MediaDefender and the Streisand Effect

Foldarn writes "It looks like MediaDefender, in an effort to quell the explosion of negative publicity over its leaked email archive, has instead done the opposite (also known as the Streisand Effect) and spread it even more widely. Ars Technica is reporting that MediaDefender has sent scary-lawyer letters to two popular BitTorrent sites, MegaNova and IsoHunt, demanding that they remove the offending content. Both sites have responded with derision. Also, Ars notes that MediaDefender seems to be behind a DDoS attack against the site that originally leaked its email." Final word to Ars's Ryan Paul: "MediaDefender's entire business model has been based on recognition of the inescapable fact that litigation cannot stop the spread of content on the Internet, so it is ironic that the company has turned to legal threats."

Comments

As the proverb goes

[tygerstripes]

He who lives by the sword, dies by the questionable business model.

Re:As the proverb goes

[kaizokuace]

they probably wouldn't be in this mess had they really used swords. ARR!

They wanna play the legal game huh?

[morgan_greywolf]

Well maybe someone should turn them in to the FBI for violating federal computer crime statutes.

Re:They wanna play the legal game huh?

[betterunixthanunix]

Oh not, the FBI isn't interested in big companies that break computer laws. They are interested in teenagers and organized crime. But flash your corporate charter, and suddenly, you aren't a hacker, you are defending the profits of a major content studio from hackers who are using deCSS.

Re:They wanna play the legal game huh?

[u-235-sentinel]

The site has been running intermittently since its launch, and the disruptions are thought to be the result of massive traffic coupled with a denial of service attack apparently launched by MediaDefender.

And all this time I thought DOS's were against the law...

I guess you are right.

My mistake

Re:They wanna play the legal game huh?

[tygerstripes]

...by which I'm hoping you mean "submit them to" the FBI, and not "give them the same purview as".

I mean, their practices may be similar, but that's an unfortunately telling ambiguity.

Re:They wanna play the legal game huh?

[BronsCon]

Wait a minute... They don't care about big companies. But they do care about organized crime?

How much more organized does a criminally active big company have to get?

Re:They wanna play the legal game huh?

[C0rinthian]

I dunno, it's pretty obvious this company was far from organized...

Torrents...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for those of you haven't already downloaded them.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/mediadefender/0/3/0

And the unofficial MediaDefender-Defender website.
http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/

#MediaDefender-Defenders @ EFNet

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[morgan_greywolf]

They use DDoS attacks against P2P and now, apparently, other sites as well. That puts them at odds with federal computer crime statutes. What do you think?

people never learn

[randuev]

censorship is not possible on P2P. speaking of mediadefender, if they do in fact execute DDOS attacks, they are breaking more rules than they are trying to protect.

Re:people never learn

[Billosaur]

Censorship is not possible on the Internet, period. Once information gets out into the wild, it will be copied and recopied (not to mention indexed by the major search engines) to the point that eliminating all copies would take inordinately large amounts of time and effort. Imagine if MediaDefender had to sue everyone who had a copy of even part of one of their emails on a server? Even Bill Gates doesn't have that kind of money! Not to mention, with so many of these copies being overseas, there's no guarantee they would win in any foreign court.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

No, censorship is possible on the Internet. It would require a concerted effort of the powers to be and some creative lawmaking but there is nothing inherent about the internet that makes censorship impossible.

The idea that no one has bothers in the US or UK or insert big name country here, doesn't mean much. The lack of doing doesn't mean it cannot be done. And if there is a point when it does get done, people like you will make it so unpleasant that there is likely going to be mandatory jail time or something for violations.

Look at online gambling in the US. Sure, if you can find a company willing to take your money, your likely to get a knock on the door from federal marshals for doing so. Your credit card company would report your transactions so there is no keeping it a secrete. There is no can't invovled with censoring the Internet. It is just a matter of how.

Re:people never learn

[dougmc]

Censorship is not possible on the Internet, period. Censorship of certain things is not easy on the Internet, but it's not impossible. If there is something that has a severe penalty for having, and few people want anyways, and even having it has a really strong stigma against it, it's effectively censored even for those who do want it. Case in point? Child pornography. Yes, there's some on the Internet, but it's very effectively censored. And the few cases where it can be found on the Internet, it's generally either 1) very carefully hidden and protected, 2) very obvious, because it was posted to `frame' somebody else (and therefore removed quickly), or 3) only marginally child porn, if it all. A picture of your six month old daughter taking a bath is not child porn, but people have been arrested for things like that before.

But of course, none of this helps Mediadefender. But don't go pretending that Internet censorship is impossible, period.

Re:people never learn

[Zebedeu]

They say that taking something out of the internet is like taking piss out of a pool.

Re:people never learn

[TubeSteak]

Not to mention, with so many of these copies being overseas, there's no guarantee they would win in any foreign court. Why would isoHunt, a Canadian company, agree to comply with a properly written DMCA takedown from an American law firm?

Especially considering how much derision they've shown towards MediaDefender.

Re:people never learn

[Sique]

That's why Antigua and Barbuda has asked the WTO to impose penal tariffs on U.S. products in retailiation, namely allowing all citizens of A&B to copy and redistribute Hollywood content for free.

The U.S. got already a cease-and-desist-letter from the WTO, and didn't comply even if the WTO council found the U.S. in violation of WTO statutes. So A&B has all rights to demand something in exchange.

Re:people never learn

[megaditto]

That's why Antigua and Barbuda has asked the WTO to impose penal tariffs on U.S. products in retailiation, namely allowing all citizens of A&B to copy and redistribute Hollywood content for free.

Which side do you think that punishes more?

Re:people never learn

[Constantine XVI]

They would have to have something to take down first. If I understand correctly, isoHunt is merely a search engine, and they don't have any files to take down (even less than "normal" torrent sites)

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

How long do you think the WTO would last without the US participating? Not long because all those big countries would need the US for the sake of their economy.

I wouldn't hold your breath on anything meaningful coming from this. The US has a bigger position over those countries internet so once it started, all they would have to do is pull the plug on them. So think about this, it isn't the first time the US has ignored a WTO, probably won't be the last and the entire idea of world trade means there isn't much that could be done about it. Ask canada.

and if they do start essentially pirating copyrighted works, then you will find trade embargos against countries who import the stuff in addition. It isn't like they would have a market outside their island. As for downloads, expect to see downloading from those countries becoming a felony in the US as well as other countries if this happens.

In all, it isn't what you think it will be. Cuting their internet service for two years will do more to hurt them. It would be worse then a trade embargo. So take it for what you will. But don't take it for more then what it is.

Re:people never learn

[dk.r*nger]

Look at online gambling in the US. Sure, if you can find a company willing to take your money, your likely to get a knock on the door from federal marshals for doing so. Your credit card company would report your transactions so there is no keeping it a secrete. There is no can't invovled with censoring the Internet. It is just a matter of how.

That's "censorship" of you creditcard, not the internet. If you could find a way of transferring money to those companies without leaving a trail in the US banking system (e.g. by a proxy in another country), you'd be fine.

Re:people never learn

[iapetus]

But that's not what he's suggesting. He's talking about cuting their internet service, which presumably means installing some sort of filter that changes all links in HTML documents served from within the US to those outside the US to point to cuteoverload.com. Probably banned under the Geneva convention, but that's nothing for the US to worry themselves over.

Re:people never learn

[ShieldW0lf]

Dude, the US is the most powerful country in the world.

