Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked

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."

Comments

Re:Distance?

[forkazoo]

They didn't just distance themselves from the company, they were going to relaunch it under a totally new name/look while still making sure it couldn't be tracked back to them. Doesn't this constitute entrapment?

Generally speaking, entrapment only applies to law enforcement and the government. RIAA still isn't there yet, thankfully. OTOH, a good lawyer could probably spin it as morally equivalent in principle for a jury.

Hahahaha, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is big. But I doubt there will be any sensible outcome. What will likely happen is that this will be talked about for a couple of days, soon enough some other story will come along, and people will forget all about it.

Re:Hahahaha, no.

[WaltBusterkeys]

I am wondering is whether we find their vigilante attitude towards stopping downloads more or less distasteful than

Their "vigilante" tactics have inspired a vigilante response, for better or for worse. It's the old "well, they started it" defense.

It's almost a little disgusting to see intelligent Slashdot readers encouraging identity theft and other federal crimes because they don't like the work that MD does. Obviously the vast majority of readers aren't doing so, but there have been full names of low-level programmers already posted in this thread and I'm sure far worse on other sites.

Do the ends (stopping MD's work) really justify the means? If this were the internal emails of an abortion provider we would all be disgusted if a pro-life group sent the names, addresses, and social security numbers of clinic secretaries and janitors around. But when it's the low-level functionaries of a hated technology group it's apparently OK and to be commended.

Just because a large number of people disagree with their work it shouldn't be OK to break federal law to discourage them. Yes, they may have broken federal law first, but the answer is not to raise the ante.

this is in the wild now

[unity100]

nothing can cover it up

Re:this is in the wild now

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Why the hell would anyone pay that much money just to engage in the online equivalent of pissing against a force 10 gale?

You assumed that the narcisstic, vain, executive types, having landed in their positions straight from their MBA mutual-adoration "schools", actually have an ounce of a clue. That is a very dangerous assumption. These people are the new artistocracy. Their time is spent in adoring each other's golf swing on exclusive golf courses and a byzantine dance of trying to ingrate themselves with the "right" coctail party crowd, which then, if successful, leads to their occupation of new, ever more obscenely overpaid, musical seats on various boards of directors, finally ending in a massive "golden parachute" payout.

Well being of the companies, competence and the financial gains of shareholders have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.

Returning to the case in point: the overpaid clowns, not having a dimmest idea as to what they are doing (as the leaked emails plainly and painfully show), did what their kind usally does: played and postured at being "rent-a-cops" for their objects of adoration, the much better paid, and even more clueless, executives of various media conglomerates.

It is a little wonder that other buffoons would pay millions (usually comprised of some blue-collar worker's pention fund money) for this glorified circle jerk of "serious businessmen crime fighters".

One of the dimwits, seeing himself so much more competent that mere "techies", then proceeded to bypass all of the security measures of their email system by forwarding all of his mail to Gmail, and then used the very same account, with the very same password of "blahbob" to "investigate" one of the p2p sites.

In short, everything that is happening here is merely a sympthom of the state of total corruption to which the modern corporate world has descended, other indicators being known under the names of Enron, WorldCom, Haliburton etc.

Re:this is in the wild now

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I'm not sure if you're intentionally parodying those who blame all of the world's woes on this supposed elite that nobody can name or place, but you're doing a great job of it. If you're not then your worldview is incredibly warped and I prescribe one dose of leaving the basement and seeing the real world.

Real world? Basement? These goofuses are actually my long-time customers and I deal with them daily. That is how my worldview got "warped" as a result of what I know first-hand. And that is how you do not know, apparently. Not only can I place them and name them, I can even name their boats. And that is why I post here under a handle. If they knew that I know many of them for what they are, they would no doubt try to retaliate and that would be rather inconvenient. I can fix the overpaid stuckup buffoons' mistakes for top dollar when they believe all their screwups are the wisest moves ever and only need "little touchups", but it is impossible to do so when they know that I know what those turds of their making really are. It bruises their fragile egos and makes them very uncomfortable. I like to call this: "Customer Relations". The way the world works, kid. Smile and shovel. Your reward is laughing all the way to the bank.

