MediaDefender Explains Itself

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has an interview with MediaDefender in which they try to explain why they attacked Revision3, which uses BitTorrent to host its own content. Somehow it eluded MediaDefender that they had injected fake content into Revision3's tracker, so when Revision3 changed configuration to forbid this injection, MediaDefender's systems saw it as a pirate tracker with lots of illegal content (which MediaDefender had put there) and attacked. In other words, everything they did was intentional except for the choice of target. Given that they have 9 Gbps of bandwidth dedicated to denial-of-service attacks against torrent trackers, all anyone needs to do is to trick them into attacking a hospital or government facility. MediaDefender has never been very competent, after all."

Comments

Mediadefender is the Punisher

[flerchin]

How is any of this legal? Injecting content, false or otherwise? DOS'ing a server? They're fighting fire with fire.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Xiph]

I fully agree, they admit two doing two things that are not legal.

Unauthorized access and Denial of Service attack.

I'm not quite sure of the details though, were they using a bug to plant the torrents or was the tracker just negligently configured?
The above matters for whether they were hacking(non-geek) or simply using it without authorization.

anyway, "bad boy!" to MediaDefender, surprise surprise.
But will the shit stick all the way to those truly responsible?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[nurb432]

I don't think you can use the unauthorized access if it was a public tracker, but i agree that i don't see how a DoS can be legal under ANY circumstance.

Take down letters, ISP turning your account off due to court order, sure.. But an intentional DoS? WTF?

Since when does 2 illegal acts cancel each other out ( not to mention no illegal act was being committed by Revision3 anyway )?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[arbiter1]

the injecting of fake stuff on the fake content they can get away with, but the ddos attack is straight illegal in any forum no matter who its directed at since it not only effects the site in question but the connection of the company that host's it takes the assault and it effects the rest of their business.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[RobertM1968]

There are actually serious laws against this. If you or I did this, we'd spend quite some time in jail, and have to pay quite a large amount in fines. The criminal and civil penalties are not small. Not to mention the probability of losing (the "right" to) Internet access for some period of time (by court order). It's happened before (and been covered here).

But... how much you want to bet that MediaDefender gets off with less than a slap on the wrist?

With luck, at the very least, MediaDefender will lose the civil suit brought against them and pay that way.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[mazarin5]

Worse, they're fighting a fire they started with more fire!

If I ever need a good defense against an arson charge, this will be it.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[HappySmileMan]

What's most disturbing is that I doubt any court will ever find them guilty of a crime for this, if charges are even pressed.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Perp Atuitie]

I think they'd have an excellent chance of being found guilty in a criminal prosecution. The roadblock will be getting a prosecutor or press charges. Once they are in court, they really ahve no defense. Far as I know, the "I didn't know the gun was loaded" excuse has a very bad track record. Any random jury would be very likely to send these crooks to prison, and rightly so.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Darkness404]

This is a great time to flood congresses inboxes with letters asking them to convect these people, though I would wait until the FBI investigation comes to an end first...

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Original Replica]

The roadblock will be getting a prosecutor or press charges

Can't they just hire any lawyer for legal advice and then press charges themselves? It would stnd to reason that if you have the right to be your own lawyer for defense your could be your own lawyer for prosecution of crimes committed against you.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Dragonslicer]

Can't they just hire any lawyer for legal advice and then press charges themselves? It would stnd to reason that if you have the right to be your own lawyer for defense your could be your own lawyer for prosecution of crimes committed against you. If I remember correctly, the victim isn't the prosecutor in criminal cases, the state is (hence criminal trials always being "State vs. Doe"). If a crime has been committed, a prosecutor from the District Attorney's office is assigned to the trial.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[qeveren]

While it was publicly accessible, I don't believe it was a public tracker, in that users other than Revision 3 staff should not have been able to upload new torrents to it; unless my understanding of the situation is completely off.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Opportunist]

I wouldn't wait. It wouldn't be the first FBI investigation that turned up the result that is most politically favorable, do it would be a good thing to ensure the politically favorable result is the right one.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[cheater512]

To increase speed, their tracker would track for any torrent id.
They wouldn't host arbitrary torrents, only track them.

They saw it was being used by other people so they disabled that.
You know the rest.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[burroughsj1]

It would stnd to reason that if you have the right to be your own lawyer for defense your could be your own lawyer for prosecution of crimes committed against you.
In a criminal case, the "victim" is not the individual, but rather society as a whole. The State brings the charges, because the state is the "victim." That's why the individual doesn't get to decide whether or not charges are filed, or have the final say in punishment. The individual victim's recourse is to file a civil suit.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[cheater512]

Yep. It would track external torrents, but not host them.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[ehrichweiss]

The State brings the charges, because the state is the "victim." That's why the individual doesn't get to decide whether or not charges are filed, or have the final say in punishment.

As far as I know, that is only true for commonwealths because the commonwealth is supposed to take over those kinds of decisions for the greater good for all...or something like that.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[billcopc]

If I were to do this against any arbitrary server and got caught, I'd be sued to oblivion.

What do we have here ? We have evidence, a confession, and implicit admission of guilt (their system is designed to blast servers). What are we waiting for ? Jesus ain't coming back, so we're going to have to purge these bastards ourselves.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[burroughsj1]

The State brings the charges, because the state is the "victim." That's why the individual doesn't get to decide whether or not charges are filed, or have the final say in punishment. As far as I know, that is only true for commonwealths because the commonwealth is supposed to take over those kinds of decisions for the greater good for all...or something like that.
I hope that's not the case, or else I've wasted the last few years of my life, and a lot of money... :)
(IANAL yet, but hopefully very soon!)

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[LrdDimwit]

More to the point, whether or not it was before, it became unauthorized access when Revision3 locked down the server. Then it got DoS'ed? I'm sorry, but I don't buy this explanation. If you see a lot of unauthorized activity from a tracker, then you take it thru the proper channels -- contact the admins, send proper DMCA takedown notices, etc. As much as everyone here hates the DMCA, if this kind of situation isn't what takedown notices are for, then they really are *totally* useless (and not just mostly useless). You don't simply assume it's a bad-guy tracker.

And then there's the part where they openly admit to using DoS attacks against trackers. That part is really brilliant. I'd like to see what law they're looking at where that's a "grey area".

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[tomhudson]

... but of course they can file a civil suit at any time.

Ankle-biters sometimes have a purpose ...

Still, if you look at the SCO case, "don't hold your breath" is good advice. MediaDefender will just go bankrupt. Mind you, R3 could use this as an excuse for LOTS of discovery, and post the results as video news. "Today we got the perl scripts that are the heart of MediaDefender ..."

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[tomhudson]

Actually they can't get away with the "fake torrent" stuff either - the torrents they put up were for copyright material, which they then tracked to see who was downloading the stuff. In other words, they enabled copyright infringement, then went after the downloaders with "we know you've been infringing - contact the settlement center."

Since they were working with the blessing of the **AA, what that means is that anyone downloading from one of those torrents isn't guilty of copyright infringement, since the download was made available with the knowledge and consent of the **AA.

Discovery is going to be really nasty in this case.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[SpaceLifeForm]

Just A DOS, not a DDOS. We have no proof that MediaDefender is in control of one or more botnets.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[schon]

the "I didn't know the gun was loaded" excuse has a very bad track record. The thing is, this isn't even "I didn't know the gun was loaded." This is more like "I loaded the gun and pulled the trigger, but I didn't realize who I was pointing it at."

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Anonymous Coward]

Were I a hacker and wanting to take down MediaDefender, I think fbi.gov and nearly anything *.mil would be great targets for them to "attack" ... eh, add whitehouse.gov also. Can't be too careful.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[jtdennis]

Just A DOS, not a DDOS. We have no proof that MediaDefender
is in control of one or more botnets. As Jim Lauderback mentioned in TWiT tonight, it was from multiple IPs (even though MediaDefender owned them all), and thus a distributed attack. If it were a DOS, they could have blocked the single IP and the attack would end.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[weber]

Actually they can't get away with the "fake torrent" stuff either [...] Since they were working with the blessing of the **AA, what that means is that anyone downloading from one of those torrents isn't guilty of copyright infringement, since the download was made available with the knowledge and consent of the **AA. You forget that downloaders are also uploaders, so if **AA connect with another client that doesn't have the file(s), the other downloaders will start uploading to that one.

And I don't think it matters who you upload to - even the copyright holder. You don't have permission to distribute, period. (and here someone will provide a link to the court case where they argue it's not infringing to upload to an authorized agent of the copyright holder)

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Tuoqui]

Implied Consent...

They charged someone with the power to act on their behalf (MediaDefender) who presumably had permission to upload these files to the the internet via Bittorrent. They *KNOW* how Bittorrent works and theres no way in hell they're gonna be able to claim ignorance on that after all the campaigning they've done to try to kill P2P ever since the Napster days.

By uploading it on bittorrent they knew that others would grab peices from others thus reducing the load on their servers (which is what Bittorrent distribution is all about!) so in other words, the downloaders who are also uploaders are reducing the strain on their servers and should charge them for using their machine as a server.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[devilspgd]

Don't forget the "It's a specially designed gun that only goes off when it's pointed at someone, regardless of who"

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[hairyfeet]

You know,that is what I really don't understand either. if anyone of us would have tried this extreme level of asshatery, we would all be sitting in a holding cell waiting on our lawyers while our machines were searched for evidence. While I know that in a plutocracy such as ours that the rich can get away with a lot more BS than we can, but this kind of massive rogue asshatery can costs major businesses major money. So why haven't THEY been raided? And is anyone like the EFF calling for their arrests? because IMHO this is EXACTLY the kinds of attacks that the cybercrimes laws was written for. It seems to me to be an open and shut slam dunk for any prosecutor. But that is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[SanityInAnarchy]

Mind you, R3 could use this as an excuse for LOTS of discovery, and post the results as video news. "Today we got the perl scripts that are the heart of MediaDefender ..." I'm not sure if that's true, but if they do, I'll have to start watching R3.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[SanityInAnarchy]

If it were a DOS, they could have blocked the single IP and the attack would end. Block it from where? (And why not do the same for multiple IPs?)

It's my understanding that any DoS is going to be problematic. So long as they have more bandwidth than you do, you're hosed, right?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Tacvek]

Well, we do have the informal notion of "pressing charges". Basically, in many cases the testimony of the victim is crucial to a prosecution winning the case. Hence if the victim refuses to testify, the case must be dropped, or the victim compelled to testify. Compelling a victim to testify is terrible form, so it is not uncommon for the case to be dropped, or formal charges never filed if the victim indicates that they are not willing to testify. Further, I am not certain, but there might be cases where victims rights would prevent the compelling of testimony.

However, there are Common Law countries, where private prosecution is possible. AIUI, generally, in those places any attorney that has been admitted to the bar of the court (i.e. is a barrister) can file criminal charges by following the exact same procedure the Prosecutor's Office follows. From that point forward, the case is treated no differently than any case brought by the Prosecutor's Office. The Office can terminate the prosecution or assign a new prosecutor (i.e. assume control of the case), just like with it's own cases.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[mpe]

If I were to do this against any arbitrary server and got caught, I'd be sued to oblivion.

Or you'd have the police come and take you away.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[mpe]

I think they'd have an excellent chance of being found guilty in a criminal prosecution. The roadblock will be getting a prosecutor or press charges.

