pirates, when you get right down to it huge sums of time and money are being wasted to protect something that's all in our heads, literally.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Bourbonium]

Again, please RTFA Coward. The torrents on Revision3's servers were their own content, but one R3 member found a torrent named something like RAMBO_axxo on their tracker on May 25 and reported it to the admins. They immediately took it down and then found the backdoor that MediaDefender had been using to post fake torrent hashes on their servers. Once the backdoor was closed, MediaDefender's servers began the DOS attack as an automatic response. Louderback says that the FBI is already investigating. I expect the EFF will get involved as well as this story develops.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let me get this straight...

MediaDefender uses back doors in web server software to plant fake torrents. Then if those fake torrents are removed, and the back door closed, they DDoS the server?

Wow. Entrapment, AND attacking the network.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[darthflo]

Not quite. MD's two most important tools are fake torrents and DoS attacks, both to be used only against what they deem immoral^Willegal.
Probably, Rev3's tracker somehow made the list of evil trackers, only to be "attacked" by the first, inexpensive measure: Injecting fake torrents. MD's goal being to dilute the quality of one tracker's torrents to uselessness. Since Rev3's tracker doesn't communicate tracked torrents back to a web site, nobody noticed or downloaded the fakes and everything was good with the exclusion of some wasted cpu cycles and memory on Rev3's side.
Now after Rev3 changed the tracker's policy to no longer accept random injections, MD's system probably recognized it's first measure to be failing and escalated behaviour to the next stage. A purty DDoSing of the torrent, obviously illegal under federal law.

Since this appears to be their software's standard behaviour, blame will probably be shifted on some dumb programmer who merely executed orders from higher-up scum within MediaDefrauder. I demand the heads of all of MD as well as the RIAA and MPAA on silver platters. Also, pepper sauce. :]

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Fieryphoenix]

Doesn't matter. Even if there were other, illegal torrents there, it's against the law to take down servers with DoS attacks.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[dissy]

Not to defend the vigilante actions of "the industry" here; but who's to say that the fake torrents injected into the tracker by them were the ONLY ones on it? Surely if they could find trackers with backdoors, so could others. For all we know R3's tracker had become a clearinghouse for all sorts of "community mirroring" projects.

For R3's sake; with a highly accusational public post and the feds involved, I sure hope that MediaDefender's fake torrents were the only 'unauthorized' ones ever hosted by R3's tracker.

Why? It doesn't really matter at all.

If I knew you bought illegal drugs, despite being a crime, that doesn't mean I should hope you were really buying illegal drugs when i murder you by shooting you in the head. No matter if you were buying illegal or legal drugs, I would still be in even more trouble for murdering you.

MediaDefender committed a felony here, while arguing the only reason they are allowed to commit this felony was because they thought R3 was breaking a civil copyright contract.
No matter if they were breaking copyright or not, that has nothing to do with, nor justifies, nor makes it ok/allowed/legal to launch a denial of service attack.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[zantolak]

How do we know that the Revision3 content was legal? Because they (Revision3) say it was? I don't buy it. MediaDefender isn't stupid; they found illegal content and shut it down. The reason there will not be any investigation is because Revision3 cannot allow an investigation to occur, lest they be found guilty of hosting illegal torrents.

Here in the US we have one little legal principle known as "innocent until proven guilty". Perhaps you've heard of it, perhaps not. Essentially, it's what keeps the justice system from being a Jump to Conclusions mat.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[scubamage]

Exactly. I highly doubt R3 would have contacted the FBI if they were hosting illegal content. They use bittorrent as a method of distrobution for legal content.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Tubal-Cain]

Here in the US we have one little legal principle known as "innocent until proven guilty".

You must be new here

Re:Criminal investigation?

[jesdynf]

You argued the lesser point with the troll and missed the greater one.

Why does the legality of Revision3's hosted content matter?

Is MediaDefender an agent of the federal government, granted extra-legal powers by Congress to commit these otherwise-illegal acts? Are they chartered by a state government? Has their operation been nationalized by the military, or perhaps they possess a letter of marque and reprisal?

No?

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Applekid]

Why does the legality of Revision3's hosted content matter?

Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[mweather]

Here in the US we have one little legal principle known as "innocent until proven guilty".

Not in civil court, where copyright cases are heard.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Fastolfe]

1. Copyright infringement isn't normally a crime. You're using the word "illegal" and "guilty" carelessly here.
2. Committing a crime to retaliate in response to another crime is still wrong, and committing a crime in retaliation for a mere civil infraction doubly so.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[provigilman]

Even worse though, Media Defender allegedly committed a crime in response to a perfectly legal activity. The only thing on that torrent tracker, prior to Media Defender injecting all sorts of nastiness into it, was just their own videos and podcasts. Basically, it's no different than an RSS feed you'd get from some place like /., they just used BitTorrent to do it.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[mdmkolbe]

I could be wrong here but I believe 506(a)(1)(C) only applies when the work has yet to be released. The work has to be in the process of "being prepared for commercial distribution". Thus most music piracy would not be criminal. This is spelled out in detail in 506(a)(3).

The intent seems to be to distinguish between competing in the copyright holder's monopoly (and thus reducing their income) which would be civil and distributing before the copyright holder even gets started making money which would be criminal. Basically they are trying to stop leaks.

(Of course, things aren't quite that simple either. For some reason, theater movies have their own special clause to get them some extra protection. A movie that is in theaters, but not yet on DVD or VHS is considered to still be "being prepared". See 506(a)(3)(b).)

Re:Criminal investigation?

[AK Marc]

MediaDefender isn't stupid; they found illegal content and shut it down.

Shutting down illegal content with an illegal attack is still illegal. Also, the only evidence of illegal content is the content MediaDefender was trying to put there. They are apparently going to all open BT servers they can find, serving up illegal content generated by them, then shutting them down. That's not looking for problems to address, that's planting evidence and then attacking them claiming vigilante justice. The only ones slinking away will be MediaOffender

Re:Criminal investigation?

[beef curtains]

I salute for having the courage to voice your opposing viewpoint in the face of such adversity, O anonymous Totally-Not-A-MediaSentry-Employee contributer.

So tell me, how did you set up this DOS?

Did I say "you"? I meant to say "they", of course. Apologies.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[shasbot]

I hate to feed the trolls, but just felt someone should point out for those who don't use Revision3 that this is incorrect, they produce original shows, such as Diggnation. (as far as i am aware, they do not have any user uploaded content or any non-original content at all)

Re:Criminal investigation?

[Ptraci]

I actually went to the site to see what they had, and I didn't see anything there that was not their own content. It looks like some pretty interesting stuff, too. Would you like to provide a cite of anything that can be found there that is not theirs? If not, just admit that you don't know what you're talking about and refrain from further comment.

Re:Criminal investigation? Yes

[deck]

A DoS violates Federal Criminal Law. Copyright is generally a Civil statute and is prosecuted via lawsuits.

What MediaDefender did is therefore being investigated under criminal law.

Re:Criminal investigation? Yes

[DAldredge]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act [wikipedia.org] The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. The NET Act also raised statutory damages by 50%.

...and in other news....

[UncleTogie]

Revision3 taken down by curious Slashdotters, and the popcorn you're eating has been pissed in. Film at 11....

Late Breaking News....

[Izabael_DaJinn]

THEINTERNETS (Reuters)- Following the DOS attack which brought Revision3 to its knees, the site was once against the target of a DOS attack by the popular news site "Slashdot" as thousands of nerds flooded the site at once hoping to find fodder to use against their arch-nemeses the MPAA and the RIAA.

Re:Late Breaking News....

[value_added]

THEINTERNETS (Reuters)- ...

Brilliant! Dunno if this is original, but it certainly qualifies for meme status.

TO paraphrase world of warcraft

[scubamage]

OMGLAWYERSUESUESUE!

Seriously, I hope they get even more crucified because of this. Performing a DOS is a clear violation of law in all states, and since it crosses the borders, its a clear felony.

Re:TO paraphrase world of warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me MediaDefender also violated their ISP's Terms Of Service. Why then are they still on the net? when a normal user is accused of violating the TOS they are taken off-line. Why/how should MD be any different? Also, law enforcement should be raiding MD offices where the attacks came from to collect evidence (ie PCs and servers).