They're the most powerful country in the world because of economic structures.

The fact that these economic structures are making them more powerful than their neighbours is an indicator that they are getting more out of them than anyone else.

Or, to put it another way, no matter how nice they all look on paper, the end result is that money flows away from this country, towards the US.

Other countries don't need the US. They get taken for a ride by the US.

People used to talk about how much the Canadian beef industry "needed" the US for our economy. Then the borders got shut a few years ago, and now instead of selling live cattle for cheaper than they're worth, we have a local industry slaughtering and butchering meat, we can sell frozen steak internationally, and the price of beef for your average Canadian went through the floor, despite our country now being richer than before.

Other countries need the US in the same way they need vampire.

Re:people never learn

[Paradise Pete]

if they do start essentially pirating copyrighted works, then you will find trade embargos against countries who import the stuff in addition. It isn't like they would have a market outside their island. As for downloads, expect to see downloading from those countries becoming a felony in the US as well as other countries if this happens.

- If they get WTO permission it's not piracy.
- So you're saying that the US would rather go to the extent of engaging in embargos rather than comply with a ruling of the WTO? An organization to which they are a founding member? How arrogant and hypocritical that would be.
- Why would other countries make it a 'felony' if the WTO explicitly gave permission? Are you saying they would also rather ignore the WTO and elevate the US to being above the law?

The US has enjoyed an enormous advantage over the rest of the world, but those days of being far and away the king of the hill are coming to an end, and the US has to recognize that and learn how to actually get along with the rest of the world in a truly civilized way.

For what it's worth, I'm a born and bred American, once proud and now dismayed at how our country shirks and abandons the very foundations that made it great.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

China, India, Taiwan, and a few other countries would find themselves in an economic ruin of we stopped buying there or refused to let our companies locate shops there to re import cut rate goods back into the US.

And when they go, they would take other countries with them. It isn't a matter of if the US would be hurt too, it is how many other countries would be hurt in the process to not let this happen.

And yes, I remember the miraculous Canadian beef story. It boils down to Mad Cow Disease. Canada saw increases when Mad Cow Disease was found in US cattle which saw the immediate baring of imports to Japan and a few other countries in the same way Canada suffered from the US. In short, the miraculous turn around is attributed to a disease effecting others. This is hardly the something repeatable on a consistent or steady basis.

Re:people never learn

[starnix]

I guess you haven't noticed that the U.S. Economy is collapsing then?

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

If they get WTO permission it's not piracy.

Wrong. It is "sanctioned piracy". The country of the US or any other modern country for that matter doesn't hold the copyrights, it is the individual authors and businesses in the countries who do. Just because some organization says your country can violate the copyright laws of a country doesn't forgo the damage to the indevidual content owners.

I know people say information wants to be free and all. But a ruling like that could effectively allow any open source project that has a copy in the US to be taken and used in a closed source app without regard to the GPL, BSD, or any other license. Do you really think people are going to let that happen? I mean it would reach far outside the GPL and open source too but think about that for a minute.

So you're saying that the US would rather go to the extent of engaging in embargos rather than comply with a ruling of the WTO? An organization to which they are a founding member? How arrogant and hypocritical that would be.

Look at how they treated Canadian lumber against the WTO's ruling. I can't speak for how leaders would handle it exactly but they probably would goto cutting off their supply of stolen copyrighted materials and possibly as far as embargoes too.

And no, that would be arogent or hypocritical. The WTO is over stepping their bounds by this. They are talking the right of sovereignty from one country over the gambling of another when no treaty to that effect has ever been made. Just because the WTO is an organization doesn't mean it is all powerful or that it possess rights over the sovereignty of nations. It can only do so by express permission in forms of treaties. They are taking something completely out of context in making that ruling and even worse, the answer seems to be t screw over the individual property owners in the US and not the US itself. Tell me where the arrogance is there?

Why would other countries make it a 'felony' if the WTO explicitly gave permission? Are you saying they would also rather ignore the WTO and elevate the US to being above the law?

In short, yes. It is obvious that you neither understand what has happened or the role of the WTO. Outside attempting to educate that, you are merely a cheer leader because someone is against the US. And no, this wouldn't elevate the US above the law. The WTO cannot make law. All it can do is make treaties. No international organization can make a law that is imposed on another sovereign body. The fact you made a statement show how little you know about this.

The US has enjoyed an enormous advantage over the rest of the world, but those days of being far and away the king of the hill are coming to an end, and the US has to recognize that and learn how to actually get along with the rest of the world in a truly civilized way.

I don't think that has anything to do with the discussion at hand. I'm sure it makes you happy to attempt to connect the two but that's about it. The US does get along with the rest of the world in a civilized way as it is.

or what it's worth, I'm a born and bred American, once proud and now dismayed at how our country shirks and abandons the very foundations that made it great.

Well, It is obvious to me that you never understood what made our country great in the first place. And don't take that as an insult. It seems to be a frequent advantage of our public education system.

Our constitution doesn't allow another country or organization to impose rules or obligations on us that we don't agree to accept. This is what made us great, we couldn't literally be sold down the river unless congress agreed. And even then congress could take it back in later years buy undoing the laws they passed to implement the treaty. This is what makes us great; our constitution and the men and women who pr

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

No, it is censorship of your actions. you wouldn't be punished for using a credit card but for using it to gamble.

Re:people never learn

[Panaflex]

Caveat emptor, of course.

Every time the government limits freedom, there must be an underlying principle of justice - it can not be arbitrary nor largely unequal. Yes, I concede that it would be possible to have a limited censorship on the internet - as we have seen in China.

But make no mistake - there is no such thing as complete censorship in any society.

Re:people never learn

[Jeremi]

So you're saying that the US would rather go to the extent of engaging in embargos rather than comply with a ruling of the WTO? An organization to which they are a founding member? How arrogant and hypocritical that would be.

Dude, have you been watching the news for the past five years? The U.S. has been doing this sort of thing constantly. The U.N., the land mine treaty, the anti-missile treaty with Russia, the ICC, the Geneva convention, Kyoto, Canadian lumber... all things that the US (under previous administrations) was involved in creating or promoting, and that the current administration feels free to ignore. "Arrogant and hypocritical" is no obstacle for Bush and Cheney.

Re:people never learn

[Paradise Pete]

Our constitution doesn't allow another country or organization to impose rules or obligations on us that we don't agree to accept. Of course, we did agree to accept. That's part of the deal. Just like we want other countries to accept ruling in our favor. That's how that stuff works.

I suggest you read the constitution and figure out how international law effects the US.

Presumably you mean "affects." But that's OK. It seem to be a frequent "advantage" (as you put it) of our public education system. And your whole notion of "if we don't like it then screw you guys" is exactly why the US will slowly slide downhill in the coming decades as the rest of world passes it by.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

Of course, we did agree to accept. That's part of the deal. Just like we want other countries to accept ruling in our favor. That's how that stuff works.

No, we didn't. Unfortunately, we never ratified a treaty giving them power over us. We did give them power to resolve conflict, but the WTO is over stepping their bounds on this. And we can just choose to ignore it.

Presumably you mean "affects." But that's OK. It seem to be a frequent "advantage" (as you put it) of our public education system. And your whole notion of "if we don't like it then screw you guys" is exactly why the US will slowly slide downhill in the coming decades as the rest of world passes it by.

No, I mean effect as in causality. I guess there is another advantage too.

