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."

Comments

Mixed feelings...

[KingSkippus]

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.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[lanswitch]

Most businesses are in the business of making money, bottom line
and at the bottom line you'll only find the bottom feeders.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[yoder]

"and at the bottom line you'll only find the bottom feeders."

Spot on. Granted, businesses are there to make money, but unless they employ only robots, there is a human factor there as well. Oversimplifying this to the point that "money trumps everything else" is exactly how these companies get into such shitloads of trouble.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the Holocaust is roughly comparable to MediaDefender. Do you have any respect whatsoever for the 10 million people who died at the hands of the German government?

Following orders to gas somebody is one thing. Following orders to make coffee and answer phones is another. One involves the murder of ten million jews. The other involves a fresh pot of joe.

If you have any sense of perspective whatsoever you'd see that there's a pretty important difference.

Re:Mixed feelings...

[gobbo]

Granted, businesses are there to make money, but unless they employ only robots, there is a human factor there as well. Oversimplifying this to the point that "money trumps everything else" is exactly how these companies get into such shitloads of trouble.

Yes, and more: Businesses are not there just to make money, I'm getting tired of this old trope. It's like saying Humans are there to make more Humans.

Enterprise means getting things done, making stuff, acheiving goals. Businesses are there to do things and compensate their investors and staff for their efforts or risk-taking. People start a business (or should) because they want to provide, create, or change something. Let them be judged by what they do and how they do it, not how much they've managed to skim off the top.

Let's not reduce capitalism to The Trough, it's nihilistic and will lead people further into market fundamentalism.

A lesson from this episode

[jkrise]

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.

Re:A lesson from this episode

[radarjd]

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. While it's possible that some corporation may be exercising some undue influence, it seems just as likely (if not more) to me that people simply don't care. Have Sony's CD sales been hurt by the rootkit incident? (And I mean on a meaningful level, not anecdotally.) Has Microsoft lost business from its anti-trust issues? Those have certainly received a great deal of media attention, but the greatest portion of the public seems not to care.

Re:A lesson from this episode

[jkrise]

While it's possible that some corporation may be exercising some undue influence, it seems just as likely (if not more) to me that people simply don't care.

I did address this issue in my original post. I speculated that this happens becasue Mainstream Media is simply reluctant to publish these issues, which have a vital bearing on true competition in the IT industry. The BBC has an article on the EU anti-trust ruling; but none at all on the Media Defender clowns circus. If it did, there would be much larger pressure on them, than discussions at Slashdot, Digg, Flexbeta ArsTechnica and so on.

In fact an email at MD discusses precisely this apathy in the mainstream media; and why they should relaunch the whole thing under a different name. Microsoft has simply relaunched the same core Office applications and the Windows operating systems in different names at different points in time. The intention is clear: To subvert proper competitive development, impede progress, ruthlessly maintain lock-in; etc. The media must resist such intereferences... otherwise such secondary media sites will make take away their business in tech reporting at least.

Totally Unprofessional

[CaptainZapp]

This may be nitpicking, but I was somewhat shocked about the tone of the (paraphrased) emails. There seems a lot of f**k and s**t flowing around from the head honchos of this dodgy outfit right to the bottom.

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.

Mediadefender Slashdot trolls.

[Lumpy]

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.

ViiDi?

[ChrisStrickler]

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.

Re:Sanitizing Wikipedia is bad?

[z0idberg]

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.