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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."

17 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Torrent or it didn't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Torrent or it didn't happen by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Funny

      This really goes without saying, as it is expected from people like them. Still it is unexcusable, what I found... They top-post on e-mails.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  2. They seemed to appreciate utorrent by Aim+Here · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you read the emails, apparently utorrent is their favourite torrent client, since it allows them to 'interdict' torrents, whatever that means. Whatever they're up to, that surely warrants a campaign to boycott the client in favour of free software torrent clients where these sorts of deficiencies can at least be fixed by anyone who cares.

    Oh, and the rumors of them being behind the spyware-encrusted ziptorrent were false; that one seems to have been MediaSentry's doing.

  3. I wonder who did it by unity100 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If it is a long hair working as a code grunt/sysadmin in their it lot, may god make his/her hair glitter with sunshine and rustle in gentle, warm winds.

  4. Oh man it hurts. by kwabbles · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't stop laughing. Oh hoh... my stomach. LOL

    --
    Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
  5. Inflation by athdemo · · Score: 5, Funny
    I thought these two were some of the best.

    >From: Watson, Jeff (WBR)
    >To: Octavio Herrera; leaks
    >Cc: Bird, Jennifer
    >Sent: Sun May 13 10:49:59 2007
    >Subject: Re: # LP illegal album downloads

    >MediaDefender folks - please let us know roughly how many Linkin Park albums have been downloaded since the leak. Album is called Minutes To Midnight. Thanks.


    >From: "Octavio Herrera" >
    >To: "torrents"
    >Cc: "Gilberto Vargas" >, "Ben Grodsky" >, "Rick Moreno" >
    >Subject: Fw: # LP illegal album downloads
    >Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 15:24:59 -0700

    >Torrent team, can you give us a sense of how many dowloads of tis album there has been off bt. We are not protecting on bt so the bigger the better.


    I really hope Warner reads this gold.
  6. Re:Hahahaha, no. by spikestabber · · Score: 5, Informative

    Their SSN's, home addresses, birthdates, wages and all are included in a spreadsheet attachment. They're screwed.

  7. Re:Distance? by Wordplay · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I imagine that a clever lawyer could point out that they're attempting to sue over a transaction of which they were an active part. If I give you something outright, it would likely be impossible for me to sue to get compensation later. If I give it to you while wearing a disguise, I'm not sure that principle doesn't apply.

    A -really- clever lawyer could point out that since the RIAA has been documented as giving their stuff away, that anyone downloading from anywhere might have a reasonable belief that it was coming from the "authorized" source in disguise. I don't know that it would fly, but seems like there'd be a non-zero chance of diluting RIAA's argument in the entire body of cases.

    On a side note, seems like this would give the artists cause to sue the RIAA, for distributing their work in a manner that's likely not covered by their contract (though with artist contracts in RIAA member companies, who knows--maybe they have the right to give it all away for free.)

  8. Student lawsuits... by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Funny

    From: Randy Saaf
            Sent: Wed 11-Apr-07 21:24
            To: Jay Mairs; Ben Grodsky; Ty Heath; Ivan Kwok; Ben Ebert
            Subject: Fw: .edu filtering

            Team

            Universal is curiouse if we have any historical data over the last 3 months that show whether .edu IP addresses on p2p have gone down.

            They want to see if their lawsuits are getting students to stop using p2p (take a moment to laugh to yourself).

            Let me know if anyone has any ideas.

            R

            --- Original Message ---
            From: Benjamin, David
            To: Randy Saaf
            Sent: Wed Apr 11 18:11:50 2007
            Subject: .edu filtering

            How are you doing with this?
            Thanks
            db

  9. OH RLY? by BlueParrot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its a pity we can't see what these paracites earn. I bet they earn more than us sysadmins :( Why hide what this scum thinks its worth.


    dev-salaries-18june2007.xls

    Sergio A. Alvarez 2,916.67 $70,000.00
    Linus Aranha 2,708.33 $65,000.00
    Dylan C Douglas 2,916.67 $70,000.00
    Benjamin Ebert 3,541.67 $85,000.00
    Norman T Heath 4,791.67 $115,000.08
    Sujay S. Jaju 2,708.33 $65,000.00
    Andrew H. Kim 2,291.67 $55,000.00
    Ivan Y Kwok 4,166.67 $100,000.00
    Jed Z. Levin 2,291.67 $55,000.00
    Gerald E. Rode 2,291.67 $55,000.00
    Sheetalkumar Shah 2,708.33 $65,000.00
    Nainesh N. Solanki 2,708.33 $65,000.00
    Daeyoung Song 2,375.00 $57,000.00
    Jeffrey W. Wang 2,375.00 $57,000.00

    You were saying? :p
  10. Re:Are you sure? by SL+Baur · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if Ray Beckerman (NYCL) would be able to use this? I doubt it, but I'm not a lawyer and he is, so I'd expect him to Do The Right Thing.

    Actually, I'm in awe of him. I read the deposition he conducted earlier in the year against an RIAA "expert" witness yesterday (yeah, yeah mod me down for violating /. etiquette in not only reading TFA but also the attached links). Reading the transcript was even more fun than reading about SCO's chapter 11 filing. Brilliant man.
  11. Re:This is NOT good news by sssssss27 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:What's interesting about that (to me) is... by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 5, Informative

    The info on the intertubes is that Mr. Maris, otherwise known as The Putz of the Century, after having forwarded all his corporate mail to his Gmail account, signed up for one of the p2p forums he was "investigating" using that very Gmail address and the same password as his gmail account had.

    And he did so from an IP address already known to belong to Media Defenders.

    You figure out the rest.

  13. Re:Hahahaha, no. by robbiethefett · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm betting right now there's a lot of employees of MediaDefender on the phone with their banks right now trying to find out why they bought several boats, cars, etc. in Russia, China, and god knows where else..

    --
    "Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
  14. Re:Hahahaha, no. by WaltBusterkeys · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  15. Gold Jerry, Gold! by MtlDty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like this one. It seems the record companies try to get marketing data from illegal p2p downloads. ---------- Subject: Nicole Scherzinger Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:14:31 -0700 Nicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called "whatever u like". It's not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio. A song called "Baby Love" just leaked (I don't know how long ago). Interscope wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p. They need to make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this song as the single. Please get me a score comparison on Monday for these two tracks. Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly furtado singles as comparisons.

  16. HTML Format :) by jrwr00 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ive Converted the emails into HTML (With attachments)

    http://jrwr.hopto.org/