And it doesn't matter if the US slides down hill. Giving up our sovereignty in favors of other countries opinion isn't acceptable to anyone but fools. New leadership will be in office 2 years and we can judge the slip and slide from there. My guess is that someone who is going to isolate us will be elected and it won't matter what the rest of the world thinks until we have to bail them out of another war. but we can wait and see on that too. Bottom line is, we will have new leadership in a few year, the rest of the world knows what to expect from the present leadership and we will see what happens.

Re:people never learn

[superiority]

"Note that as of Jan. 22, 2007, we have moved servers to Canada and is no longer subject to US DMCA laws. But we are keeping this copyright policy and procedure modeled after the DMCA, as it worked for us and for copyright owners in the past, and we find this procedure and takedown process to be mostly fair."
isoHunt's copyright policy

Re:people never learn

[Paradise Pete]

No, I mean effect as in causality

If you're really going to pretend you meant that, I'm done talking with you.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

Good by then.

And as a side note, International law can't be law the US is subject to unless the US agrees to this and makes the appropriate laws concerning it. For International law, it would require us to do something first, therefor it would be a US law too. That's how it works and I believe it fits that definition.

Re:people never learn

[ShieldW0lf]

It doesn't matter why it happened. You can't sell livestock off the continent like you can with butchered frozen meat. There was a culture here for years based around how we NEEDED trade with the US for all our meat, so why bother setting up infrastructure here?

Truth is, that culture made select people individually rich while shipping off most of the wealth to the US.

Now that culture is permanently broken. We don't sell the resource of "live cows" across the border wholesale now, we slaughter them ourselves, eat cheap meat, and sell frozen steak internationally. We will never need to go back.

This needs to happen to all our industries.

Re:people never learn

[Sique]

The main problem the U.S. has is that it demands other nations to play by the rules and bend over backwards, but whenever the issue arises and the U.S. has to change to play by the rules, it refuses to do so. This makes the WTO, which was installed by the U.S. in the first place, obsolete.

What if suddenly China and Russland are no longer compelled to play by the WTO rules when it took decades to persuade them to do so? What if AllofMP3.com gets up and operating again? What if China no longer feels the need to even seem as if they respected patents and trademarks? What arguments do you have against China left?

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

You do understand that there is a major difference between the sovereignty of one country and breaking the copy and patent rights of another don't you? I mean you couldn't have picked stuff any more different in nature for that.

In most/some ways, the WTO is broke anyways. The WTO is over stepping their bounds on this. It doesn't have the ability to stop the US from doing what it is doing yet is seems to want to stretch a couple of things in order to make the claim that it does. And with the Canadian lumber issue, it totally ignored that Canada was subsidizing the lumber in order to dump it into the US market. These are the only two instances that I know of, where we failed to follow directives from the WTO and those are also two instances where the WTO failed to do what it was supposed to do.

If you think it looks like we aren't practicing what we preach, then I suggest you look into the situation(s) a little more. You will find that we have reasoning behind it that is pretty solid. And you will find that it isn't the way you think it is.

Re:people never learn

[Sique]

If the U.S. arguments where that good, why did the WTO and the appellate court rule that they weren't? I don't claim to know all issues, but I know that two instances have ruled against the U.S. So whatever you think, the arguments were too weak to hold before the WTO.

Because the U.S. allows online betting (at least some states do), and the U.S. allows casinos (again some states do), the ruling goes, it is discriminating against a non-U.S. company not to be allowed to offer online gambling to U.S.-citizens. So either the U.S. stops all online gambling inside the U.S. (and this includes online betting and online lottery), or it allows non-U.S. companies to offer the same services. The U.S. didn't comply, and the U.S. just mumbled something about some cultural problems with allowing online casinos. The WTO never cared about cultural issues, and so the U.S. is caught pants down with it.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

If the U.S. arguments where that good, why did the WTO and the appellate court rule that they weren't? I don't claim to know all issues, but I know that two instances have ruled against the U.S. So whatever you think, the arguments were too weak to hold before the WTO.

Well, first, you have to remember the "ruling" is from a commision. The appellate court, is sort of the same made up of members of the WTO. They are staffed with countries lower on the pole.

Now, what happened was they took a clause that said you cannot deny foreign entry or participation into a market in favor of a domestic market and applied it to internet gambling ban somehow. Now they didn't favor the domestic market because they halted all Internet gambling in the US. This is the same as getting rid of the market all together which is allowed under the WTO rules and to some degree a right of a sovereign nation. And this isn't a right that the US or any member of the WTO has given up as far as I know.

When you ask why did they support it? I don't know. But they clearly jumped their bounds and authority in doing so. This isn't a deal where they are in a position of authority over us.

Because the U.S. allows online betting (at least some states do), and the U.S. allows casinos (again some states do), the ruling goes, it is discriminating against a non-U.S. company not to be allowed to offer online gambling to U.S.-citizens. So either the U.S. stops all online gambling inside the U.S. (and this includes online betting and online lottery), or it allows non-U.S. companies to offer the same services. The U.S. didn't comply, and the U.S. just mumbled something about some cultural problems with allowing online casinos. The WTO never cared about cultural issues, and so the U.S. is caught pants down with it.

No, federal law prohibits online gambling. That is why. Federal law would supersede state law. I think you better check your facts again. They arrested the CEOs of several vegas casinos for ignoring the federal law banning online gambling a while back too. The only way it could happen is if the entire process remained within the state in which the casino it located.

And the only reason it is allowed within a state is because the federal government can't twist the interstate commerce law enough to include jurisdiction. But it is outlaws in every venue that it does have jurisdictional control over.

I don't think the WTO has the ability to take the copyright and patent protections away from individuals. I have a feeling that when they try, Some countries will have the Internet access cut and over thrown or something along those lines. I also see the WTO going the way of the dodo bird if it gets that far too. And no, that won't mean the US will be hurt somehow either. Too many other countries depend on trade relations with the US. Another organization will spring up to replace the WTO just as fast as we get out of it.

Re:people never learn

[Sique]

Why should Antigua and Barbuda care how the internal structure of the U.S. is? It has nothing to do with their case.

1. fact: It is possible to legally place online bets in the U.S.
2. fact: It is not possoble for A&B's companies to offer that service.

That's discriminating against foreign competitors. It's that simple.

Neither the WTO nor A&B care how the U.S. gets their act together to sort this out. If it's a fault in the construction of the U.S. legal system? Be it. If it's just some unwillingness to clear the mess up? Be it. Either the U.S. gets online betting completely banned in every state, the one way or the other, or the allow foreign companies to enter the market. "We can't because of constitutional issues." is an answer the WTO never ever accepted anywhere else. Why it should in the U.S.?

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

Lol..

Why should Antigua and Barbuda care how the internal structure of the U.S. is? It has nothing to do with their case.

It has everything to do with their case. The US government outlawed online gambling in every avenue their have jurisdiction over. This is what their case is about.

1. fact: It is possible to legally place online bets in the U.S.
2. fact: It is not possoble for A&B's companies to offer that service.

Ok, Wrong on both 1 and 2.

It is legal to place online bets inside a state if all parties are inside that state and that state permits it. This isn't inside the US, it is inside a state that is in the US. If either country would want to set up shop inside a state that allows online gambling, host servers in those states and only deal with people in those states, they aren't shut out of the market in any way. They don't want to do that at all, they want to stay in their country and violated the US law that banns the online gambling.