The basic problem is "how do you get criminal law applied to a corporation in any meaningful way?" Which includes preventing them from being "business as usual" until the end of the trial.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Tacvek]

Actually, in this case, it sounds like the tracker in question was open, and so other people started using it to track infringing files without Revision3's knowledge or consent. MediaDefender notices this and adds fake content, as well as presumable connecting to non-fake content and requesting pieces to gather evidence against the uploaders.

Now when Revision3 made the change, MediaDefender thought that this tracker had become a private tracker (one of those password needed-trackers) when in fact it just stopped tracking files other than those Revision3 had intended it to track.

MediaDefender then begins DoSing the server, trying to take down this "private tracker". Even at this point MediaDefender was completely unaware that this was tracker intended for Legal content only, or that it was Revision3's tracker in particular. As far as MediaDefender knew, it was just another tracker that was tracking infringing content.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Kijori]

A private prosecution is possible over here (the UK); I don't know if it is in the US. Basically a privately hired lawyer prosecutes rather than the state; this is normally because the case is "not in the public interest" or because the state judges the chances of conviction to be too low to bother. If the situation changes the state can take over the prosecution at a later stage - either to continue the prosecution or to drop it.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[aproposofwhat]

A few ounces of Semtex at each of the Co-Lo sites listed at the end of this filing should sort out the 9 gig of offensive power.

Then we can start getting the buggers through the courts.

There is absolutely no way that a DDOS on this scale, where the source can be identified, can be accepted as legal.

What got me was the quote from the FBI source that this was a 'legal gray area'.

Intentional sabotage of a service? How the hell is that 'gray'?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[aproposofwhat]

If you're going to reply to this post, please read it first!

Ok - read your post.

The solution is to get Mediadefender's provider(s) to block the packets at source or, as I suggested further up, to deploy a few ounces of Semtex (or C4 if you're that primitive) on the fibre from each of MD's colocation sites.

Realistically, if I was running a co-lo site and someone complained about a DOS attack, I'd block all outbound traffic from the relevant servers as a matter of courtesy until the owners explained themselves.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[AK Marc]

Since they were working with the blessing of the **AA, what that means is that anyone downloading from one of those torrents isn't guilty of copyright infringement, since the download was made available with the knowledge and consent of the **AA.

But that's not the way it works. The RIAA does not give permission to Media Defender to copy or distribute anything. That means that MD is breaking the law. However, the RIAA does not want MD prosecuted. So they don't persue a civil case. However, it could be argued that MD benefits financially from distributing the files, so criminal charges could be brought regardless of whether the RIAA wants them, but I don't think that will happen. Both MD and the RIAA want this arrangement. So that if MD serves anyone any file, they presume it's being distributed (without ever receiving the file), know it is unauthorized, and put them on the list. Or, to put it in the silly way it is really being done, MD is being paid to illegaly share files, illegally download files, and track who they illegally deal with in order for very selective prosecution of the laws to be done. Oh, and MD is instructed to perform illegal DoS attacks against sites allowing traffic they can't track (which they performed flawlessly in this case).

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[hostyle]

No. Its not trivial to block SYn flods (which is what this was), but its not magic either: http://cr.yp.to/syncookies.html / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_cookies

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[hostyle]

s/Syn flods/SYN floods/

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Mateo_LeFou]

'One bureau source told THREAT LEVEL that it was a "gray" area in federal computer security law.'

Black: An individual DoSing a big company
White: A big company DoSing a small company
Grey: A big company DoSing another big company

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[jvkjvk]

I believe you have a couple of facts wrong. First, the tracker was not "open" per-se. MediaDefender utilized an exploit, or hack as they are sometimes called to illegally access another system and illegally plant data. I don't know where you got the part about other people also illegally accessing Rev3's systems but perhaps I missed it. To my knowledge it was not MD noticing illegal torrents - it was MD noticing the perfectly legal torrents that Rev3 hosts themselves.

It doesn't fscking matter if it was or was not "another tracker that was tracking infringing content". It doesn't matter that MD was "completely unaware that this tracker was intended for Legal content only." It is criminally illegal in the US to 1) hack into other people's systems 2) DOS other people's systems - (and here's the point you seem to miss in your apologia) regardless of any criminal activity on those systems. Full stop.

There is no wiggle room for MD here especially since they have admitted to the crimes. The only thing that could save them is the corporate cash defense - "we have a lot of money, and corporations run by a higher law so we're obviously not guilty." Unfortunately, that one seems to work all too well today.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Anonymous Coward]

you think a DOS against Akamai is a good idea ?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[sjames]

I don't think you can use the unauthorized access if it was a public tracker, but i agree that i don't see how a DoS can be legal under ANY circumstance.

I don't think it was intended to be public access. It's more like accidentally leaving your door unlocked. That doesn't constitute an invitation to haul your TV away and isn't a get out of jail free card for anyone who does that.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Anonymous Coward]

they admit two doing two things that are not legal.

What's even more interesting is this:

Given that they have 9 Gbps of bandwidth dedicated to denial-of-service attacks against torrent trackers

It wasn't merely a slipup; it was premeditated. They have dedicated a lot of resources to what appears to be solely intended for illegal activity.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Tacvek]

See the article: "At Fenopy.com, Revision3's tracker was used for 296,000 downloads, mostly of unauthorized copyrighted movies, Saaf said."

The only way that could be true is if the tracker was open. Unless those "unauthorized movies" were MD fakes, but then that statement would still be false because MD fakes are definately not "unauthorized copyrighted movies". So I conclude that those must have been real, in which case the tracker must be open, or at least exploited by people other than MD.

I made no claim that what MD did was right, or legal. I am just clarifying what the article clearly implies about what actually happened.

The article definitely makes it sound like there were non-authorized files that were not MD's fakes on the tracker. When those were dropped, MD assumed the tracker when private. It sounds like the fact that MD had fakes on the server was unrelated to the DoS.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[FuturePastNow]

Revision 3 is uniquely suited to distributing any information they find...

I for one hope they don't roll over and accept some confidential out-of-court settlement for this. Taking this all the way would be expensive, but R3 will make the short list of true internet heroes if they push this.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Mind you, R3 could use this as an excuse for LOTS of discovery, and post the results as video news. "Today we got the perl scripts that are the heart of MediaDefender ..."

They may be allowed to view/copy the Perl scripts, but they certainly wouldn't be allowed to distribute them (it would expose them to horrendous counterclaims). Subpoenaed company secrets have to be protected. I am not a lawyer.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[SanityInAnarchy]

I understand what a syn flood is, but that's not even relevant -- I was simply pointing out that it's possible to crush people with raw bandwidth. I suspect MediaDefender has a bigger pipe than Rev3, so I don't see anything Rev3 can do (by themselves) to even block a ping flood.

I mean, yes, they could keep their servers up if they use syncookies. Maybe -- 8k packets per second is quite a lot. But they'd still effectively be DoS'd, as they'd have no bandwidth left to serve legitimate customers.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[T.E.D.]

If I remember correctly, the victim isn't the prosecutor in criminal cases, the state is (hence criminal trials always being "State vs. Doe"). If a crime has been committed, a prosecutor from the District Attorney's office is assigned to the trial.

In the GP's defense, the writers of the Daredevil movie got this wrong too. :-(

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[hostyle]

Find out the source, and contact their provider. Unless you're close hop wise, or their provider is an ass, or they are the provider themselves (but then you have bigger issues). Of course it may take a while to determine the source ...

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[SpiderClan]

Why do you start by assuming the statement is true?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[tomhudson]

Watch their "Scam School" I use Miro (miro.org) to automagically fetch each episode - it's well worth it.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[cheekyboy]

I am setting up DDOS.CORP with 50000 employees, then we will be safe from the feds.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[1110110001]

Since they were working with the blessing of the **AA, Doesn't matter. In Germany there was a company working with similar tactics and IIRC they had the blessing of IFPI. But neither the artists nor the labels were asked, so they were still operating illegal. As long as the RIAA doesn't hold the copyright directly they can't bless something like this.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[Anonymous Coward]

haha....you think a DDoS has to be performed from a botnet? DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service If you looked at the logs from the attack you would see that it was in fact a DDoS.

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[tomhudson]

Depends on who the actual authors are. Wouldn't it be funny if they (MediaDefender) pirated code?

Re:Mediadefender is the Punisher

[ehrichweiss]

Sorry to reply so late. Well I can't find any information backing up my assertion and every single prosecutor's office in the U.S. has the exact(and I mean EXACT, minus state name, etc.) same cookie-cutter template for "I am the victim, can I drop charges" question on their website so either the template is legit or else there are a lot of retarded prosecutors. I wish I could remember where I initially heard this but it was probably over 20 years ago in high school.

Now, really?

[Perseid]

Shouldn't admitting to a DOS attack in and of itself get people arrested? Who cares what the site they are attacking contains? They are committing acts of digital vandalism. Jail, please.

Re:Now, really?

[Vectronic]

According to Wikipedia...

"In May 2008, MediaDefender was publicly accused of allegedly being the source of a distributed-denial- of-service attack on Revision3. Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO charged that these attacks violated the Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Federal Bureau of Investigations is currently investigating the incident."

Although that may have been written as of 5 minutes ago... plus the FBI isnt exactly notorious for accomplishing things in any sort of justified, or timely manour, and may very well side with MediaDefender.

Re:Now, really?

[arbiter1]

jail HA, they got money they will settle it outta court for some money and not be jailed for it

Re:Now, really?

[DarkOx]

Even if the FBI is investigating its still untter bullshit in terms of double standard. With this much evidence, and the seriousness other DOS attacks have been treated their should be imediate consequences. If Joe Slashdoter had done this s/he would get to wait in jail for up to 180 days while the FBI investigated her/him. Where are the responsible parties at Mediadefender tonight?

Re:Now, really?

[jd]

The responsible parties are drowning their sorrows in champaign, their guilt crushed under the weight of party hats and women of ill repute.

Re:Now, really?

[Cruciform]

Putting someone in jail for this is just stupid. Too many people get put in jail that don't need to be there. Whether it's a hacker or a pot smoker, if they are not *endangering* someone else then they don't need jail time.

Instead, in the case of MediaDefender, blast them with huge fines or issue a court order restricting the company to no internet access for 6 months to a year. THAT would be more in line with the crime.

Re:Now, really?

[Opportunist]

The equivalent of putting someone in jail, for a corporation, is suspending the corporation and freezing its assets. A death verdict would be disbanding & seizing. Surprisingly, neither ever happened as far as I can remember, despite the "real person" equivalent happening every day.

And I somehow doubt that the average corporation is so much more law abiding than the average person.

Re:Now, really?

[Perseid]

I agree, but if you or I got caught perpetrating a DOS attack on mpaa.com there is a good chance we'd go to jail. These people never will because they are special and we're not. That's my main issue.

Re:Now, really?

[jedidiah]

I dunno. The INS has started running amok lately. They have started getting
a little unreasonable shutting down factories and harrassing/arresting lower
management on very weak evidence.

The end result is that the relevant factories have been shut down by the
relevant corporations and all the management has fled.

Shattering the corporate veil might not be such a bad idea after all.

Re:Now, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree completely! otherwise thats essentially like saying its ok for a police officer to bust someones door down and rape their gerbil while the occupant trembles in fear but its ok because he thought the gerbil had a pirated copy of windows or something. pffft lame this company and everyone associated with it should lose the right to internet access for no less than 10yrs.