I am looking forward to hearing that MD is off-line and without a significant portion of their computing infrustructure.

Re:TO paraphrase world of warcraft

[smoker2]

Heh, all you need is a screenshot with their ip showing.
Works for the RIAA, right ?

That'll teach 'em

[Nerdposeur]

Looks like they're also the target of a vicious Slashdotting. ;)

Really? Lucky We Have Laws

[jesdynf]

I look forward to the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of the executives of their operation.

Failure to achieve these things will not reflect well on the fitness of the rulers to rule.

Re:Really? Lucky We Have Laws

[Pedrito]

I look forward to the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of the executives of their operation.

Failure to achieve these things will not reflect well on the fitness of the rulers to rule.

ROFL... You must be new here. Allow me to welcome you to planet Earth. Expect no useful action against Media Defender. And again, welcome to our humble planet...

Re:Really? Lucky We Have Laws

[Wandering Wombat]

Or the people who elected them.

Re:

[Goaway]

Man, it really is amazing how much better you are than all those other people!

Please bear in mind...

[jd]

...the rulers are vampires and therefore do not reflect at all.

Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[elrous0]

Revision 3 should have just sued, and sued BIG. By discussing it so glibly, and in such detail, on their blog they're jeopardizing their case. A huge financial hit would hurt the RIAA's cronies a LOT more than a little negative publicity from a blogger.

Re:Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[RichMan]

>>Revision 3 should have just sued, and sued BIG. By discussing it so glibly, and in such detail, on their blog they're jeopardizing their case. A huge financial hit would hurt the RIAA's cronies a LOT more than a little negative publicity from a blogger

Except then RIAA could have just paid up and fixed their scripts and moved on.

The FBI investigation is going to turn up more dirt and likely will lead to lots of discovery. Imagine the connections between organizations proper discovery could come up with. Also imagine the work needed to comply. "Ok, RIAA turn over all correspondence you have had concerning enforcement for the last 3 years".

This does not mean Revision 3 can't sue for damages. But letting the FBI get the ball rolling is the first step. And if the FBI do lay charges then the money part gets a lot easier.

R3 says they are not planning to sue

[davros-too]

According to CNET article http://news.cnet.com/coops-corner/?tag=cnetfd.blogs [cnet.com] "At this point, Revision3 says it's not planning to file a lawsuit. Not because it doesn't have a case but pursuing a court remedy would likely cost a lot of money."

Publicity a better business strategy?

[davros-too]

Even with free lawyers from the EFF, the costs and risks of civil litigation could be substantial for what looks like a fairly small company. The alternative of focusing on maximising the free publicity and then keeping 100% of your effort on providing a great service might be a better business strategy. I'm just guessing, but if I was in Revision3's shoes I'd think long and hard before starting law suits that could easily tie up scarce resources. The upside could be big I suppose but it would be a gamble and also any payoff would surely be a long way in the future.

Re:Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[Frosty Piss]

Revision 3 should have just sued, and sued BIG. By discussing it so glibly, and in such detail, on their blog they're jeopardizing their case...

How so? The facts have not changed just because they've talked about it in a blog. If it was illegal before, it's still illegal. IANAL, but I can't imagine a law that says you can't talk about it when someone commits a crime such as this against you...

Can you expand your comments on this to include a reason such a thing as you propose would be true?

Re:

[Beardo the Bearded]

Revision 3 should have just sued, and sued BIG. By discussing it so glibly, and in such detail, on their blog they're jeopardizing their case...

How so? The facts have not changed just because they've talked about it in a blog. If it was illegal before, it's still illegal. IANAL, but I can't imagine a law that says you can't talk about it when someone commits a crime such as this against you...

Can you expand your comments on this to include a reason such a thing as you propose would be true?

The most important thing in legal matters is that you don't discuss a damned thing without talking to your lawyer first.

Let's use a hypothetical example: I've been injured by, let's say, "Mike Dammit!" (MD for short). Let's say MD stabs me in the arm.

I usually carry a small aid kit, so let's also assume that I manage to give myself First Aid and stop the bleeding. In the meantime, MD had stabbed four other people and run off before the cops arrive.