The WTO knows the structure of the US, they know the jurisdictional limits, know that what would have to happen is that all the action would have to remain within the singles state that allows it and forgo all this knowledge to stretch some rules in places they shouldn't have.

That's discriminating against foreign competitors. It's that simple.

No, they can go inside the state and set up shop. But no where in the US can anyone setup an online betting place that doesn't limit itself to state jurisdiction. There is nothing in the WTO rules that say a country has to be able to compete solely from within their own and separate country. In fact, in several places, conditions are expected where you have to travel into the other country in order to do business there. So the ban is within the scope of the WTO treaties.

Neither the WTO nor A&B care how the U.S. gets their act together to sort this out. If it's a fault in the construction of the U.S. legal system? Be it. If it's just some unwillingness to clear the mess up? Be it. Either the U.S. gets online betting completely banned in every state, the one way or the other, or the allow foreign companies to enter the market. "We can't because of constitutional issues." is an answer the WTO never ever accepted anywhere else. Why it should in the U.S.?

Lol.. It isn't a fault at all. And any rule making decision has to take into consideration the legal limits of the partied they are dealing with. In the US, it is almost like expecting Mexico to govern Argentina when they only govern the roads up to the US.

And yes, foreign companies can enter the market as of now. They can goto those states, open shop and participate in the market within those states. What the WTO actually did was probably a direct response to the Canadian lumber deal where the US was likely wrong but ended up settling the problem outside the WTO and with Canada directly. They (WTO) are overstepping their bounds on this and stretching the rules to make it apply.

And yes, constitutional issues or governmental structure issues are a common place in signing treaties. The US does it quite often, The UK has in the past too. There are several countries who have signed in these ways. It is a long and common practice to do so with multilateral treaties since long before the WTO has been around. Even to this day, the renown Kyoto Protocal has several signatories like this. It is a construct called reservations. And if Either country had a problem with the US's reservations, the proper response is to invalidate the treaty or the portion of that treaty that placed the obligations there in the first place. Any country making a treaty with the US knows full well about the political structure and the jurisdictional limits involved.

Now, if the WTO wants to ok the theft of copyright and patent related materials from the people (not the country because the

Re:people never learn

[Sique]

It is legal to place online bets inside a state if all parties are inside that state and that state permits it. This isn't inside the US, it is inside a state that is in the US. [Emphasis mine]

Cool! You even know why the U.S. regulatory is discriminatory against A&B :) No just draw the conclusion.

Re:people never learn

[sumdumass]

No, it isn't discriminatory. They can goto that state and set up shop and do business inside the state. There is no discrimination at all. No one in the US can accept bet across state lines so if anything, it is fair that they could do this.

Free Trade and WTO rules doesn't.don't mandate that the country participating in the trade has to have the ability to do so strictly from within their country which is foreign to where they wish to do business at. They can set up shop and participate just like anyone else. End of problem. Unless for some reasons you think they should have special access and special rules.

Anyways, Let them go the route they are trying to go. I will laugh when they get more then they bargained for. I don't see how stealing from individual citizens of a country is an acceptable answer to anything anyways. And yes, that is Emphasis mine. Because that is exactly what would be happening- theft from people not the government.

Something else I find interesting is that a lot of OSS folks think this is fun to see happen and are actually rutting for A&B to get this little copyright theft ring going. The funny thing is, a lot of the OSS/gpled works are copyrighted in the US which means they will be fair game too. Could you imagine the frustration when Tivo Buys their GPLed works from A or B and claims they don't have to deal with and are not affected the GPLv2 or v3. There are a lot o consequences for everyone with this.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[monk.e.boy]

What do you think?

Not much by the looks of it. I doubt he could find his asshole with both hands.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[gravos]

Regardless, companies should know by now that any attempt to censor or remove (in particular, by the means of cease-and-desist letters) information will backfire, bigtime.

You can't argue this was intentional, either, because MediaDefender is just drawing bad press to themselves.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Flipao]

It sure is a fun way to make money?

heh.

[apodyopsis]

"They are shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted."

Always liked that phrase.

Re:heh.

[antime]

"They are squeezing the cheeks after the asstunnel has..."

Re:heh.

[monk.e.boy]

... evacuated?

Cat's Out

[Esion Modnar]

You want to bet that they (MediaDefender) should be more worried about what their clients make of the emails about them? 'Cuz you know they have a copy, and they ARE reading them. Can't unscramble an egg.

"Asstunnel"...

[pieaholicx]

You know...at first that seemed like a weird insult, but I'm starting to like it. I think I'll have to start bringing that into my usual insults.

Re:"Asstunnel"...

[Rob T Firefly]

I think I may have a new favorite expletive.

Re:"Asstunnel"...

[Down_in_the_Park]

Meganova:But fair is fair you guys did suffer over the past week so here's bit of advice to you guys: F*** you! F*** you again! F*** you again and again and again!"

arstechnica:(I'm guessing that an "asstunnel" is what you get when a European whose first language isn't English tries to say "asshole." It seemed awkward when I first read the response, but the expression has since grown on me.)

I guess it's more when a European thinks about an asshole that got "F*** you! F*** you again! F*** you again and again and again!" and by that turned into an asstunnel, but I'm just guessing.

Re:"Asstunnel"...

[elrous0]

Torrent fans to Mediadefender: "I've got two lots of news for you guys--one bad, the other worse. The bad news is that you're an asstunnel. The second is that we're all driving semis and buses."

Re:"Asstunnel"...

[pieaholicx]

Hmm...a fairly logical reason, but that still won't stop me from using it as an insult.

Ironic

[Ilex]

Ironic that MAFIAADefenders business model is based on stopping content leaking out onto P2P networks.

When they can't even stop their own internal emails and phone calls from leaking you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe their claims. To make matters worse they resort to legal nasty grams and censorship to try and suppress the evidence of their incompetence which makes them look all the more the fool.
To really put the cherry on the cake they're now resorting to illegal DDOS attacks, which for the most part have also failed.

If they were in any other business it would already be over for them, sadly for us, fortunately for them their clients are just the sort of gullible people who will keep doing business because they can't face the real truth. Their business model has failed.

Sadly we haven't heard the last of MAFIAADefender.

Re:Ironic

[CaptainZapp]

When they can't even stop their own internal emails and phone calls from leaking you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe their claims. To make matters worse they resort to legal nasty grams and censorship to try and suppress the evidence of their incompetence which makes them look all the more the fool.

One word: Diebold

Re:Ironic

[sumdumass]

Their job isn't really in stopping the content, it is to frustrate users into thinking paying for the stuff is easier and less time consuming. It is to break the model the P2P sites are using.

They can fail to remove the content in it's entirety and still succeed in their goals. I remember some sites that would take 20 downloads before getting a file that worked. To many, that site just became a "they never have the stuff" or it is too much bother, lets goto Itunes or Rapsody and get it. And these people are the ones who would pay for something anyways except for the fact that getting it free was so easy to do.

Re:Ironic

[TubeSteak]

Ironic that MAFIAADefenders business model is based on stopping content leaking out onto P2P networks.

When they can't even stop their own internal emails and phone calls from leaking you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe their claims. Maybe they should have hired one of the RIAA's lawyers instead of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.

Oh wait.
Even the RIAA's lawyers can't file a legally sound complaint.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/0246203

Re:Ironic

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

To make matters worse they resort to legal nasty grams and censorship to try and suppress the evidence of their incompetence which makes them look all the more the fool.

Wait, who are you talking about here? The RIAA or MediaDefender?

