Slashdot Mirror
Leaks Prove MediaDefender's Deception
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."
You know, I hope people keep this incident in mind if they are considering going to work for a disreputable company, a company whose primary missions is screwing people, especially when those people that are being screwed have a Robin Hood-like reputation and are a lot smarter than you. The sad fact is that there will undoubtedly be a lot of collateral damage due to this episode. As pointed out in the Ars Technica article, a secretary who happened to be working for MediaDefender whose worst crime was answering phones and getting coffee for his or her bosses now has the social security number, home address and phone number, and salary information out there for everyone to download and look at.
I think that an even worse fallout of all this is that companies are going to be even more anal about stuff like e-mail policies and such. At my company now, they content-block us from accessing Gmail. I'll be that companies will start doing crap like blocking employees from even sending e-mail to Gmail now, the attack vector that allowed these e-mails to get leaked.
But still, even after having said all that, I love it when an evil company doing evil things gets their due like this. It's entirely possible that MediaDefender might go out of business because of this. If you're one of their customers whose detailed contract information got leaked, how likely are you to do business with them again? Although it occurred in a totally scummy way that I just can't endorse, I can't deny the end result of big media companies being a little more skittish to hiring these outfits to do their dirty work is a Good Thing.
I think this revelation brings to light the extent to which companies will go - to deceive the public, the mainstream media... and then continue with their illegal practices after a short time.
Microsoft's recent downplaying of the unexplained Windows Updates is another case in point. Where is Mark Russinovich's article that does a 'diff' of the replaced files, and explaining the 'new behaviour' in detail - like he did in the Sony rootkit case?
It is a bit sad that many of these incidents do not figure in the mainstream media - which seems to be in the powerful grips of these Corporate thugs.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Now don't get me wrong. I'm neither squeamish, nor easily offended. But in professional, corporate email communications such a tone has about as much justification as surfing porn at work.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Is this a good time to mention that access to these internal emails was gained illegally? Sure, he was stupid enough to use the same password on different systems, but that doesn't mitigate the invasion of privacy.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Oh yes, they definitely read "techie, geek web sites where everybody already hates us" like Slashdot, too."
Duh, most of us that are here too much can pick out those shills. They are very obvious to anyone paying attention. I believe there is a website out there that tracks them and even links accounts on different sites to specific people at Idiot-defender.
What they do is ineffective except for catching the 13 year old girls that dont know anything. they dont even put a mild dent in the real sharing groups. One of the guys at work was running around with a new DL DVD he got in the mail from a group member full of zero day songs and even stuff that has not been released yet all at incredibly high bitrate. He also had a copy of the Simpsons movie in 1080i which was mind blowing, it had to be a digital conversion from a not released yet BluRay master or someone broke the digital cinema format to convert it in a theater projection booth with a laptop.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Following the Nintendo pronunciation of Wii (as Wee), would this not be sound like ViiDi would be pronounced "Vee Die" I'd check to see if they are scandinavian and suicidal.
From TFA:
"When Douglas pointed out that information about MiiVi had been added to the MediaDefender Wikipedia page, Saaf decided that he wanted it taken down. "Can you please do what you can to eliminate the entry? Let me know if you have any success," Saaf wrote. "I will attempt to get all references to miivi removed from wiki," developer Ben Ebert replied. "We'll see if I can get rid of it.""
They wanted to remove all links between themselves and Miivi. When there definately was a link. They knew it was true, they just didn't want anyone else to know about it.
That's not the intended use of the tool that is Wikipedia.