Someone then asks me how I'm doing. I say, "I'm fine."

Later

Re:

[Frosty Piss]

The most important thing in legal matters is that you don't discuss a damned thing without talking to your lawyer first.

A useful anecdote when you are accused of a crime. But Revision3 isn't being accused of a crime, they are the victim. They have no liability by discussing the issue because they have committed no crime and it can not change the legality of MediaDefender's behavior.

Re:Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of the classic joke:

Farmer Joe decided his injuries from the accident were serious enough to take the trucking company (responsible for the accident) to court. In court the trucking company's fancy lawyer was questioning farmer Joe.

"Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine'?" said the lawyer.

Farmer Joe responded, "Well I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule Bessie into the...."

"I didn't ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted, "just answer the question." "Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine'!"

Farmer Joe said, "Well I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road...."

The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time the Judge was fairly interested in Farmer Joe's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favoritE mule Bessie."

Joe thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side.

I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans.

Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road with his gun in his hand and looked at me.

He said, "Your mule was in such bad shape I had to shoot her. How are you feeling?"

Re:Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[NotBornYesterday]

That 'huge financial hit' would be years off at best. R3 is trying to hurt them now while they can. They know that with deep enough pockets, the RIAA & friends can keep justice at bay almost forever. Contrary to their public boo-hooing over the cost of "piracy", the RIAA and MPAA are full of money.

What they need is public opinion. In order for them to be successful in curtailing "piracy", they need to convince a large percentage of the public of 2 things - 1) that they are in a morally superior position compared to those sharing files, and 2) that bad things happen to those who share files.

R3 is taking this opportunity to show that 1) the RIAA is a morally bankrupt group of thugs in 3-piece suits, and 2) the RIAA makes bad things happen to good and bad people indiscriminately.

I'd be surprised if a whopping big lawsuit didn't follow this, but I haven't been able to RTFA.

Re:Shouldn't have publicized it on their blog

[mabhatter654]

this is how MD finds out who's downloading torrents.. they hack the servers of private groups and then log the IPs of people who stumble on their illegally placed "infringing" files. This has been the MO for a while and slashdot reports it occasionally. Places like Pirate Bay deal with this all the time but can't report it because they are infringing on copyright so they'd get in more trouble. R3 has no such issue.. they are trying to run an honest shop because their jobs and homes are on the line here. They'll have no problem turning over IP logs to the FBI because their downloads are legal. Nobody LEGAL has gone against these guys like this before. Pass the popcorn!

"Hey guys, we just got the servers ba-"

[Trails]

and then slashdot linked to them.

And the rustling noise

[petes_PoV]

... you can hear is R3's lawyers leafing through the 2008 Mercedes catalog.

Media Defender is going to get shitcanned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard.

"Move it's own media files" means they were probably using it for jamming operations against other trackers. Meaning they hacked the server, went to other bittorent sites, said "hey, we've got tasty files here, but only 91% of complete garbage", used revision3 as their server so everyone thought it was kosher instead of, say, Media defenders IP range, and when revision3 kicked them off their servers decided to reconnect and DDOS'd them. Because the input bandwidth was intense for the fubar'd uploads and they had just been cut off of their primary source, they used all available bandwidth to reconnect and DDOS'd.

What's going to happen here is a combination between defamation of character suites and hacking lawsuits. Those are the kinds of suites that put people out of business and in jail.

The RIAA and MPAA just shot themselves in the head on this one and their shell company is going to go tits up due to it. That's going to have a concussive effect on the other shell companies which will have a bad effect on their anti-piracy campaign.

And what about other trackers...?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be too big of a stretch of one's imagination to believe they use the same tactic against other trackers.

Maybe if the likes of PirateBay, Mininova and others looked more closely at their traffic patterns and found some "common problems" (such as web traffic from MediaDefender), there would be grounds for civil if not criminal proceedings against MediaDefender.

What IP#'s or subnets or networks does MediaDefender use?

Or better yet...

Maybe we should all run trackers with fake movies being shared and watch for MediaDefender DOS'ing us and create an ever larger case against these twits?