Re:Ironic

[grimJester]

I feel a bit dirty prefacing this with "to be fair", but... To be fair, their sales argument is probably that they slow the spread of new content rather than stop it completely. If a few of those who download a movie get a fake instead of the real thing, a few of those might end up seeing the movie in a theater instead.

I really don't think it's a flawed business model. We're talking millions of potential customers per movie. If just a thousand viewers find p2p downloads a hassle because of fake files or slow downloads and decide to pay for it instead, that's worth paying someone like MediaDefender a thousand bucks for. If the business model is flawed, it's only because nearly everything they do is illegal in one way or another. They have no right to interfere with someone else's downloads, regardless of how legal or illegal those downloads are.

Re:Ironic

[redcaboodle]

Their job isn't really in stopping the content, it is to frustrate users into thinking paying for the stuff is easier and less time consuming. It is to break the model the P2P sites are using.

They should ask for a raise - since their corporate masters are still working on making it more difficult to just buy the stuff. What with all kinds of DRM and silly restrictions like you cannot buy a single while the album is for sale. Not to mention songs played to death on the air for a month before you can actually buy the single anywhere.

Re:Ironic

[Jugalator]

To really put the cherry on the cake they're now resorting to illegal DDOS attacks, which for the most part have also failed. I keep reading this, but where does it say it was 1) a DDOS attack that took them down and 2) from MediaDefender. Not in this article at least; it's just speculative. Couldn't it just have been from the massive public interest during these events, impacting this major P2P news site? Has Slyck.com told their logs indicate this (their IP range) or what?

I searched Slyck for "ddos" but couldn't find anything:

Antispam groups come under heavy DDoS attack June 14, 2007
Estonian DDoS - a final analysis June 3, 2007
EveryDNS Under Botnet DDoS Attack December 4, 2006
bluetack server being DDoS'd? November 13, 2004 Why do so many think it's them and not just some other random fluke due to the lately very turbulent P2P week of news? It's not just this, but there was recently a huge eMule server bust too that has crippled that network, and many ed2k users have now had to turn to the decentralized Kademlia network, not that it's much worse. Actually, from my experience, it might even work better, now that everyone is using it.

Re:Ironic

[kalaf]

Very few people who want to see a movie in the theatre is going to watch a downloaded version at home instead. I'd guess most of those downloads are people either watching it again (because it was good) or feeling it isn't worth seeing in the theatre (because they think it won't be good).

Taking care of rich gullible corporations (or the government for that matter) may be a successful business model, and it's employed by a lot of companies, but I'd still call it "flawed".

Re:Ironic

[samwac7]

@Jugulator If you go to http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/ you will find a list of Mediadefender owned IP addresses that were used in the DDoS attack on the Mediadefender-defenders website.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[miknix]

s/asshole/asstunnel/

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

>That puts them at odds with federal computer crime statutes. What do you think?

That it looks like two criminal gangs fighting it out!

New leak!

[xtracto]

There is a new leak now! it is the source code of some of the MD applications in Piratebay.

Re:New leak!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also some interesting statistics created from the leaked tracking databases. The statistics include what times of the day and week are most popular for P2P pirates and which fake files have been uploaded the most.

More updates, leaks and news at:
http://mediadefender-defenders.com/

Re:New leak!

[Shining Celebi]

Can someone explain why the IP addresses are showing up as belonging in weird countries such as Algeria and the Philippines?

So they aren't as easily identified. If you read through their emails, you find a lot of talk about them getting hold of a lot of different IPs from all around the world.

Re:New leak!

[nxtw]

I'm thinking that these IP addresses are in error unless of course MediaDefender actually paid for servers in Africa (HIGHLY unlikely).

There's nothing stopping them from having a subnet routed to another location. If they want to be sneaky, they can even fool traceroute.

Go ahead!

[Eggplant62]

Try to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I dare ya.

Pandora's box also comes immediately to mind.

Re:Go ahead!

[elrous0]

Try to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Superman did it in that new crappy Richard Donner cut of "Superman 2." But that guy is from Krypton.

Oh great, good heavens, thank you

[unity100]

all we could ask for would be they showed their true colors, and boy, are they doing a good job showing it !

These are no longer "Trade Secrets"

[kwandar]

I note with interest that Sheppard Mullin (generally a good law firm in my experience, irrespective of their current client) are claiming that the items are "trade secrets". They've lost the argument before they started. The cat was out of the bag, and those emails have been seen and distributed far and wide. As such, these are no longer "trade secrets" (like the formula to coke). Their only recourse is against the Media-Defender Defenders whoever they may be. Good luck ever finding them, and if they do then what? Odds are that their total net worth is far less than what Media-Defender are paying Sheppard Mullin (they aren't cheap!!) :)

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Nicholas Evans]

Do you mean his asstunnel? (Mods - it's a joke from TFA.)

SCO Merger?

[Chapter80]

This seems like a perfect time for Media Defender and SCO to announce a merger.

Potential Nasdaq symbols: STNL, ASST, ASTNL

Re:First post ...

[pieaholicx]

...some asshats will represent themselves...the old-schoolers and the asshats...the asshats will have a... I believe you meant "asstunnel"?

ouch

[wwmedia]

"this site is located in Europe (I hope you can point it out on a map..."

Re:ouch

[jrwr00]

I'm the data manager, and I have no clue where it is, all i know prq.se is hosting it

Re:ouch

[IdleTime]

Yurope?

Isn't that the big blob in the middle of all that blue stuff down to the right on the picture of... what do you call it again??? Oh yeah, earth!

Can't keep a secret

[Keys1337]

They left a loose end allowing the true nature of Miivi.com to be discovered, then their 2nd attempt is Viide.com? I'm I the only one who gets an immediate mental association with old and new name? These guys must really suck at hide and seek.

Another Explosive Story Suppressed

[Erris]

Political Filtering of Email by Hotmail and AOL. M$ seems to be better at suppressing the news here than the MAFIAA is at suppressing the Media Defender story, but it won't last long.

Re:Another Explosive Story Suppressed

[lordtoran]

An explosive story is being suppressed by Microsoft? I'm sure when they can't hold it any more, it will burst out of their asstunnel in true projectile diarrhea fashion.

Re:Another Explosive Story Suppressed

[Macthorpe]

They fact that they've been blocked by five major mail vendors (AOL, Hotmail, MSN, WebTV and Yahoo) doesn't suggest 'news suppression', it suggests an over-zealous spam filter. They say they send out a lot of emails, and someone else pointed out that if a lot of those addresses have been closed down, they will get added to the spam filter.

It's only in your head (and, it seems, theirs) that this appears malicious. If this was really happening, don't you think that Slashdot emails to MSN addresses would be blocked too? Or does that not fit in with this tantrum you want to have?

Re:Another Explosive Story Suppressed

[birdboy2000]

As a hotmail user, I have no problems recieving regular e-mails from the SPUSA mailing list. Sometimes it really is incompetence, not censorship.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Pvt_Ryan]

I have to agree, as far as I am aware DDoS is a criminal offence..

what is their business model?

[Anonymous Coward]

quite interesting looking through some of the threads - a lot of work is done to produce GeoIP reports (i.e. working out countries where trackers are located)..

• is this to produce marketing output for the film studios?
• or is it to direct litigation effort at certain countries?

i.e. how do they make their money?

it gives an interesting top 10 of the complete turkey films that people can't even be bothered to track.