Non-mainstream event

[eggman9713]

Even if this story makes it to the mainstream media, its not going to get much airtime. Especially since no Joe User knows what Revision3 is. There just wouldn't be enough outrage to make it a worthwile story anywhere except the geek community.

Re:Non-mainstream event

[nurb432]

Lets sucker them into trying to DoS yahoo or google. THAT would get some air time and effect the average non-techie in a way they would understand.

Re:Non-mainstream event

[eggman9713]

Google and Yahoo have so much bandwidth and server distribution that an attempt at a DoS on them would be futile.

Re:Non-mainstream event

[POTSandPANS]

I don't know how media defender works, but it seems to me that if you could make [your target] "appear" to be a tracker, you could have media defender perform a DoS attack against whatever you want.

I work for a small ISP and DoS attacks really piss me off because they seem to have about as much accuracy as a shotgun. Depending on the attack, it can sometimes affect more than just then intended target. I'd really like to see media defender get raped for this, but I know how these thing usually seem to work..

Re:Non-mainstream event

[CycoChuck]

The key to the story would present it in a way that the mass public could understand that MediaDefender are doing illegal things that could result in you being framed for a crime you did not commit.

After all, if they can inject fake torrents on Revision3 servers which is suppose to have trained IT people running it, then what is to stop MediaDefender from doing it to Joe User's computer.

Even if this story makes it to the mainstream media, its not going to get much airtime. True, this won't get much airtime but not because Joe User doesn't know what Revision3 is. This won't get airtime because MediaDefender is paid by the **AA, which also seems to have full control of the news media.

Re:Non-mainstream event

[Anonymous Coward]

>story makes it to the mainstream media

NBC: The network is part of the media company NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric and Vivendi [1].

CNN: The network is now owned by Time Warner [2]

and so on.

Vivendi, universal, Time Warner... Are those clients of mediadefender ? May be N. Chomsky was right [3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media

Re:Non-mainstream event

[linzeal]

The only way to DDOS Google would be to pool the processing and bandwidth of Yahoo and some other Big guy like Microsoft. These animals can be taken down by eachother one would think.

As Ricky Ricardo would say...

[JavaBasedOS]

MediaDefender, you've got some 'splaining to do!

It's not illegal...

[stevedcc]

They've bought senators, how can it be illegal when they've got paid for law makers fighting on their side(!)

Re:It's not illegal...

[TubeSteak]

They've bought senators, how can it be illegal when they've got paid for law makers fighting on their side(!) Because those law makers haven't changed the law yet?
Until then, denial of service & unauthorized access charges shouldn't have much trouble sticking.

The only reason Revision3 wouldn't take this all the way through trial is if MediaDefender offers them a pile of money greater than what R3 would win with a guilty verdict.

Fry.

[Renraku]

If you distribute baking soda (sell/give away/etc) and tell people that its crack, you can be arrested and held to the same liabilities as if you had actually sold crack..in fact..some states have laws to where you'd get charged for selling it, but not possession. Some will tack on an extra charge on top of possession/sale.

So tell me why MediaDefender gets away with inserting fake data labeled as copyright-violating material into someone else's server and then going all vigilante on them. If you own the copyright you might be able to get away with it as its no longer in violation of copyrights since its yours, but since MediaDefender doesn't own them directly..

That on top of the damages they have caused this company, in either time, money, or business damages.

Re:Fry.

[cp.tar]

Assuming for a brief moment that copyright infringement is theft, just for the purpose of this analogy...
If I broke into your house and put someone else's stuff in your room, then phoned the police that you have stolen property in your room... how nice would that be?

I only have one question: how can we retaliate?

Re:Fry.

[jon787]

If you distribute baking soda (sell/give away/etc) and tell people that its crack, you can be arrested and held to the same liabilities as if you had actually sold crack..in fact..some states have laws to where you'd get charged for selling it, but not possession. Some will tack on an extra charge on top of possession/sale.

Kaffee: It was oregano, Dave. It was 10 dollars worth of oregano.
Lieutenant Dave Spradling: Yeah, but your client thought it was marijuana.
Kaffee: My client's a moron that's not against the law.
Lieutenant Dave Spradling: Kaffee, I have people to answer to just like you do. I'm going to charge him.
Kaffee: With what? Possession of a condiment?

Re:Fry.

[Ma8thew]

I think Media Sentry are employed by the copyright holders, so on that charge they're probably off the hook. However, I fully look forward to the company being taken down by the Feds for the denial of service attacks.

Re:Fry.

[lobStar]

Off topic but, in my country it works the opposite. If you sell fake crack, you can get arrested for fraud. But not for selling drugs. This has happened, I read about one case where the victim (buyer) turned in the dealer. Both were eventually convicted for different things.

Re:Fry.

[DarkOx]

Assuming for a brief moment that copyright infringement is theft, just for the purpose of this analogy...
If I broke into your house and put someone else's stuff in your room, then phoned the police that you have stolen property in your room... how nice would that be? Its not like that though! Its more like:
If I broke into your house and put someone else's stuff in your room, then waited until you came home and then smashed all your car windows with baseball bat while sceaming "theif" and your stood by in confused amazement, and then after I got done with that called the cops on you about the stolen property in your room... how nice would that be?

No very nice, and if anyone else tried it, even if you had really stolen the property and put it in your room my actions would still be a crime of their own. MediaDefender are criminals and the people operating those servers can't be so ignorant of the actions not be accountable for them. We might not be able to get the kingpins but at the very least the doers should be arrested and charged. I know slashdot does not like to go after the little guy but MediaDefenders developers, network, and server admins deserve jail time! If my boss asks me to do something illegal I am still obligated to refuse otherwise the law will hold me responsible. Its imporatant that even these little guys get PUNISHED. The only way you stop getting organizations like MediaDefender from being above the law is to make sure nobody will work for them, because no salary they can offer will be worth doing time for!

Re:Fry.

[Bladesonfire]

War on Drugs, meet War on Profits-Not-As-Much

Re:Fry.

[cp.tar]

Thank you for the correction.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you distribute baking soda (sell/give away/etc) and tell people that its crack, you can be arrested and held to the same liabilities as if you had actually sold crack..in fact..some states have laws to where you'd get charged for selling it, but not possession. Some will tack on an extra charge on top of possession/sale. And then some people wonder why the USA have the highest prison population on the planet, second to none (not even China's)...

(Yes, I know, off-topic. But seriously.)

Re:Fry.

[91degrees]

They're not selling drugs! It's up to the copyright holder whether to prosecute for copyright infringement and they have a lot more leeway to be arbitrary about their decisions than the police or government. Media defender is acting with the (possibly implied) permission of the copyright holders. The people running trackers are not.

Re:Fry.

[xigxag]

So in other words, basically MediaDefender = OJ Simpson in 2007?

Re:Fry.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you distribute baking soda (sell/give away/etc) and tell people that its crack, you can be arrested and held to the same liabilities as if you had actually sold crack Surprise! Other parts of the US legal code are EVEN MORE fucked up than Title 17!

I sense a pattern here!

Re:Fry.

[Renraku]

Well, according to the media industry, copyright infringement is the exact same as theft. They see it as you walking into their house and taking the Thanksgiving turkey right off of their tables. As driving off in one of their cars. As taking their daily newspapers right off of their porch.

All I'm asking them is to do the minimum: Nail MediaDefender for their copyright violations. If they let some people do it but not others, could this be a good step to getting the whole copyright violations = theft thrown out? After all, even if they grant MD permission to use those titles, surely they are writing off the 'grants of usage' as business expenses and taking it off of their taxes..

Maybe its time the IRS get a few anonymous tips?

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

DoS /their/ servers? Repeatedly? It won't bring it into the public but how well would a company look if their corporate fascade was never available?

Re:Fry.

[cp.tar]

Even better: how would we go about conning^Wgetting them to DoS their own servers?

Re:Fry.

[DaveRobb]

I only have one question: how can we retaliate?

Talk to people you know at ISPs (or if you work there yourself, push for the following) and have them blackhole MediaDefender. Denial of service attacks are (hopefully!) against the contract they have with their upstreams, and even if they're not, it's a fairly commonly accepted practice to blackhole known DoS sources.

Re:Fry.

[Torvaun]

In Revision3's case, the people running trackers are the copyright holders. MediaDefender acted without permission to break into their systems, then DoS them when the hole got closed.

This is like if I had a broken lock on my back door, didn't realize it, and some guy kept breaking into my house day after day. Then, when I finally realized what was going on, and replaced the lock, he nailed all my doors shut and boarded up my windows.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument that the little people deserve punishment is basically supporting MediaDefender in the brand of "justice" that they serve on legitimate businesses. They go after pirates and copyright material distributors, but get some other guys too just because they might be distributing copyrighted material.

The developers and server admins aren't attacking people, even though they're linked to a big evil corporation, exactly parallel to Revision3 which hasn't done anything wrong but are still using a highly popular transfer protocol for pirates; the big evil group that MediaDefender is going after.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still not quite right,
If I broke into your house and put worthless objects labeled as being someone else's stuff in your room, then waited until you came home and then smashed all your car windows with baseball bat while screaming "theif" and your stood by in confused amazement, and then after I got done with that called the cops on you about the stolen property in your room... how nice would that be?

Re:Fry.

[marxmarv]

They're not so much giving them a license to copy those titles as they are providing trademark rights as a feedstock to MD's process. Put on your OOD cap and it starts to compile, even if it does not link.

Re:Fry.

[Opportunist]

Well, the difference is that there is no controversy whether they're guilty or not. It's not like OJ admitted breaking the law, ya know...

Re:Fry.

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

If the police felt like it, they could charge me with posession of stolen goods. If I did the sensible thing and turned over all goods that were stolen to the police I would probably not even be charged with that. A policeman would probably note the broken window and muddy footprints and start pondering who would do such criminal damage...

May I suggest we wait for the FBI to do their work and then MediaDefender to pheonix.

Re:Fry.

[AVonGauss]

How can we retaliate?

Retaliate is not the word I would choose, but things you can do...

1) Be nice and professional, but write your congressmen, senators and governors and tell them how you feel about the issue.

2) Write the transit providers that provide peering agreements with MediaDefenders service provider. Their service provider and the transit providers that peer with their service provider are supporting their actions indirectly. If their service provider refuses to continue service with Media Defender then they will be forced to move. If other transit providers refuse to peer with their / or a service provider that supports their actions, their service provider will be forced to change their business position or go out of business.

3) MediaDefender is primarily funded by copyright holders, the irony being that the copyrighted works have absolutely no value if there is no demand. If XYZ studio, producer or artist employs the services of MediaDefender, do not purchase their products. Simple.

Re:Fry.

[Jerrry]

And then some people wonder why the USA have the highest prison population on the planet, second to none (not even China's)...

That's because China actually kills people they sentence to death. They don't let them rot in prison for 20 years before carrying out the sentence.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

no one in this thread is doing a very good job of explaining why DoS attacks should be illegal (or are illegal--I honestly don't know). can you define LEGALLY what a DoS attack is beyond a "malicious intent"? how can you criminalize something that can't be explicitly defined?

Re:Fry.

[cp.tar]

3) MediaDefender is primarily funded by copyright holders, the irony being that the copyrighted works have absolutely no value if there is no demand. If XYZ studio, producer or artist employs the services of MediaDefender, do not purchase their products. Simple.

If you then download (pirate) their products, though, you validate the argument that piracy == lost sales.

