RSSMediaDefender Used MiiVi to Trap Downloaders
By Ed Oswald | Published September 17, 2007, 12:08 PM
The company that was hired by the MPAA to rein in leaks and catch downloaders of copyrighted material on BitTorrent networks is apparently the victim of a leak itself, with thousands of its own internal e-mails leaked to BitTorrent last week.
MediaDefender was hired by the Motion Picture Association of America to assist in its anti-piracy efforts. As part of the deal, the e-mails reveal, the company set up its own BitTorrent site named MiiVi. While its downloads were real, a program said to "speed" that download process was actually a Trojan horse.
Once the software was on the user's computer, it scanned for copyrighted content and reported any findings back to MediaDefender. The company was caught in July, and the site was taken down not soon after.
According to the e-mails, the decision to take down MiiVi was triggered by a story on TorrentFreak, which exposed MediaDefender as the owner of the domain during a domain transfer.
An e-mail from developer Ben Grodsky links to the story, to which founder Randy Saff responds, "This is really ****ed. Let's pull MiiVi offline."
The 700 MB file now available on BitTorrent includes e-mails as far back as six months or more, and provides the reader with a look at the inner workings of the company. It also shows the rise and fall of MiiVi in detailed fashion.
The leak apparently occurred when MediaDefender employee Jay Mairs used his Gmail account to store forwarded e-mails from the company. Mairs' account was hacked, which allowed for the downloading of the e-mails.
It even showed that if the site would have never been discovered, the reach of MiiVi could have been great -- the company was planning to go as far as to allow users to place videos from the site on MySpace.
MediaDefender went to great lengths to hide its involvement, with founder Randy Saaf in one e-mail scolding an employee about having detailed any private, company-related information in his own correspondence. "Make sure MediaDefender can not be seen in any of the hidden email data crap that smart people can look in," he wrote.
The leaking of the e-mails may be a blessing in disguise for BitTorrent users, as well as a warning to thoroughly investigate any new sites before linking to them. Apparently, the site had plans to return, according to e-mails dated last July. "Viide" seems to be the agreed upon name, although with this leak it's almost certain that those plans have been scrapped.
"For a business model that gets its life-blood from piracy, in a twisted way this leak is likely to help generate even more business and develop the market," 'Enigmax' and 'Ernesto' wrote for TorrentFreak. "Funny old world."
I'm reading this article, and I wonder if any of the employees of the MPAA or MediaDefender could end up in Club Fed for this. The article reads like the MPAA was deliberately trying to steal information from a person's computer, wihtout that individual's knowledge or consent. I believe the 4th Admendment to the Constitution protects all citizens against illegal search and seizure, so someone want to show me the warrant on this?
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|Speaks volumes to the ethical integrity of the people entrusted to sniff out unethical behavior.
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|Don't let them kid you the MPAA themselves host Video files for people to download that are often infected and in some cases cripple your codec. Case in point the Bionic Women torrent. Yep Its infected... But trust the community to find it and strip the infection and throw the entrapment back in their faces... Which was done. now the 700mb file that was infected is long dead and there is the 650mb DIVX file size free and clear and they are all up in arms over it. Original source? MPAA themselves trying to entrap the community.
Now do I condone it? no do I use it? sometimes for timeshifting... Does it effect me buying a quality product like a DVD when its released? Of course not... DVDs are much higher in content then divx will ever be.
But still the MPAA is all crazy faced over Television leaks that THEY put out there to begin with... Even the ones they do not put out there that have aired. who really gives a crap when its not much better then a VCR recording from air (which is legal, though they HATE that it is, and the whole DMCA exists cause they didn't want another fair use ruling again, and do everything in their power to be sure it never will make it to the supreme court again.)
Point is Just like music the concept of TV programing and schedules is changing.. and the industry is again stuck on the same page as they were at the turn of the century... with no clue how to cope with a dieing business model. And no vision beyond a typical entrapment or bogus file campaign ripe with lawsuit intimidation to make the public terrorized about the lack of evolution of the entertainment industry. ratings are meaningless now because a large majority of people get what they want to watch through some kind of digital means. from tivo, to DVR cable boxes, to torrent streams, and youtube.. Its all about the lack of ratings and not knowing how to make good programing anymore...
Thats why all you see anymore is Reality TV and gameshows... They just have no clue about what is good and what is not anymore... all they know is what makes ratings, and first run reality does this cause typical dramas people can watch in other ways that ratings can not track... And as such they often never make it past 1 season if they make it past 4 eph at all they are lucky... The industry just has no vision anymore... Thats the problem...
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|Yeah i just love how all their schemes are just blowing up right back in their face. It gives me new faith in humanity. :)
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|Torrents are for hillbillies and angry broke teens. The educated people get thier MP3's and software from Usenet.
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|Sorry, you fail.
1) It's likely you didn't get your stuff from 'usenet' but from 'newsgroups' - two seperate things.
2) How do you think thy got there? I'll give you evens that whoever upped them to the relevent newsgroup, did so after getting it from a torrent. (the other half is by the uploader getting it from the same FTP that a torrent creator did)
Either way, this notion that newsgroups are 'l33t' and torrents are not, is laughable in the extreme.
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|Hey Mr. I didn't go to college: From Wikipedia
Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post e-mail-like messages (called "articles" or "posts") to one or more of a number of categories, called NEWGROUPS. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums which are widely used today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
Usenet and newsgroups are the same thing.
Also....., what is "l33t"? I dont speak angry psuedo-cool teen.
Lastly, find me one incident where someone was sued by the RIAA/MPAA
for downloading copyrighted content via newsgroups / Usenet.
When you start out a post with "Sorry, you fail." You should know what you are talking about before you hit the "Post Your Comment" button.
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|Shhhhh!
Everybody forgot about the usenet, so it's still useful :-)
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|Crap the smart people, done founded us!
DAM YOU SMART PEOPLE!!!!
DAM THOSE INTERWEB TUBES!
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|poor mediadefender.lol. That gnutella info is pretty interesting.
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|Good !
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|Oops.
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|http://jrwr.hopto.org/ good stuff. Been reading all morning...
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|the hopto link is not working
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