Re:what is their business model?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't fancy downloading 700MB and sifting through it to find out, so help me out here: what are the top 10 films people don't pirate?

I'm guessing at least one of them features Ben Afleck (Other than Gigli, obviously)

What law did they break!

[tjstork]

The FBI goes after anyone who breaks laws. If MediaDefender broke the law, then, yeah, they should be prosecuted.

The question is, what law did they break? It's not illegal to post fake versions of Universal's music when Universal gives you the legal rights to do exactly that. The only thing would be, if they did do denial of service attacks. However, if the target site is outside of American jurisdiction, it is not entirely clear that this is a crime.

Re:What law did they break!

[betterunixthanunix]

In theory, yes, the FBI should prosecute them. In practice, I doubt it will happen.

Speaking of theory, as long as they are operating here in the states, a denial of service attack is breaking the law. At the very least, they probably knocked out a few of their ISP's routers during the attack, which is technically harmful to their ISP. IANAL, but I think that is a violation of the law.

Re:What law did they break!

[elrous0]

The FBI goes after anyone who breaks laws.

How old ARE you?

Re:What law did they break!

[tjstork]

How old ARE you?

Old enough to know that your silly corporate conspiracy theories, are just that...

Re:What law did they break!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Us big boys sit at home posting on Slashdot about how everyone except us is corrupt, and how everyone is out to get us, how the Man is only there to oppress us, how democracy is broken, and how we live in a fascist police state. I guess you must be too immature to understand such things, and you probably still cling to the thought that there are shades of grey in the world. Ha! You probably also think that elected officials are more indicative of the wants and needs of the people than the opinion of a random Slashdotter! How foolish.

Re:What law did they break!

[Paradise Pete]

The FBI goes after anyone who breaks laws.

Yeah, I must admit it was pretty impressive how they locked up all those Sony execs after the rootkit CD fiasco.

Re:What law did they break!

[Man On Pink Corner]

Old enough to know that your silly corporate conspiracy theories, are just that...

Then I'm sure you have a good explanation for their lack of action on the Sony rootkit. If you or I had done that, we still wouldn't have our computers back.

Geez, open your eyes, dumbass. There is one law for the people, and one law for corporations.

Re:First post ...

[z0idberg]

no, asstunnel is only when you want to say asshole.

what he meant to say was asssombrero.

Torrentspy E-mails

[Anonymous Coward]

The courts recently ruled that the MPAA did no wrong when obtaining Torrentspy private e-mails: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/31/1334245

How is this any different aside from the fact that it is now the torrent sites gaining access to "Big Business" e-mail? Oh, right...

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[sumdumass]

Are you sure it isn't just a setup? I mean the emails were leaked somehow, It is pretty obvious about what would happen with them. Especially if they contained something juicy.

So now, they have known copy-righted works being purposely distributed on those networks which chose to ignore the legal legal remedy that is necessary before a massive lawsuit puts the file sharing networks out of business.

If you thought this outcome was obvious, what makes us think that they couldn't have thought about it too. Time will tell.

Why are they quoting her?

[I'm New Around Here]

How come they are quoting Ayn Rand? What can she possibly say that's relevant?

Maybe the editor just wants to start a flameware between Rand's supporters and opponents here on /. . Seems kind of juvenile.

The above comment is a joke. But I swear that the name I read while glancing at the submission.

Re:Why are they quoting her?

[elrous0]

Is your asstunnel feeling sore? Try the new Asstunnel Ice Plasmid(TM), available now from Ryan Industries!

they are spamming usenet too

[Anonymous Coward]

// // This file contains a list of // // // //
giganews news-60.giganews.com gn124059 V3Lrt // banned - searching only
easynews news.easynews.com pauldaman ebertsux37 // banned
giganews-2 news-60.giganews.com gn58936 J4nCid // good
easynews-2 news.easynews.com jomama2069 givemesome420 // good
usenetguide news.usenetguide.com Babykillah@usenetguide.com N7xVlE08 // banned
uncensorednewsfeed binaries.uncensorednewsfeed.com musicman tacobell // good
corenews news.corenews.com gde974cn 168umz // good

Necessary Futurama quote

[cpaalman]

Prof. Farnsworth: "This will not stand!" (people talking surprised together) "I'll take you on, you air balling bozos"
Bubblegum: "You old man? Hu! Sweet Clive, laugh derisively at him."
Sweet Clive: "Ahaha, ahaha, aahahaha."

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[clickety6]

apparently an ass-tunnel is just an ass-hole that's bigger and has more traffic entering and exiting it...

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty stupid. If they go out of business, what is MediaDefender going to sell?

They want rampant bittorrent piracy, except for their customers products, where they want to be able to demonstrate they made a huge difference where law suits didn't.

US disrespected

[wytcld]

Meganova's response says. "In case you haven't noticed, this site is located in Europe (I hope you can point it out on a map) where your stupid copyright claims have no base."

Can we see a connection between the official US government disregard of "silly" things like international treaties against torture, and now this disrespect by some Europeans of claims based in US law? Europeans just aren't following the US example any more. For instance, to the EU, Microsoft is officially an abusive monopoly; in the US they've been given a pass. So it's not just European individuals, but top government bodies which no longer respect US sensibilities and precedents.

Between Media Defender and Media-Defender Defender, both sides are playing dirty. That's far worse for a "legitimate" corporation to do than for a loose confederation of mostly teen hackers, so in a sane world Media Defender would be stripped of its corporate charter and dissolved. But the US has tried to establish as its new norm that there is no law for corporations, no punishment for their harms to society or nature. The blowback from this, from regions of the world - especially the EU - that still have norms of law applying to all (except French leaders while in office, but that's another story), will be major.

Re:US disrespected

[robbiethefett]

It really bothers me when people refer to this policy as "new" as if the U.S. never had things like robber-barons and big-oil-controlled-government. The woes of the industrial revolution are coming back, just in time it seems, since most Americans don't seem to remember high school history class.

Corporations and their umbrellas are the triangle shirtwaste's of our age. Instead of being chained to a sewing machine, we are chained to our electronic devices. Of course they aren't "ours" as we are only leasing the privledge of using them, at least if the corporations have their way.

Re:US disrespected

[zcsteele]

The woes of the industrial revolution are coming back, just in time it seems, since most Americans don't seem to remember high school history class. Most Americans' knowledge of history can be summed up as follows:

1. George Washington chopped down a cherry tree
2. Abraham Lincoln ended slavery
3. Nazis are evil anti-Jews

George Santayana said it best: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked

[wwmedia]

just in

MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked

Re:MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked

[Spy der Mann]

Thanks for that, I really hope that after knowing their algorithm, we can counter them more efficiently. I'm just sick tired of those "uncensored / full / full version" .zip/.exe/.com fake files that appear in all my queries. They're like P2P SPAM.

Re:MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked

[padonak]

This is actually a very weak countermeasure, because these files are easy to recognise - they have unreasonably high availability.
Hopefully the more nasty tricks like clogging of upload queues will be defeated after P2P developers look at MD's code.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Meh, I'd rather have these guys than lawyers.

[Calledor]

Honestly, while I think publishers piss their money away with firms like the existence of this warms my heart if only because it creates a scenario reserved for RPGs. I mean fucking lawful evil vs. chaotic neutral. Also, Sup com, I pre-ordered this time. It was my gf that pirated it to see if the full version ran on her old laptop (barely) and then bought it with her new laptop because she loved it. Congrats publishers, not only did this company fail at "defending" your media, their failure actually worked to your benefit.