'Tis tricky ground, that.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction, they leave them in an institution until somebody requires a donor for a live body part. Then they kill them.

Re:Fry.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not trying to advocate piracy, but piracy does not equal lost sales or even lost revenue. Piracy is potential sales lost at best. That does not mean I think piracy should be ignored or that there should not consequences, but call it for what it really is.

In this case of MediaDefender, they went well beyond the reasonable rights of a copyright holder to enforce their copyright. I believe the article and other comments adequately summarize their activities so I won't repeat them again.

Somewhere along the way we as a society have forgotten and lost track of the fact that copyrights and patents are not a right, they are a privilege granted by the other members of society for very specific reasons.

Re:Fry.

[cp.tar]

I am not trying to advocate piracy, but piracy does not equal lost sales or even lost revenue. Piracy is potential sales lost at best. That does not mean I think piracy should be ignored or that there should not consequences, but call it for what it really is.

I agree completely. However, when you deliberately avoid purchasing something from certain companies and seek out to pirate it for "political" reasons, that is a lost sale. And through the rape of logic so common in these situations, I see the danger of it becoming true by law.

Somewhere along the way we as a society have forgotten and lost track of the fact that copyrights and patents are not a right, they are a privilege granted by the other members of society for very specific reasons.

Privileges are more readily defended than rights. Do note that companies more readily and more ferociously defend these privileges than consumers do their rights.

When consumers finally wake up, though, a revolution may occur.

Re:Fry.

[mpe]

This is like if I had a broken lock on my back door, didn't realize it, and some guy kept breaking into my house day after day. Then, when I finally realized what was going on, and replaced the lock, he nailed all my doors shut and boarded up my windows.

Possibly a better analogy for Media Defender's actions would be "deployed a squadron of AC130s against your house".

Re:Fry.

[remmelt]

Well, that's weird.

In my country (the Netherlands) you cannot sue someone over something that is a crime in itself.

Joe wants to kill John and hires Jack to do it. He pays Jack a million â. Then, Jack does not kill John. This is fraud (or something like that, breach of contract, you name it) and would be punishable if the main act were legal. Killing a person is not legal, thus, Joe does not have a case.

Re:Fry.

[91degrees]

I'm sorry. I thought the suggestion in the GP was that Media Defender were breaching copyright by offering files that they claimed were copyrighted files.

This is a bit like if a company claims to be distributing copyrighted files that they don't have rights to and they're actually distributing dummy files.

Re:Fry.

[91degrees]

How does this make things clearer? Is this a situation that happens on a regular basis that we all know how to deal with?

Re:Fry.

[lobStar]

A clarification, i meant the criminal case here. There is usually no separate civil case, damages are awarded in the criminal court. The government is always the plaintiff in criminal cases. I don't know how it works in your example, I've never heard about that happen.

Re:Fry.

[mxs]

1) Be nice and professional, but write your congressmen, senators and governors and tell them how you feel about the issue. Unless you attach a wad of cash, the other side has the better arguments (read : more cash). The RIAA has deep pockets, and they spend this money wisely in the political arena. If you think your senator will ever actually read your well-argued letter, I have a bridge to sell you.

2) Write the transit providers that provide peering agreements with MediaDefenders service provider. Their service provider and the transit providers that peer with their service provider are supporting their actions indirectly. If their service provider refuses to continue service with Media Defender then they will be forced to move. If other transit providers refuse to peer with their / or a service provider that supports their actions, their service provider will be forced to change their business position or go out of business. And the transit provider, who is getting paid hand over fist for their multi-gbps lines, should care why, exactly ? Are you offering to buy their bandwidth for more than they are paying ? What do "neutral" providers care what traffic their legitimately incorporated, paying customers are carrying ?

3) MediaDefender is primarily funded by copyright holders, the irony being that the copyrighted works have absolutely no value if there is no demand. If XYZ studio, producer or artist employs the services of MediaDefender, do not purchase their products. Simple. Yes, I'm sure they'll feel the sting of a couple of geeks not buying the new Britney Spears album. You know, the one they aggressively market to kids on MTV all day. They can just attribute the 1% loss in sales to piracy and be done with it. Why would they assume MediaDefender is to blame ?

Re:Fry.

[AVonGauss]

So what would you suggest?

To answer your points directly...

1) Cash is good, but unless you have the office, they aren't going to give you the cash.

2) Transit providers have tons of customers, negative publicity regarding one customer who operates at best questionable services is generally not worth it. Not to mention the havoc it can cause for all those other paying customers while that one customer conducts their questionable activities.

3) A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products you're right won't make a dent directly. A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products and telling others not to purchase their products - that might make a dent. Even if it is 1% to use your number, depending on the "media" we are talking about, could be significant numbers. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth - they don't.

As long as you have a negative attitude you will most likely get negative results. Remember, you are the consumer, it's your money they're after, hence you have the ability to shape the industry. If they do stupid things that you don't like and you still give them your money, you have no one else to blame but yourself.

Re:Fry.

[b4dc0d3r]

while sceaming "theif"

How exactly do you pronounce that?

Re:Fry.

[Fast Thick Pants]

Still not quite right, If I broke into your house and put worthless objects labeled as being someone else's stuff in your room... You could fill the room with P-P-P-PowerBooks!

Re:Fry.

[u-235-sentinel]

So tell me why MediaDefender gets away with inserting fake data labeled as copyright-violating material into someone else's server and then going all vigilante on them. If you own the copyright you might be able to get away with it as its no longer in violation of copyrights since its yours, but since MediaDefender doesn't own them directly..

Perhaps this is why more and more Judges are asking if MediaDefender has a license to practice.

Then they wouldn't do stupid things anymore and be liable right?

Oh wait... ignorance isn't a defense right?

Am I beginning to think like a lawyer yet? Might be why I need an aspirin now.

Re:Fry.

[mxs]

1) Cash is good, but unless you have the office, they aren't going to give you the cash. Unless of course you make promises to get money for your election campaign. The sad truth is that generally, the more money you throw at it (in terms of advertizing, PR firms, etc.), the better your chances are at office -- especially when we are not talking about the highest office in the land.

2) Transit providers have tons of customers, negative publicity regarding one customer who operates at best questionable services is generally not worth it. Not to mention the havoc it can cause for all those other paying customers while that one customer conducts their questionable activities. Transit providers have tons of customers, correct. Well, bundles of em -- generally not the same customers that get upset about attacks on P2P, but rather customers whose bill with them would be greatly reduced if P2P just didn't exist (short-sighted, but true).

What havoc does it cause them ? We are talking about transit providers here, i.e. the guys who are starting to count their bandwidth in terabit/s -- it takes a rather large bit of dDoS to adversely affect their entire networks -- and it's hardly just a single network they are connected to.

As an enduser, it's hard to vote with your dollars in this case; sure, you can shun Comcast. But do /you/ know which transit providers your ISP peers with, which it buys transit from, which it does business with ? Do you really care ? If you do, does a considerable amount of your peers ?

3) A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products you're right won't make a dent directly. A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products and telling others not to purchase their products - that might make a dent. Even if it is 1% to use your number, depending on the "media" we are talking about, could be significant numbers. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth - they don't. They can write it off as losses due to piracy -- and they likely will. Helps get tougher laws passed.

Word of mouth is a powerful tool, to be sure, but so are broad ad barrages on MTV. Have you ever considered what kind of person buys CD-singles ?

As long as you have a negative attitude you will most likely get negative results. The opposite, unfortunately, is not true.

As long as you have a realistic attitude you will most likely not be disappointed.

Remember, you are the consumer, it's your money they're after, Fat chance in hell they'll get /my/ money.

hence you have the ability to shape the industry. This argument is oft-repeated, but rarely backed up. Sure, the masses have the ability to shape the industry -- I alone have no such ability.

If they do stupid things that you don't like and you still give them your money, you have no one else to blame but yourself. Quite true. Now if I don't give them my money, can I start blaming the masses that do ?

The torrent community has more bandwidth than MD

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they DDOS back? Tactics like these shouldn't be permissible, but you can fight fire with fire.

lawyers

[jrozzi]

sue their asses

Uh

[Joe Jay Bee]

Given that they have 9 Gbps of bandwidth dedicated to denial-of-service attacks against torrent trackers, all anyone needs to do is to trick them into attacking a hospital or government facility.

While it's a stupid thing to do (DDOSing random trackers that is), why the fuck would a government facility or hospital be running a torrent tracker?

Re:Uh

[just_another_sean]

why the fuck would a government facility or hospital be running a torrent tracker? Because someone like MediaDefender runs it for them? Without them knowing?

Re:Uh

[Daniel_Staal]

I'd think bittorrent would be a great way to distribute manuals on which forms you need to fill out for which situation.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Both government facilities and hospitals both rely on BT for a number of things. The government's idea of a database file is many gigabytes in size. Moving those around is MUCH cheaper and easyer with BT. Hospitals that are affiliated with universities usually do some sort of medical research on-site and also send/receive data to the campus. BT is used a lot with sending around things like DNA maps and decoded genomes; that sort of thing.

BitTorrent is a legitimate method of distributing data, no matter what kind of data. It just happens to be a great way to send your entire mp3 collection to 12 friends in very little time and that's why people associate it with piracy and the like.

Re:Uh

[jzu]

Someone, someday, will find a legitimate use for a torrent tracker in an hospital. But simply imagine an illegal tracker run by a rogue employee. MediaDefender uses it for its tactics. The sysadmin notices the tracker, and shuts it down. MediaDefender's Stalin organ goes amok and shuts down the entire hospital network.

Because of a BT tracker. Yeah, right.

In Revision3's case, there might have been illegal file sharing occuring - thats only a civil case if memory serves - and certainly MediaDefender's attack was criminal. In the hospital's case, MediaDefender would risk becoming downright murderers.

Re:Uh

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

Currently working for large governemt department. We are assessing bittorrent as a method of distributing large read only databases to multiple servers as a way to reduce load on individual servers and speed up average deployment times. Having said that, the likelyhood of MediaDefender seeing our tracker would be very low as this would be on an intranet with very low exposure to the rest of the net.

This does highlight one important point for us. How do we protect our trackers form hosting any old thing?

Re:Uh

[Nullav]

Or you know...HTTP/FTP, which would be better suited for small files.

Re:Uh

[mysidia]

That's great, but these BitTorrent servers should not be open to the public if their correct operation is "mission critical".

Basic security protocol: the internet is an untrusted network and full of potential adversaries, enemies, attackers, etc.

There are far more potential attackers than MediaDefender.

Exposing any type of critical infrastructure to the internet let-alone relying on the internet's proper operation is a highly negligent and irresponsible security design.

In the future bittorrent-like protocols might be utilized to distribute materials to the general public, but that is yet to be seen.

Re:Uh

[Daniel_Staal]

Have you seen those manuals?

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

BT is not just a method of distributing data: it's a method of distributing data that many people are likely to want/need.

The government's idea of a database file is many gigabytes... so what. If the government is in point A, and they need the data to get to point B, then the speed of that transfer depends only on the connection path between A and B. This argument only holds water if said government has a database at point A that they want to get to points [B-Z], in which case BT can be useful... as long as the points B-Z don't compete with each other for the same outbound (when they do, transfers slow back down)...

Re:Uh

[I.M.O.G.]

Rtfa, the only content that prompted the attacks was fake illegal content that MD themselves placed on R3 servers. There never was ANY illegal content involved in this situation. They only attacked when R3 cut off MD's access.
By all means tho, don't let the facts get in the way of your ideas.