And if you are one of those MBAs - keep in mind that this grinning consultant on whom you offload all your real work and who says "That would be no problem!" or "I can work within the framework of your plan!" and the like, might be someone like me and hold the same opinion of you as I do. You can tell by how skillfully he actually does what he needed to do to make it work, as opposed to what you told him to do, even though he agreed and nodded his head all the way. That and the fact that his bills keep going up the more your fuckups pile up, even though you did your darnest to hide them. But he never stops smiling and being nice to you, does he? It is so fortunate that you cannot read his mind. You would spend the rest of your days under your bed shivering.

PS - Nobody even plays golf anymore. Try adventure sports. That's where you'll find today's executives.

Muahahahahahaha! Hahahahaah! Ehrm.

"Adventure sports" would require these farts to actually exert themselves. Although some few do that, there are very good reasons why golf (followed by far distant second: squash) is king, which you do not seem to grasp: 1) one can do this in an exclusive, exorbitantly-priced, invitation memebership only, bar-equipped course right in or very near the city, which also provides an opportunity to flaunt one's wealth to all the peons 2) most execs are lazy farts who talk a storm about "sports" but usually restrict themselves to swinging clubs and copiously drinking and 3) one can discuss business deals in comfort while golfing, which is rather hard when, say, hand-gliding and what not. "Adventure sports" are what most of them would, without batting an ayelid, label a posh trip to, say, Africa or some other poor but picturescue place, where they ride around in well guarded and very luxurious RVs, once every decade or so.

I get cold sweat when I think on my days of youth, when I actually believed the same sanitized, propagandistic crap you seem to believe. But I don't blame you for your naivette. Unless you were born into this rarefied socialite club or are grudgingly admitted to it via marriage or some astronomically unlikely random coincidence (which you will prompty ascribe to your own infallable iron wit of which the mere peons are bereft of, as is the prevailing custom in those circles), you will learn eventually.

Re:Distance?

[dgatwood]

I'm glad you pointed that out. If this company, acting as an agent for the plaintiff (a movie company, for example), participated in the distribution of this content via P2P, then that constitutes a tacit approval of P2P distribution of the content by the plaintiff, thus making any further P2P distribution of that content potentially authorized by the copyright holder, and thus not a copyright violation.

Further, even if the person did not actually get it directly from an agent of the copyright holder, the rights holder distributing in such a way that causes it to be automatically redistributed by anyone who receives it (P2P) could constitute deliberate abandonment of the copyright (at least for the purposes of personal, noncommercial use) by the copyright holder.

I'm not saying that argument would necessarily hold up in court, but if I were in charge of a media company, I would not be doing anything nearly this stupid and reckless.

Re:Distance?

[Sparr0]

Keep reading. He posits that the existence of honeypots lends credibility to the argument that *ANY* download *MIGHT* be coming from a legitimate source. We know the RIAA is distributing songs via P2P, and we know they are disguising themselves, so why can't we assume that the guy sending us music right now is really the RIAA in disguise, making it legal?

It'll never be admissible in court.

[glindsey]

If the emails were obtained by hacking somebody's GMail account -- as seems to be the case given the comments on the torrent file -- then they were obtained illegally. The RIAA's lawyers would immediately cry "illegal search."

IANAL, so I'd like to hear from somebody with real law experience either confirming or denying this, but that's my gut feeling.

Re:This is NOT good news

[sssssss27]

Somewhere along the way, or maybe it has been this way the whole time, people started using laws as ethics. Most people seem to think that if something is illegal then it must be wrong and if it's not illegal then it's probably fine.

I don't think anyone here is jumping for joy that a gmail account got hacked. Instead I see a bunch of people jumping for joy because a company that is seeming violating the law might actually have to suffer for its actions.

I think what happened here is for the greater good. Sometimes breaking the law draws attention to a problem few realized existed.

Re:You are taking it the wrong way

[FunWithKnives]

Quite succinctly put. Specifically with regard to music, I find major fault with those who seem so up in arms about artists losing money due to p2p or torrent sites. Being a musician, I understand quite well that true artists do not create their music for money. Those who do are not musicians, they are simply business people hijacking an art form for personal profit. If we did away with copyright, and instituted a system such as the one you have mentioned, music would not disappear. Rather, as an art form it would become confined to those who love it for what it is.

Creating music is not a chore. It is something done out of necessity, more often than not. I liken it to an addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms if neglected. In short, if a system like yours was implemented, music would not cease to exist. On the contrary, the trash would be weeded out and we would all be better off for it.