Re:First post ...

[lordtoran]

Wrong. He meant assumbrella.

MediaDefender + SCO = ???

[scottsk]

I am worried that the soon-to-be-unemployed forces of both SCO and MediaDefender will get together somehow and form a new venture.

They're mercenaries

[Spy der Mann]

and they work for the RIAA. So if you're against the RIAA, as I think almost everybody here is, you can safely assume they're "the bad guys".

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Mushdot]

No wonder the emails leaked out.

Re:Doesn't work that way...

[kwandar]

Good points; I'd even mod you up, but you're responding to my comment :)

I agree that courts may well allow that these are trade secrets ont he basis that they been released through no fault of their own; however there is a practical limitation to this. The information hasn't just been released locally, or in the United States, but worldwide.

The US courts don't even have jurisdiction in those locales, and if the Court looks at the big picture are they going to want to enforce an impossibility? I'm not even sure what (I'm not from the US, btw) relief they can expect to achieve in getting a claim for trade secret upheld.

With respect, I think Chapter 7 or 11 are extreme given it is early days, and they probably only have limited creditors at this time. No point if you don't owe much money. With a name change, or two, or three, there is a good chance they will go back to doing what they've been doing, albiet with more security.

DDoS

[Nom du Keyboard]

Ars notes that MediaDefender seems to be behind a DDoS attack against the site that originally leaked its email.

Wouldn't that be even more illegal than what they're already doing?

Re:DDoS

[mink]

Some of the e-mails seem to say they are activly torrenting child pornand beastiality vids.
Overall I dont think there is much good they do.

Re:"Asstunnel"...TAG AWAY

[Nom du Keyboard]

You know...at first that seemed like a weird insult, but I'm starting to like it. I think I'll have to start bringing that into my usual insults.

And it makes a great Slashdot Tag too.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[ShieldW0lf]

Don't do it.

Yes, you... I know you're thinking about it.

Leave the goatse link out.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[ShieldW0lf]

Has anyone actually read these emails?

I tried to download the torrent, but all I got was a bad rip of Fight Club...

Series of tubes^W tunnels!

[MacDork]

How the internet works - with asstunnels!

Re:Streisand effect?

[Carewolf]

New name for the Xenu effect. Don't know why they renamed it though. Strangely the wikipedia article doesn't even mention the much older Scientology conflict.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Did Sony break the law?

[tjstork]

I don't think so. You opened the CD, you accepted the license. If you don't want the CD, then don't engage in the contract with Sony. I don't. Neither do most people. Hell, I've discovered that really, I don't even need to buy much music at all.

Re:Did Sony break the law?

[Paradise Pete]

I don't think so. You opened the CD, you accepted the license.

You're kidding, right? Do you really think buyers (sorry... 'licensees') legally agreed to let Sony do what they did? By that logic, all malware would be perfectly legal as long as they could dupe you into 'accepting' a license. What if the license said you will send us all your money in exchange for listening to this CD? COuld they come 'round to collect your house if you don't pay?

Re:Did Sony break the law?

[meringuoid]

I don't think so. You opened the CD, you accepted the license. If you don't want the CD, then don't engage in the contract with Sony.

What contract would this be? When I buy a CD, I enter into a contract for sale of goods with a record store. I don't enter into any negotiations of any kind with Sony.

Re:Did Sony break the law?

[tjstork]

You're kidding, right?

I didn't say it was good. I said that it was legal. But, under the DMCA, you are allowed to bundle copy protection with your works and it is against the law to try and defeat that protection. So, even though what Sony did sucks, in the worst case, its a misrepresentation and a commercial thing, not necessarily a criminal one.

Re:Did Sony break the law?

[Paradise Pete]

ut, under the DMCA, you are allowed to bundle copy protection with your works

But that's not what they did. "copy protection" doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with the computer. They injected a rootkit. That software remained on the computer forever unless the user figured out how to forcibly remove it, even if he had long-ago gotten rid of the CD.

From the wikipedia description:

The first time a user attempts to play such a CD on a Windows system, a program will be installed even before a dialog box prompts the user to accept a license agreement.[6] The EULA did not mention that it installed hidden software. The software will then remain resident in the user's system, intercepting all accesses of the CD drive to prevent any media player or ripper software other than the one included with XCP-Aurora from accessing the music tracks of the Sony CD. No obvious way to uninstall the program is provided. Attempting to remove the software by deleting the associated files manually will render the CD drive inoperable due to registry settings that the program has altered.

If you or I had done exactly that we'd be in jail right now.

Re:Did Sony break the law?

[tjstork]

If you or I had done exactly that we'd be in jail right now

Yeah, that's true. Maybe the gov't should indict Sony USA then, and just shut that down. I used to work for RCA way back in the day, so watching Sony get destroyed wouldn't be all that bad.

Re:Streisand effect?

[moderatorrater]

there was a website that was taking pictures of the california coast, including some property owned by Streisand. She got mad and sued the company because she didn't want people to look at it, the company won and by the end everyone who'd even heard of the internet had seen the picture.

Well, let's see how long this will live

[Opportunist]

It could be a 09F91102... or a Sony Rootkit.

What I mean is, how many people actually remember what magic number started with 09F91102? It was the hype of 2 months (or was that 3?) ago. Doubt anyone but the most dedicated anti-DRM people remember what it was about.

Sony and its Rootkit troubles certainly lived for longer. Why is that? Maybe because it wasn't a one-time hype. The "forbidden number" was news for about 3 days. Maybe a week. Afterwards? Dead. Sony and its Rootkit lived on longer. Why? Because Sony kept spewing "it's no rootkit, it's just security, nothing to see here" crap.

In short, if you want to hush up something, do it: Hush up. Don't talk about it. Don't create elaborate counterstatements and try to limit damage. For some odd reason, geeks only get interested in a problem if the company that creates it actually keeps talking about it. If you want a geek to shut up about your malware, just say "you're right, satisfied?", and behold, he will be.

So if you don't want this to die, keep talking, people!

Freedom does not need an excuse.

[Erris]

It's only in your head (and, it seems, theirs) that this appears malicious. If this was really happening, don't you think that Slashdot emails to MSN addresses would be blocked too?

It's hard to tell if Slashdot emails are being blocked or not, but that's just more cause to advocate free software and a free internet. The only way to prevent abuse is to outlaw involuntary filtering. The right to use bandwith as you please should be legally protected. Restrictions for harmless activity with what you have paid and own is unAmerican.

Re:Freedom does not need an excuse.

[Macthorpe]

It's hard to tell if Slashdot emails are being blocked or not... The only way to prevent abuse... The right to use bandwith as you please... Restrictions for harmless activity... unAmerican Can you cut the rhetoric out and make your point? Which is, I assume, that you would rather filter your mail yourself than have your provider do it for you?

Plenty of services do that (Gmail for example), and you're perfectly free to join those instead, but don't be surprised when notoriously well-spammed sites like Hotmail start to be a bit more proactive with preventing spam from inconveniencing their users.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[dc29A]

Has anyone actually read these emails?

I tried to download the torrent, but all I got was a bad rip of Fight Club... This site has everything so far.

Re:Did you hear the one about blocked emai?

[Macthorpe]

Did you really post this exact same comment to 2 completely unrelated stories?

Wow. Maybe I should post my rebuttal twice as well!