Re:Uh

[tinkerghost]

Or you know...HTTP/FTP, which would be better suited for small files. Um, small is not a word normally associated with manuals issued by either the Government or Insurance companies.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad analogy. Any hospital that has mission-critical infrastructure exposed to the 'net should be sued for negligence.Fact is, an attack is an attack. It doesn't matter how guilty or innocent the victim is. Even if somebody is the most evil child rapist/killer imaginable, it doesn't make it legally ok to shoot him in cold blood. (Morally, it is ok to shoot him only to prevent him from harming any other people. We have a government, police force, and judicial system in place to try to prevent mistakes in doing this.)

Re:Uh

[MikeBabcock]

Distributing high-resolution imagery to multiple research institutions as part of clinical trials perhaps?

It would be protected and encrypted traffic of course (one would hope).

Almost like

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like having the bronze medalist from the special olympics in charge of America's nuclear arsenal... oh wait.

I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that Air Traffic Control using BitTorrent to distribute approaches is quite possibly the worst analogy I've heard come out of this whole mess.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

It also misses the point IMHO, by trying to tie it to the magnitude of the damages.

The greater point is that vigilantism is not something a civilized society should tolerate.

Re:I think...

[TomRK1089]

At least I haven't seen any car analogies yet.

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this then: You missed a server patch and someone exploits this and sets up a tracker on your air traffic control/hospital data/refinery process control server. MediaDefender sees this tracker (or perhaps just sees the unpatched vulnerability and sets one up) and starts injecting bad torrents on to it. You notice the increased traffic and discover the unpatched exploit and repair it. MediaDefender's servers detects that is now blocked and launches a pre-programmed DDoS assault on your servers, causing them to fail, endangering hundreds, if not thousands of lives.

Mail Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's hilarious that they've taken all their email addresses offline.

Re:Mail Servers

[tomhudson]

MediaDefender:
sales@mediadefender.com
info@mediadefender.com
jobs@mediadefender.com
president: try herrera@mediadefender.com, oh@mediadefender.com,
ceo: try randy@mediadefender.com (personal), saaf@mediadefender.com or rsaaf@mediadefender.com
controller: try: rr@mediadefender.com, rousselet@mediadefender.com

parent company: artistdirect (stock ticker: ARTD)
Investor relations: ir@artistdirect.com
Chairman: diamond@artistdirect.com
CEO: try villard@artistdirect.com, dv@artistdirect.com

Auditors: Gumbiner, Savett, Finkel, Fingleson & Rose, Inc
rgreene@gscpa.com (Ronald Greene) http://marketcenter.findlaw.com/scripts/display_profile.pl?id=173844

Executive Vice President Ronald Greene is in his thirtieth year of providing litigation support services
...
Mr. Greene has sub-specialities in the food, wine and music industries.

Have fun.

Re:Mail Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't we (and the spiders) have more fun if we linked them properly? :)

MediaDefender:
MediaDefender
MediaDefender
MediaDefender
president: try president, president,
ceo: try MediaDefender (personal), president or president
controller: try: controller, controller

parent company: artistdirect (stock ticker: ARTD)
Investor relations: Investor relations
Chairman: Chairman
CEO: try CEO, CEO

Auditors: Gumbiner, Savett, Finkel, Fingleson & Rose, Inc
rgreene@gscpa.com (Ronald Greene) http://marketcenter.findlaw.com/scripts/display_profile.pl?id=173844

Executive Vice President Ronald Greene is in his thirtieth year of providing litigation support services
...
Mr. Greene has sub-specialities in the food, wine and music industries.

Have fun

I don't really understand what happened...

[Kopiok]

From reading the article, it sounds like Revision3 hosts their own content and distributes it through Bittorrent, and they allowed other torrents to use their tracker, which included illicit torrents, and then they stopped letting other torrents use their tracker so MediaDefender DoS'd them? I'm very confused. ;-;

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[dark whole]

They didn't allow others to use their tracker, they just didn't properly prevent it.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[Kopiok]

So they had a security hole in their tracker, MediaDefender laced it with their illicit downloads, and when Revision3 locked it down MediaDefender attacked? That makes more sense.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[91degrees]

I'm as confused as you are. The complete absence of any sort of order of events makes things more confusing.

Things I'm fairly sure of. Revision3 had a security hole. MediaDefender saw the security hole, and seeded it with fake files. Revision3 noticed these fake files and disconnected them. As a result, MediaDefender - either due to misconfigured servers or malice - DOSed Revision3.

Not sure if pirates were using the security hole. It would seem a bit pointless given that there are plenty of pretty open torrent sites.

Also not quite sure how MediaDefender can defend their initial actions. This seems to be pretty clearly hacking. Exploiting a security hole in another machine to gain access is generally enough regardless of whether there was any further malicious intent.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[Opportunist]

Yeah, MD "punished" them for disallowing the distribution for illegal content.

After all, without illegal content, MD could lose its funding.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[techno-vampire]

I'm not sure, but I get the impression that MediaDefender's servers were configured to launch a DOS against any site that started blocking them or removed the tainted content without waiting for human intervention. If so, I'd guess that their "thinking" was that if they couldn't poison the site they'd take it down. I'd also guess that they had automated the process of searching for and poisoning sites on the assumption that all BT sites were pirates. Stupid, malicious and not exactly competent; just what you'd expect, judging from their history.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[jvkjvk]

Both "poisoning sites" as you say and DOS'ing sites are criminally illegal in the US. MD is basically saying that autoconfiguring their servers to perform illegal activities is fine but there is no difference in the legality of MD's actions whether the site they target is legitimate or not. Even if Rev3 was hosting illegal content it's still illegal to hack into their servers and it's still illegal to DOS them. Imagine that.

Re:I don't really understand what happened...

[techno-vampire]

Yup! Now, if we can prove that this was done on the direct orders of MD's management, we've got them on a conspiracy rap. And, if there's a way to show that their masters at RIAA were involved, we can include them as well. I doubt we'll be that lucky, but this might well be the break that brings the whole house of cards crashing down.

What the fuck?

[LordKaT]

Media Defender ought to pay Revision 3 an undisclosed sum of money for the financial damage it caused the company.

But they're not going to do that.

Seriously, every single employee @ Media Defender needs to be anally raped with razor wire.

Re:What the fuck?

[cp.tar]

Seriously, every single employee @ Media Defender needs to be anally raped with razor wire.

Do you have a newsletter?

Re:What the fuck?

[LordKaT]

No, I just cockpunch the people I want to take money from.

Re:What the fuck?

[Splab]

$1 would be an undisclosed sum of money...

Re:What the fuck?

[cp.tar]

No, I just cockpunch the people I want to take money from.

Seems to me you do not take money from women.

I find that... shortsighted.
And kinda sexist.

Re:What the fuck?

[smorken]

No it wouldnt. That's one dollar.

Re:What the fuck?

[glitch23]

Seriously, every single employee @ Media Defender needs to be anally raped with razor wire.

Why not just cut their heads off and put the video of it on YouTube? Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime. Seriously, you need help. I suggest you schedule another appointment with your psychiatrist and let her know what she is doing is not working. You may even need to get a 2nd opinion.

Re:What the fuck?

[marxmarv]

But they're not going to do that. Depends on the judge. The court system strongly encourages conflicting parties to settle conflicts like this out of court, and if MD gets money from their media-industry customers to tender a ridiculously lucrative confidential settlement offer to R3, refusal could count against R3 as the trial moves along.

IANAL, TINLA, yadda...

Re:What the fuck?

[Opportunist]

Depends on the script language you use.

Re:What the fuck?

[TheSpoom]

In all the ones I've used, variable names can't start with a digit.

Re:What the fuck?

[Opportunist]

How about awk?

Re:What the fuck?

[Shai-kun]

Just do a m/\$(\d+)/ first.

Re:What the fuck?

[An ominous Cow art]

DOS batch files.

Re:What the fuck?

[AK Marc]

Why not just cut their heads off and put the video of it on YouTube?

Because that would be cruel and unusual punishment. Anal rape has been declared to not be cruel or unusual punishment when the prisioners have sued because of conditions. Decapitation has been determined to be cruel and unusual, and thus illegal. But a little anal rape never hurt anyone, or so claims the US court system when prisoners sue about it.

oh noes, my /. torrents!

[Anonymous Coward]

it all begins with going to http://www.mediadefender.com/

Isn't this criminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't MediaDefender being sued or criminally prosecuted? What they did *IS* a crime as best as I can tell. Does the law not apply to MediaDefender or something?

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[Timothy Brownawell]

If you read the article, you'll see that the FBI is investigating. This generally has to be done before they get prosecuted, so they know what exactly to prosecute them for.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[RobertM1968]

I doubt the FBI is investigating with any true intent of prosecuting. This isnt the first time MediaDefender has been found violating some federal or state law - with no repercussions.

And exactly how much more "investigating" does the FBI need to do when MediaDefender has already admitted their guilt? To file charges... none. To prosecute... maybe more.

They have publicly, irrefutably, admitted their guilt. Go beat someone up, let that person complain about it/you, then go brag about having done it (admitting to doing it) and give a lame reason that (a) doesnt make sense and (b) admits to you having violated other laws - and see how long you are "investigated" before the cops lock you up.

Revision3 (and their ISPs) have all the evidence needed... and MediaDefender has been nice enough to admit to all counts - and some additional ones - which in effect is admission to violating about a dozen federal and state laws.

My prediction: Revision3 will be lucky enough to get civil penalties out of them. The chance of something criminal even getting to court, much less being charged is nil. Too many precedents would be set... if they are charged, then numerous other companies and individuals (including ISPs who host the companies and individuals and thus also suffer damage to their network) could and would sue them for such behavior. If it goes to court, then either MediaDefender wins, setting a dangerous precedent saying "it's ok for them to break numerous laws" or MediaDefender loses (yeah, right) which would destroy their (and the **AA's) business model - which is something the current administration will not allow.

My opinions on the matter, yes... but history supports them (sadly).

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[philipgar]

Your comment is hilarious... Do you think that the Bush administration somehow controls the FBI and tells them that they can't prosecute a company for this? Do you honestly think the president of the united states is that powerful, that he has the power of a dictator? Even if he does have that power, would he use it so openly for this?

The FBI likely will investigate this matter, and the only way I could see media sentry getting out of criminal charges is by paying off Rev 3 enough that they drop all criminal charges against media sentry. Companies have been convicted of crimes before, and will be again. Sure the *AA has favor from congress, and the executive, but that doesn't exactly stretch over to the courts. At this point, I bet the *AA's first reaction will be (if they have any intelligence whatsoever) "i didn't know mediasentry did this", and back out of deals. The last thing they want is to be hit up with more lawsuits for hiring a criminal company.

The likely situation from all this is that media sentry is going to get hit, and hard. While you can make comments that you or I would already be arrested for this, it's only been a week, and a company the size of media sentry isn't exactly a flight risk. The hardest part of the case will be determining where exactly the guilt lies.

Phil

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[abirdman]

Interesting. Your post made me think how there's a lot of documented "looking the other way" in cases of vigilantism. The courts seem to tolerate a little "excess" when someone's a sworn defender of another's "rights." From citizens lynching suspected rapists to Guantanamo, our legal system-- both the prosecutors and the courts-- seems to look the other way. And if the vigilantes also wear ties and cuff links, heck, they're even allowed to join the country club. MediaDefender are vigilanes, pure and simple. I don't believe much will come of this-- maybe some new paragraph in a regulation somewhere.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[RobertM1968]

I said history under the current administration supports my opinion.