Mail to MediaDefender

[WereCatf]

I just absolutely felt compelled to send email to MediaDefender, I so much hate MPAA/RIAA using illegal tactics. So, anyway, here is the email I sent them: Hi there! I just wanted to congratulate you on your brilliant stunt of a highly illegal DOS (Denial of service) attack on Revision3. Perhaps you should have checked earlier that they were seeding their own legal products? Then again, DOS attacks are illegal even against illegal trackers so this could be a bit unfortunate for you. If FBI can link you to DOS attacks on other trackers then you could face serious legal issues. So, I just want to congratulate you once more, this was such a brilliant move by you and I hope you'll do something equally stupid again in the near future! ;) Yours truly, -Nita

misuse of Revision3 servers?

[belmolis]

Revision3 refers to longstanding misuse of its severs by MediaDefender, before the current DOS attack. What exactly they were doing isn't clear to me. Anybody know? And is it a crime?

What's sauce for the goose...

[techno-vampire]

MediaDefender [mediadefender.com] seems to think it's just fine and dandy to DOS other sites because they don't approve of what that site's doing. Why don't we all go over there and take a real good look at what they have to say for themselves. Let's see how they like being Slashdotted.

If they take down *my legal tracker, I'll sue

[MichaelCrawford]

And yes I know it's expensive, but I could find an attorney to take it on spec.

I operate a tracker to distribute my music [geometricvisions.com]. It's more efficient than direct HTTP downloads, so it saves on my hosting bill.

The point really needs to be rammed home to law enforcement and elected officials that there are many perfectly legitimate, and in fact socially beneficial uses for peer-to-peer file sharing.

Competition ... illegal or otherwise

[phoomp]

Sounds like MediaDefender wants to take down *any* competition to their clients, illegal or otherwise.

Letters and Phone calls (The old school DOS)

[Bryansix]

2461 Santa Monica Blvd., D-520
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PHONE: [phone]
FAX: [phone]

Start your letter writing and phone calling campaign against Media Defender now.

Re:

[jd]

One can hope, but I doubt it. Revision3 might see it as bad publicity, even though they're not the ones who did anything wrong, and they'd risk further massive DDoS attacks in retaliation if they did file a lawsuit. Cases take a long time to come to court, and all MediaDefender needs to do is destroy their solvency before that happens. Dead companies tell no tales.

Re:smells like...

[argent]

they'd risk further massive DDoS attacks in retaliation if they did file a lawsuit.

That would be the best thing that could happen. Judges have absolutely no sense of humor about people who pull shit like that.

Re:smells like...

[RingDev]

Sure, R3 may disolve before it can file a civil suit, but I imagine the US goverment will hold together long enough to bring criminal charges against MediaDefender.

DOS attacks are a felony. People go to jail for committing felonies.

R3 can sue, in addition to the criminal charges brought forward by the state, in order to recoup any damages sustained by the attack, but even if they don't, MD still has to face the federal government for breaking the law.

-Rick

Re:smells like...

[scubamage]

Not to mention any discovery in this matter can and WILL be used by states who are currently investigating mediadefender for performing investigations without proper licensing.

Re:smells like...

[Penguinisto]

Dear Revision3: Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

signed,

The Rest Of The Planet

Re:Where did they get the firepower?

[mrbah]

They have a 9 gigabit connection dedicated to launching illegal DoS attacks. I wish I was joking.

Re:Where did they get the firepower?

[DragonWriter]

They have a 9 gigabit connection dedicated to launching illegal DoS attacks.

Its going to be hard to blame that on a rogue employee.

A deliberate decision to acquire the instrumentality of a crime is frequently fairly convincing evidence of intent.

Re:Where did they get the firepower?

[Bourbonium]

The story is all over the place now. You can read about it at CNET at http://news.cnet.com/coops-corner/?tag=cnetfd.blogs [cnet.com]
as well as Valleywag http://valleywag.com/393955/revision3-ceo-antipiracy-group-attacked-our-network [valleywag.com]

Re:god save their souls

[scubamage]

Its doubtful that anyone will hack into any of those closed systems for the most part. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see mediadefender start getting nailed VERY hard bandwidth wise. I wonder how many syn packets or christmas tree packets it takes to fill up a 9gbps pipe?