They fact that they've been blocked by five major mail vendors (AOL, Hotmail, MSN, WebTV and Yahoo) doesn't suggest 'news suppression', it suggests an over-zealous spam filter. They say they send out a lot of emails, and someone else pointed out that if a lot of those addresses have been closed down, they will get added to the spam filter.

It's only in your head (and, it seems, theirs) that this appears malicious. If this was really happening, don't you think that Slashdot emails to MSN addresses would be blocked too? Or does that not fit in with this tantrum you want to have?

Media Defender...it's a series of ...

[bmo]

Asstunnels.

FTFA: "Dearest little asstunnels"

Is it a tunnel within an ass or is it a tunnel made of asses?

"You are in a series of twisty little asstunnels, all alike. It is dark in here. You might be eaten by a gerbil"

--
BMO

Re:Media Defender...it's a series of ...

[boteeka]

With all these internal errors on Slashdot, apparently those dear little asstunnels got Slashdot too. Holy crap! They're in my kitchen already! Eating up all my tuna! F*** you! F*** you again! F*** you again and again and again!

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[orclevegam]

So now, they have known copy-righted works being purposely distributed on those networks which chose to ignore the legal legal remedy that is necessary before a massive lawsuit puts the file sharing networks out of business.

A network can't go out of business. The company hosting a network can, or the company hosting the software for the network, but not the network itself. P2P by its very nature will not die without major government intervention, and even then it won't until the internet is behind lock and key that the government controls. Worst case scenario, all the public P2P networks switch to a darknet style of operation.

Re:Doesn't work that way...

[Paradise Pete]

I would have taken a long look at advising MD to cut their losses, file criminal reports, and hit Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 while they still have some assets worth liquidating.

Somebody at Media Defender has been making a lot of money. That person is not going to let this cash cow disappear. Media Defender will die, but he will start up a new company that he'll pitch as "it's like Media Defender two-point-oh! Now we'll really get those bastards!" And it will all begin again.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[starnix]

LOL... My Bad.

s/Final word to Ars's Ryan Paul

[SpaceLifeForm]

Final word *from* Ars's Ryan Paul.

Sheesh.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[dj_tla]

The emails were obtained by cracking the password to a MediaDefender employee's gmail account. He had forwarded all his MediaDefender email to his gmail account.

Source: the description on the torrent on ThePirateBay.

Screw the source code!

[Khyber]

Check their emails. What're they protected with? Their e-mail messages are protected by the free version of AVG -- copyrighted software that, for business use, requires a purchase to use. THEY ARE COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS, THEMSELVES! Hypocrites, every last one of them!

Re:Screw the source code!

[fafalone]

They steal source code too, example:

MovieMakerModule.cpp Line 497: // Stolen code, begin
Line 560: // Stolen code - end

If you're going to steal code, it's not a good idea to put in comments announcing it's stolen. Of course scumbag crap is what they're about, so they probably are just fine with copy/pasting code.

Oh my god... they are stupid...

[BlueParrot]

When the e-mails were leaked I called for them to DMCA it as that would effectively confirm the leaked information as authentic while doing nothing to prevent its spread. I sarcastically ended that comment with "you have to outdo your own incompetence somehow". Little did I know they were actually going to be that fucking stupid. There is a reason the military, NRC, CIA etc.. has a policy of never confirming or denying leaks. Doing so would essentially confirm/debunk the accuracy of the leaked information. Good job MD, you just made a mistake most people have known not to do for more than a century. Idiots...

Legal Double Threat

[Khyber]

Not only are they DDoSing sites, but take a look at their emails. Notice what they're protected with? AVG FREE EDITION. They're not only violating Federal Computer Crime statutes but also in violation of Grisoft's copyright.

anyone behind a DDoS attack is a criminal

[DragonTHC]

the FBI should raid their offices and lock them all up for this sort of crime.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[gerrysteele]

I have to say i thought, one way or another it was an inside job. And even if they were going out of business, it would make more of an excuse to your backers if the entire internet was taking the piss out of you.

MediaDefender is currently at Grisoft's Mercy

[Khyber]

Note what virus protection is used on the MD emails. Hello, massive copyright violation with LOADS of dated proof as to how long they've been illegally running a not-for-business version of AVG. Ironic, indeed.

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[iron-kurton]

Cobras *ssssssss*
Panthers *MEOW*

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[orclevegam]

P2P cannot be suppressed by the government, the few cannot silence the many.

They can if allowed to posses the proper leverage. This is why it's advisable to give governments only as much power as absolutely necessary.

Mod fafalone up +5 Informative

[Khyber]

Just checked the source code. It's confirmed. Now who owns THAT particular piece of code?

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[boteeka]

Maybe with an advice like this, they would have greater success in stopping spread this package of embarrassment:

so here's bit of advice to you guys: F*** you! F*** you again! F*** you again and again and again! Or not. But who cares. What was the name of this asstunnel company anyway?

Re:Streisand effect?

[AJWM]

Should call it the Obi Wan effect "If you strike me down, Darth Vader, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine".

Sig2Dat

[Palpitations]

A quick google code search later, and it looks like it's from Sig2Dat. The code in questions starts around line 393 of sig2dat.c

I've just briefly looked around, but so far I haven't had any luck finding any kind of license for it.

Re:Bankruptcy may be premature

[Raenex]

they're basically a boutique offering an extremely narrow range of products, virtually all of which have been rendered worthless by the latest leak They have more than just the tools. They have the experience, infrastructure, and business contacts in place. Also, the technology is a cat and mouse game, so the tools are constantly adapted. A one-time leak isn't the end of the world.

I'd think having all their email exposed is the biggest threat, as their method of operating may be found to be illegal.

Maybe MediaDefender has a mole problem...

[Kadin2048]

The source is important.

Personally, I'm not sure that I believe it, at least not that it's 100% of the story. If it were just the emails, then I'd believe it was just a random hacking of some idiot's GMail account. However, there's also a taped phone conversation between someone at MediaDefender and someone at the New York State Attorney General's office floating around, and that's something that seems like it'd be harder to just find randomly.

I think it's entirely possible that the person or persons who are behind both the leaked email and the phone conversation are actually working inside MediaDefender. I'm not suggesting that the emails or the convo is a deliberate plant -- the MD people don't strike me as that smart nor that subtle -- but rather I think someone inside their company has more sympathy for the pirates than for MD's customers.

To be honest I think the phone conversation is really much more interesting than the emails are; I really tend to wonder whether both people on the line knew they were being taped, and whether the taping was being done as a CMA policy by MD executives, or if it was something that a disgruntled employee did by themselves.

Although it might seem a bit farfetched now, as technology issues become more important to more people, and start to impinge more on daily life, I think we're going to see the level of effort that people are willing to spend rectifying perceived injustices increase significantly. It's not impossible to imagine someone who feels strongly about an issue getting themselves hired at a company they hate, purely to undermine them or conduct espionage. This already isn't unheard of in political campaigns; extending it to tech issues isn't that big of a stretch.

Now I know why we need IPv6

[u-235-sentinel]

After quickly looking at the mediadefender_decoy_upload_iplist.txt, these guys are taking up way too many addresses and need to be cutting back. IPv6 isn't being rolled out fast enough to meet their needs. ;-)

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[Madsy]

A move instead of the e-mails? Probably one of MediaDefender's decoy torrents

Re:Are they the good guys or the bad guys?

[bcmm]

Goatse.ca is a currently working mirror, and has a much larger image than the thumbs on Google.

Just providing this useful information in case anyone ever needs it.