Specifically, for this part "which is something the current administration will not allow." I refer to the various laws that this administration is considering and trying to push that help no one but the **AA and Media Sentry.

Hope that explains what I mean by what "the current administration" will allow (through inaction, or through passing laws that grant immunity or make such actions on the **AA/MediaSentry's part legal).

Or perhaps, even though it has been discussed ad-infinitum here and elsewhere, please refer me to one criminal proceeding that was seriously brought against the **AA or Media Defender by the government? There have been enough reasons for them. Yet I dont recall any such actions ever taking place. Perhaps I am forgetting a few, in which case I would appreciate enlightenment from you.

The only thing close is a class action lawsuit which was started by a citizen.

As a side note, when since does a company paying off another for their wrongdoing have anything to do with criminal charges? This situation should be a two-fold set of proceedings... the criminal one - and the civil one.

I am not sure what world you live in where you think that you can "pay off" criminal charges and investigations by paying off the ones you have hurt. Hopefully it isnt this one. But you may be right - which just supports my statement even more. Such should not be the case. If a law is broken by an entity, reparation and fines should be determined by a (civil and criminal) court case - not be used to prevent one.

As for the hardest part of this case being where guilt lies... I am not sure in what fashion you mean. A corporate entity is liable for their actions - how they pass that down to the individuals in their company is something unrelated. And of course, higher-ups in their company have already admitted their corporate guilt in a cavalier attitude indicating it is practice - not accident - that caused this - with their only defense being "gee, we just didnt mean for it to be Revision3"

Rob

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do you think that the Bush administration somehow controls the FBI and tells them that they can't prosecute a company for this?

No, I think he appoints and fosters the most venal, corrupt, double-talking corporate-police-statists you can possibly imagine.

The other guys install the second-most.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[philipgar]

First, there are criminal acts (that are not civil charges) that requires someone to press charges for them to go through. I don't know the circumstances with these particular computer crimes, but they might require that the victim party presses charges for anyone to be punished. I don't see why someone couldn't make a civil agreement whereby one party agrees not to press criminal charges against another. I think this happens in lawsuits often enough where a party was harmed by another, and they agree to drop civil and criminal charges in response to payment. It's pretty clear cut when a criminal action is perpetrated directly against one or entity. Again, i'm not a lawyer or anything, but I'm pretty sure this sort of stuff is legal.

When I mean where the guilt lies, I mean where in the corporation, and how the charges should be filed. Just because we know a company did XYZ, we don't know where the orders came from, and who did what, and why.

Phil

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[Opportunist]

Why do I have the hunch that they're not looking for clues why they're guilty but rather for some excuse why they're not?

What do you need to investigate for? They already pleaded guilty to willful disruption of online operations (aka DDoSing), and "apologize" for hitting the "wrong" target. It's a bit like a hitman saying he's sorry he didn't kill the serial rapist he was ordered to kill by a relative of a victim but instead he hit some innocent bystander. Is he less guilty because of that? Killing anyone is illegal unless you are part of the government's mandated powers that may do so. And even those have to apply due process and usually have pretty strict guidelines before they may pull that trigger.

The US government should be aware that this is about the worst that can happen to a government: Someone challenging their monopoly of power. I don't know any government that takes things like this lightly.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[RobertM1968]

Ah, I understand now... as for the criminal acts part... IIRC, there are new "Terror" Laws which apply to such things, which do not require someone to press charges - just as no one needs to press charges for murder. The "someone" is the state or federal government - which a similar situation is being implied here since the FBI is investigating it to determine if they should "press charges". At least, that's my take on it.

As for where the guilt lies, it is not necessary to determine that to press civil or criminal charges against a company. Otherwise, there isnt a corporate lawsuit that would get anywhere.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[Alpha830RulZ]

Do you think that the Bush administration somehow controls the FBI and tells them that they can't prosecute a company for this?

Well, yes, I do. Both directly, in that the FBI reports to the Department of Justice, which is part of the executive branch, which reports to the president, and indirectly, in that the FBI's resources are currently targeted to the Meaningless War On Terror, which has dramatically reduced resources available for investigating actual Real Crimes Against Americans (tm).

I'd love to think that Media Sentry is going to get spanked and that the FBI is going to be the paddle, but I think it's unlikely.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

kill the serial rapist

Shoplifter, more like.

Re:Isn't this criminal?

[yuna49]

The FBI likely will investigate this matter, and the only way I could see media sentry getting out of criminal charges is by paying off Rev 3 enough that they drop all criminal charges against media sentry.

If there is a criminal prosecution, Revision3 doesn't have any say over whether it goes forward or not. That's up to the Federal or state prosecutors involved. Revision3 could reach a settlement with MediaDefender in lieu of a pursuing a civil case against the latter, but even if they reached such an agreement, a Federal or state prosecutor could still pursue a criminal case against MediaDefender.

Who is more destrictive?

[pembo13]

Seems like this is as least as destructive as 1 billion people "illegally" downloading digital media .

Re:Who is more destrictive?

[Jorophose]

Revision 3 needs to persue MediaDefender in both civil and criminal courts, if possible (I can't recall if individuals can actually bring someone to criminal court, or if its based off of the FBI/RCMP's investigations).

Civil because they posted "illegal content", and they should sue for over9000 billion dollars. Really. Word for word. MediaDefender spread copyrighted content against the holder's wishes and claimed to be owners of said artifact, destroyed Revision 3's "business", and was going against R3's ToS, effectively breaching whatever verbal contract they had going. And if the RIAA wants to sue people ~50 million (or was it 500?) per downloaded song, a song being 3MB-6MB, and assuming this was a 700MB-4GB movie, well, MediaDefender is going to get it in the ass for a long time.

And then bring them to criminal court for issuing a DoS attack, for possession of the tools & infrastructure dedicated for DoS (if this applies), and attempted murder (R3 could have easily been part of a hospital's network).

Really, R3, lay the rape, lay it thick and full.

I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[DarkOx]

If they law does not apply to MediaDefender then surely it can't apply to anyone else either!

If MediaDefender is allowed to
1. use Revision3's tracker in an unauthorized mannor
2. DOS them

Then I say we are free to ignore any laws we don't like with regaurd to MediaDefender. Dose anyone know where their offices are? Since they seem so fond of vandalism I say some local Slashdot'ers drop by and do a little painting.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[s4m7]

I say some local Slashdot'ers drop by and do a little painting. This is not civil disobedience. It is more commonly referred to as vigilante justice. Generally speaking, it is a despicable practice. But go ahead, lower yourself to the standards of those you castigate. Cede the moral high-ground. I'm sure it will be fun.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[DarkOx]

Well I did not explain myself adequately. It is civial disobedience if we all do it. If 200 people go down there an each pain their own tag on that building it makes a statement. It says very clearly that if the laws don't apply equally then they don't apply at all. If MediaDefender an goverment recognized entiry (a corporation) is allowed to engage in vandalism then so are the people.

Maybe the authorites would get the message that if they want to maintain the rule of any law then they had better respect it with its application!

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[NormalVisual]

Generally speaking, it is a despicable practice.

Not nearly so despicable as a government that ignores the rule of law for those who curry its favor and provides no legal means for those wronged to secure justice. We'll see what happens with MediaDefender, but I severely doubt anyone will be held to any meaningful degree of responsibility over this.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[s4m7]

It is civial disobedience if we all do it. No. Read the link. Destruction of property is not civil disobedience. If you have a lot of people dispensing vigilante justice is it simply mob rule, or maybe in this case, Collectivist Anarchism

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[s4m7]

I severely doubt anyone will be held to any meaningful degree of responsibility over this. You might be right, but the FBI is looking into it. Let's save our outrage until MediaDefender is actually exonerated.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[Hierarch]

Skipping the bit about the vandalism, this was one of my first thoughts. If a court were to find that the SYN flood isn't illegal, then that would leave us all free to enjoy it, too. Can you imagine if, say, 50% of slashdotters were to dedicate 25% of their upstream bandwidth to a SYN flood at Media Defender's servers? I don't recommend illegal activity, but then again, I'm considering the hypothetical where is is legal.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[Opportunist]

And this reaction is exactly why selective laws and even more selective application of laws is damaging the whole democratic and civilized society.

A law that does not apply to everyone equally despite the promise of a government to treat everyone equally creates contempt with the government and in turn with the system altogether.

Re:I saw its time for a little civil disobediance

[ubernostrum]

I think what you meant to say was:

And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is 'cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do, and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say, "Shrink, you can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant." And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And if three people do it, three, can you imagine -- three people walking in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walking out. And friends, they may think it's a movement.

Kill mediadefender

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone taking this risk should not be allowed to use a computer.

This time the victim was "just" a software company that has a configuration error in its bittorrent tracker. Next time it might just be a hospital or power plant having a wrong configuration on any server. If the anti-cyber-terrorism laws can be applied anywhere, this should be it!

What I can't understand...

[Newer Guy]

What I can't understand is how MediaDefender has been getting away with illegal DoS attacks for years, when ANY of us would be put in prison for doing it. Who have they paid off to be able to break the law with impunity?

Isn't DoSing also a Homeland Security issue? Shouldn't their ISP have cut them off when they started doing illegal things like automatically targeting innocent companies with illegal DoS Attacks?

If someone did to MediaDefender what they do to EVERYONE ELSE, they'd be screaming bloody murder!

Finally, what if they DID actually DoS a company that caused someone to be hurt or die. Would they be liable for pre-mediated murder?

Re:What I can't understand...

[arse maker]

In what world is dos'ing a company which leads to someone dying equal pre-meditated murder??? Even doing something to someone which kills them, and is something that was at least likely to kill them, but you are shown to have not intended them to die is only manslaughter. Dos'ing someone which inderectly leads to someones death is nothing of the sort, there is no intent, and you can argue just as easily that who ever you dos'ed is just as responsable for allowing such a thing to lead to someones death. What situation is going to cause this anyhow, are they going to hook a router onto someones pacemaker or something?

Re:What I can't understand...

[dissy]

In what world is dos'ing a company which leads to someone dying equal pre-meditated murder??? Even doing something to someone which kills them, and is something that was at least likely to kill them, but you are shown to have not intended them to die is only manslaughter. Dos'ing someone which inderectly leads to someones death is nothing of the sort, there is no intent, and you can argue just as easily that who ever you dos'ed is just as responsable for allowing such a thing to lead to someones death. What situation is going to cause this anyhow, are they going to hook a router onto someones pacemaker or something? While I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, and that is the way things -should- be, it isn't in every case.

A few years back, i think in 1999 (give or take a couple years as im not sure) I remember reading an article where someone cracked into a hospitals blackberry management server while on the inside of the hospital network, which he accidentally broke and took down their blackberry communications for a time. He was not only charged with the normal computer trespass laws, but also with some weird form of attempted man slaughter, and a number of counts of it too, thou i'm sure they just calculated that by how many pages were placed to doctors and surgeons during that time frame, not all of which i would imagine are life threatening.

Granted, that is just one example, but it goes to show that a judge will not look kindly upon mucking with medical related things, and let the book be thrown at you.

Back on topic, you do realize hospital servers host copyrighted content as well (owned by the hospital), which by MediaDefenders logic is the exact type of people they go after, as proven by the case with rivision3 whom owned the copyright to everything they distributed.
I see no error of logic in expecting MediaDefender to have no issues with DDoSing a hospital, or even burning it to the ground from their hatred of anyone that has copyrighted material, despite the owner of the copyright on it having the legal right to choose how it is distributed, not to mention the point of todays copyright is to allow one to grant limited rights to others to their own works, which MediaDefender says is also illegal sharing.

Also since you asked, I don't know of any pacemakers on a wired network (or even using wires), but they DO use RF communication for logging, and programming adjustments back to the device, and they Are hackable. In a healthy body this might just result in pain, but if you were healthy you probably wouldn't have a pacemaker installed! So simply ramping the sensitivity way up or down could very well kill a person.

Re:What I can't understand...

[Maestro4k]

What I can't understand is how MediaDefender has been getting away with illegal DoS attacks for years, when ANY of us would be put in prison for doing it. Who have they paid off to be able to break the law with impunity?

Mostly they've gotten away with it because they've been attacking trackers that had mostly (if not all) illegal content on them. The owners of those trackers aren't about to risk calling up the FBI to report the DoS when there's a chance they might get charged for copyright violations. And so, MediaDefender didn't get reported.

Re:What I can't understand...

[Ma8thew]

Up until now, MediaSentry have been DOSing people who were actually running trackers with copyrighted material on. These people may not be keen to call in the Feds, in case they get prosecuted.

Re:What I can't understand...

[nuzak]

> Who have they paid off to be able to break the law with impunity?

Nobody. They're simply making money and defending the money-making enterprise of another company. And that is worth more than every single freedom, societal benefit, or principle imaginable, at least according to those staunch guardians of our liberty that we elect year after year.

Turn on C-Span, and whenever you see any of them wagging their jowls about what we need to do to "protect the economy", that's almost always them genuflecting to wealth, reflecting a worldview where the only True Blue Americans are American corporations.

Congress is worse than merely venal and corrupt -- they actually believe the things they're saying.

Re:What I can't understand...

[Newer Guy]

In many states, if someone dies during the commission of a crime, that person is guilty of felony murder. What if MediaDefender's servers DoS ed a hospital that was right in the middle of a delicate operation that was being guided via teleconference-and as a result the patient died?

Re:What I can't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets run a DDOS against MediaDefender. I am willing to donate comp time to run a bot on my comp.

Re:What I can't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't their ISP have cut them off when they started doing illegal things like automatically targeting innocent companies with illegal DoS Attacks? No, their ISP should have cut them off when they started targeting GUILTY companies with illegal DoS Attacks. Just because you're a pedophile doesn't make it legal for me to retaliate by beating the crap out of you! (After all, that's what we have police for.)

Revision 3 is lucky!

[mcbutterbuns]

I can't prove it but I heard that The Planet was hosting an open tracker. We all heard what happened to them... http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/01/1715247

Congress Will Act...

[BlueStrat]

Although the FBI *is* investigating, be on the lookout for a hastily-written and passed-by-voice-vote bill by Congress OK'ing this behavior by MD.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Congress Will Act...

[dark whole]

complete with retroactive immunity of course.

Re:Congress Will Act...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the MPAA and RIAA are the oil companies of the democrats. This is the downside to supporting the other big party as a protest against republicans actions. (disclaimer: fiscal conservative) Expect more pats on the back for the **AA.

I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook now?

[Bananatree3]

Dear Public, Media, and our friends Revision3: We are very, very sorry. Our servers did bad, bad things to Revision 3 and WE HAD NO CLUE!! Please, take mercy on us. Sure, our severs were snooping around their legitimate BitTorrent tracker seeding maliciously. BUT WE HAD NO CLUE! Sure, our servers recently assraped their severs into oblivion, BUT WE HAD NO CLUE!! This is all one big, misfortune event. Our Friends at revision3, we are really, really, REALLY sorry. Please, we plead ignorance. Our innocent servers honestly thought you were running an pirate operation. Please accept our appologies (Pretty please! with a cherry ontop :))) We PROMISE we will NEVER EVER NEVER do it again. Sincerely, MediaDefender

Explain?

[QuietLagoon]

Wired has an interview with MediaDefender in which they try to explain why they attacked Revision3...

Try to explain? The bottom line is MediaDefender attacked another commercial entity.

If someone throws a stink bomb through a brick & mortar storefront window, forcing the store to close, do you think the police would allow the offender to get off with saying, "oops"?

Re:Explain?

[bastafidli]

Well, why is not Wired having interview with spokeperson of FBI or DOJ asking about the stauts of the investigation???

You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[plasmacutter]

First off, theyre a coroporation in the midst of one of the most corrupt adminstrations in the history of the united states.

Second, theyre working for the **AA organizations, the darlings of congress, for whom no human rights violations are too great a cost, for whom ACTA is being negotiated to subvert those pesky public interest groups and constitutional protections present in every industrialized nation on earth, and for whom judges suspend several constitutional protections for due process.

In other words, they are above the law, and the public allows them to do so because filesharing = terrorism, after all bush said so.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Second, theyre working for the **AA organizations, the darlings of congress, for whom no human rights violations are too great a cost, for whom ACTA is being negotiated to subvert those pesky public interest groups and constitutional protections present in every industrialized nation on earth, and for whom judges suspend several constitutional protections for due process.

I'm sorry what? When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Sure they're scumbags, but try to keep a little perspective. They're not exactly selling people into slavery.

The solution to the problem of them being "in" with congress is to give congress, and the government in general, less power. Power is abused. Always. This seems to be a pretty good example of that.

In other words, they are above the law, and the public allows them to do so because filesharing = terrorism, after all bush said so.

Reference?

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[91degrees]

They're not exactly selling people into slavery.

Not exactly, but threatening a lawsuit that will result in someone owing money to them for the rest of their life is a little too close to indentured servitude for my liking.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Dragonslicer]

Second, theyre working for the **AA organizations, the darlings of congress, for whom no human rights violations are too great a cost, for whom ACTA is being negotiated to subvert those pesky public interest groups and constitutional protections present in every industrialized nation on earth, and for whom judges suspend several constitutional protections for due process.

I'm sorry what? When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Sure they're scumbags, but try to keep a little perspective. They're not exactly selling people into slavery.

I think there's an ambiguous pronoun. I read it as Congress being the ones violating human rights e.g. privacy. Whether or not you want to consider privacy a human right is up to you.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[klapaucjusz]

When has the **AA ever violated human rights?

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest [...]

Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law [...]

Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence [...]

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't bush, it was his attorney general

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest [...]

Nobody in the US has ever been arrested for downloading music.

Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law [...]

Copyright infringement is a civil matter, and so far the **AA has always correctly handled it through the courts.

Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence [...]

How is the **AA violating anybody's privacy? My understanding was they put fake listings on tracker sites, and sued for copyright infringement when people attempted to download from them. It's a bit of a leap to assume an IP identifies a single person, but it's usually correct. I'd almost agree with you if they were actively infiltrating Tor networks or using man in the middle attacks against SSL connections, but convincing idiots to download and share files with them isn't a privacy violation in my book.

Besides that, the internet in general is public. traceroute shows 12 machines between me and slashdot, and any one of them can monitor, log, or otherwise view my traffic at their whim. For better or worse, anonymity on the internet usually assumes the other person isn't trying very hard to find out who you are.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Gideon Fubar]

That is a business plan i would like to see explained..

1) trade warez
2) ???
3) aid terrorism!

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Not exactly, but threatening a lawsuit that will result in someone owing money to them for the rest of their life is a little too close to indentured servitude for my liking.

Yeah, but that's the risk people knowingly take when they decide to infringe the **AA's copyrights. They had to consciously think "I know I can get a huge fine for this, but I'm going to do it anyway." Is it really too much to expect people to take responsibility for their actions?

Right now, the legal choices are:

• Buy **AA's music and movies
• Don't buy **AA's music and movies
• Vote to get IP laws changed so filesharing is legal

There is no "Disregard the law and do whatever you want" option. If they're willfully breaking the law, it shouldn't be a very big surprise when they get punished for it. And right now the penalty for copyright infringement is a big fine.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[ziggie]

When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Every time they use their version of justice to threaten, rob, or kidnap a being for viewing or sharing information.

And every time they keep useful information from a being because of their laws which have been designed to suck money out of the progress of humans.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[tomhudson]

Except that MediaDefender, with the knowledge and consent of the **AA, loaded trackers onto the R3 servers that allowed people to do the downloading. Since the trackers were, in effect, sanctioned by the copyright holders, who were making the material available for download via MediaDefender poisoning R3s servers, the downloads are legal.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Khaed]

Yeah, but that's the risk people knowingly take when they decide to infringe the **AA's copyrights. They had to consciously think "I know I can get a huge fine for this, but I'm going to do it anyway." Is it really too much to expect people to take responsibility for their actions?

Except there have been cases where the person did not violate their copyrights. They don't prove someone did it before threatening or suing them, and those people who are innocent still have to fight to prove they're innocent. Then the RIAA holds up paying damages in court for years -- like the case where they tried to claim they shouldn't be liable for attorney's fees. I can't recall the specifics but they were found to be wrong and the defendant then sued them for costs and they called her claimed attorney's fees "outrageous" then refused to publish their own lawyer fees*. It was on Slashdot a few months ago.

* "Objection, your honor!"
"On what grounds?"
"...It's extremely damaging to my case!"

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Mistshadow2k4]

Do you have evidence that everyone accused of file-sharing music is guilty of doing so? So far, the RIAA has not been able to prove that and they have been caught sending notices to people who were very obviously not guilty in the past. Accusation does not equal guilt. However, the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA against person, whether guilty or not, has the same effect on his or her life. Saying downloaders should take responsibility, given the RIAA's track record of highly imperfect accuracy, is hardly any kind of justification for the RIAA's actions.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

I never said the **AA was right in this case.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Look, I'm not saying the **AA aren't scumbags. They've made some pretty huge, blatant mistakes, and some of their tactics are illegal. The cases you mentioned, and the one in the article, for instance. But, those cases only get talked about because they're the exceptions to the rule. It doesn't hurt that they make the **AA look bad. However, the majority of people go for settlements because they were guilty.

The **AA being scum doesn't make it okay to infringe their copyrights.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Of the tens of thousands of lawsuits the RIAA has filed, the vast majority have settled because the defendants were guilty. You don't hear about those cases because they're not very interesting, don't make the RIAA look bad, and they go against the group think on sites like Slashdot, Digg and Reddit.

Making a few mistakes doesn't mean they lose the right to defend their copyright.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[mpe]

Except that MediaDefender, with the knowledge and consent of the **AA, loaded trackers onto the R3 servers that allowed people to do the downloading. Since the trackers were, in effect, sanctioned by the copyright holders, who were making the material available for download via MediaDefender poisoning R3s servers, the downloads are legal.

Even though MediaDefender's uploading of the trackers undoubtedly wasn't.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[91degrees]

It's not a fine. It's compensation for damages to the record industry's sales.

Should people really expect to be charged a ridiculous amount - hundreds of times the damage they cold possibly have caused - based on a law that was intended to deal with large scale industrial piracy? Surely most people expect the punishment to fit the crime and for damages to be reasonable.

And given that the media industry were the ones who lobbied for these laws, and they're the ones who bring lawsuits based on them, then I'm damn well going to hold them responsible still. Just because you have the power to ruin someone's life does not oblige you to do so in retribution.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jimicus]

I'm sorry what? When has the **AA ever violated human rights? Sure they're scumbags, but try to keep a little perspective. They're not exactly selling people into slavery. They're not doing it the old-fashioned way - by invading a country, capturing as many people as they can find and putting them on the next ship going home - but there are plenty of experienced artists would disagree with you over the "not exactly selling people into slavery" comment:

Courtney Love:

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/

David Bowie even set up his own record label:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/1714545.stm

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

Should people really expect to be charged a ridiculous amount - hundreds of times the damage they cold possibly have caused - based on a law that was intended to deal with large scale industrial piracy?

It doesn't matter if it's fair or not because according to the law, they should be. If you don't think that's fair, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you. There are ways of getting laws changed, but that isn't one of them. For example: I think social security is bullshit, but that doesn't mean I can stop paying it without going to jail.

In our country the people are ultimately responsible for the laws. We vote for the people who write them, and often times we vote for the laws themselves. The RIAA didn't single handedly elect the entire congress and senate. Lobbying doesn't explain why the citizens let the politicians keep their jobs after enacting these laws.

Also, I'm a little confused about your alternative solution. Are you arguing that fixing the law would be a waste of time and it's better to remain a criminal and whine about it?

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

The **AA being scum doesn't make it okay to infringe their copyrights.

Yes it does. Current copyright laws are bought and paid for by the **AA. The general public have no say and no way short of violent revolution to change this situation. Therefore these 'laws' should be treated as null and void.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vote to get IP laws changed so filesharing is legal"

get real. you might as well vote for communism.
As more and more of the economic output of the USA becomes information that is encoded digitally, you wish to reduce its value to zero?
Good luck getting anyone who doesn't live in moms basement to support such bullshit.

Why not vote to make income tax illegal, and to make cookies free for everyone too!!!!111ONEONEONE

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

As more and more of the economic output of the USA becomes information that is encoded digitally, you wish to reduce its value to zero?

I didn't say that at all. I'm fully aware that a legalized filesharing law would never get passed. My point, which you seem to have missed, is that if you don't like a law, you can't just pretend it doesn't apply to you.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you never read much news about this, so stop making false statements about arrests you don't know anything about:
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/February/06_crm_103.html
It even mentions the RIAA's help (probably through media defender lol).

I seem to recall another case as well about some fans of some artist group sharing some popular music before release (they claimed they didn't know it was wrong), but I can't find it with a quick search.

Also, copyright infringment is not always a civil matter.

This federal law I'm going to show you gives 3 years in jail for taking a snapshot of a movie with a cell phone camera.

"Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005"
You probably haven't heard of this given your reply, and also likely don't know what that they put into it.

The actual text of the law shown here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/content/legislation/s167 says:
"(2) AUDIOVISUAL RECORDING DEVICE- The term `audiovisual recording device' means a digital or analog photographic or video camera..."

So digital cameras and cell phone cameras count because it says photographic OR video camera. Someone could be prosecuted under that law for an instant 3 year jail sentnance just for taking a digital snapshot of the film.

BTW, the law also permits and indemnifies theatre operators from any civil/criminal lawsuits and if they want to detain and interrogate you.
"(1) may detain, in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time, any person suspected of a violation of this section with respect to that motion picture or audiovisual work for the purpose of questioning..."
"(2) shall not be held liable in any civil or criminal action arising out of a detention under paragraph (1)"

So not only can you be arrested for criminal charges and 3 years in jail, the theatre operaters can gestapo nazi interrogate you and are held harmless and blameless and unsueable/unchargable under this law.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, here's another arrest for music sharing, this time a guy on campus:
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2000/victim.html

Oh yeah and that family copyright act also is the one that allows arrests if you have a music file in your shared folder:
http://news.cnet.com/Bush-signs-law-targeting-P2P-pirates/2100-1028_3-5687495.html?tag=nefd.top

Oh and don't forget that young woman who was arrested for recording a 20 second clip of transformers to show her brother (yeah its not music, but it IS copyright infringment thats now criminal):
http://www.cinematical.com/2007/08/03/19-year-old-arrested-charged-for-recording-20-seconds-of-trans/

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[91degrees]

My position is simply that the RIAA are evil on account of behaving in a manner that causes disproportionate harm for their own benefit. I think they're evil even f supported by the law, and even if the populace have the power to change the law. I'd consider them evil whether they lost or won. They're attempting to violate human rights by making people indebted to them for life.

If someone was sold into slavery, even if they knew their actions would result in that, and even if it was legal, I'd consider anyone who bought them to be breaching their human rights as well.

I don't think I was offering an alternative solution, apart from the record labels should push for damages that are related to the damage caused.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Schadrach]

The vast majority settled because the defendants were guilty? I would be shocked if no small number of them settled because the settlement is cheaper than paying for their defense, which would likely come out of pocket, even if they were not found to be liable for copyright infringement. After all, the RIAA works hard to be a PITA when someone countersues for lawyer's fees.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine, but the fact that they own copyrights that earn them gobs of cash shouldn't allow them to do illegal things with impunity. I would really like to see one of their smug CEOs get thrown in jail to get raped by Bubba. They spend so much of their time trying to convince people that they are some *huge* victim, through the use of lies, diceptions, and half-truths.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jedidiah]

I would like to add a "me too".

People don't "settle because they're guilty". They settle because
it's far cheaper to settle than to defend. We see this bullshit with
patents all the time. We have obvious and clear examples of why your
principle is clearly wrong.

So why do you choose to apply it to individuals where it is obviously
bogus for corporations?

Another citizen vs. corp double standard?

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jedidiah]

Can we count on you to defend the chopping off of hands and the throwing of widows into funeral pyres next?

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently you have not seen the cost of proving yourself innocent.

It will cost more to prove your innocence than to pay their settlement.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Hatta]

Copyright itself violates the fundamental human right to property. Real physical property, not the imaginary kind.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Hatta]

People who break an unjust law don't get to be upset when they're punished for it? Sorry, injustice is an outrage, whether it's legal or not.

Yes, the reality is that some people will face consequences for violating copyright. Just because that's the law doesn't make it right. In fact, every person punished by an unjust law makes it every bit more outrageous.

It's hard to imagine what kind of depraved indifference would cause you to think "eh they knew the risks, so fuck em". It's not the people who are in the wrong, it's the law.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Khaed]

I never said it did -- that is not my argument.

I said there's a problem with them going after people that might not be guilty. And in many cases it appears they go after people too poor to defend themselves. Their surrogate, Media Defender, is committing crimes.

Also, infringing their copyright is in no way worth the judgments they get -- I'm sorry, but it just isn't and never will be. They know it, too. But they want to bully people into paying their fine without seeing a day in court. Probably because they have such a shitty record.

I'm one of the few on /. that believes in copyright, so don't get me wrong here. But I think it has gotten out of control and they're abusing the system and in many cases using their money to facilitate illegal and immoral behavior.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[sjames]

Perhaps not slavery, but there is the matter of extortion, racketeering, and cynically perverting due process for their own ends. Due process IS a human right.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[radish]

And people get wrongly convicted for crimes all the time. It sucks, but it happens. That doesn't mean we stop charging people and repeal all the laws. What it does mean is we need to look at ways of making it less likely to happen in the future. The way it works now they (the *AA) don't have a lot of incentive to be careful before bringing a case, I'd like to see them pay costs equivalent to their own costs (not the opponents') if they lose, and be penalised for either delaying payment or bringing excessive losing cases. These penalties should include being prevented from bringing any more cases.

It sucks to be falsely accused, and we should try to make the longterm effects of that as small as possible, but we shouldn't go so far as to hamper people/corps from getting legitimate complaints addressed.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[randyest]

In our country the people are ultimately responsible for the laws. We vote for the people who write them, and often times we vote for the laws themselves

Yep. But the people are currently too busy blaming Bush for every problem (though ha can not legislate) and giving the ultra-corrupt and moronic congress a free pass.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[u-235-sentinel]

Of the tens of thousands of lawsuits the RIAA has filed, the vast majority have settled because the defendants were guilty.

Reference please?

So if these guys are guilty, I'm wondering where is the proof and was it validated? Or do we simply take the **IA's word on this?

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Khaed]

Nonono, please don't think I'm saying we need to repeal all the laws in that area. But the judgments should be a lot closer to reality, not in the millions of dollars for simple copyright infringement. People that did real harm suffer less than that.

I was just pointing out that not everyone that is attacked and suffers because of the RIAA did something wrong, and can be put in a situation where they have to pay for years and their lives are wrecked over this. The RIAA is basically blackmailing people. "Hey, you can pay some huge fine or risk a HUGE legal process that will dominate your life and take years to resolve. Your choice."

I think the limit for sharing a song should be a buck per completed file transfer, provable by the RIAA, and not from them or their agents (otherwise they're just jacking up the fine themselves). If they can't prove someone is distributing enough songs for that to be worth pursuing then they're SOL. And I wouldn't ever let the RIAA get lawyers fees reimbursed. Not because they're the big-bad-corporation but because they've acted in bad faith to abuse the system and fought hard not to have to reimburse lawyers fees when they were obviously and maliciously in the wrong.

You'd pretty much have to be running a piracy ring to fall under this -- because you'd have to share enough music to cover their lawyer and research costs, which is nearly impossible on our current series of tubes.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[radish]

But the judgments should be a lot closer to reality, not in the millions of dollars for simple copyright infringement. People that did real harm suffer less than that.
Agreed 100%.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[jlarocco]

17100 lawsuits as of December 2005.

If nearly 20000 people had been wrongly accused and bullied into settleing, every lawyer in the country would be trying to cash in with a giant class action lawsuit.

So if these guys are guilty, I'm wondering where is the proof and was it validated? Or do we simply take the **IA's word on this?

Settling means no proof is necessary and and we don't take anybody's word for it. It means the defendant would rather agree to the terms set by the person filing the lawsuit rather than go to trial.

Also, here's "proof" that at least some of the defendants are found guilty if they don't settle.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[tomhudson]

They did it as the agent of the **AA. Unless and until the **AA disowns them, the downloads are authorized.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[magus_melchior]

I don't know if property and privacy are human rights (there are probably many who regard it as so), but the music cartel's plan to threaten anyone who trades files to pay them or risk losing everything in litigation is certainly a form of extortion. If organized crime (which they're becoming with every frivolous discovery filed) were to engage in this sort of campaign, the FBI would jump on them post haste.

Let's not forget that Media Sentry took a few lessons from the military intelligence unit under Rumsfeld that told us Iraq got uranium from Africa and generally is doing "just a cracker-jack job"...

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[Hoknor]

Many settlements specifically contain the wording "with no admission of guilt" so there is no basis for stating whether or not a party who settles was guilty. Just because lawyers want to cash in on a class action lawsuit does not mean these same parties that decided the least burdensome way to resolve the situation was a settlement now want to put up with getting a new lawsuit started.

Re:You forget, theyre the "darlings" of congress.

[mpe]

They did it as the agent of the **AA. Unless and until the **AA disowns them, the downloads are authorized.

The ??AA can't disown them retrospectivly. Any torrent they have uploaded before then continues to be "authorized" so long as it exists.
what they had no authority to do was to use R3's servers to distribute their torrents. Thus R3 are entitled to take all sorts of action, be it instigating criminal/civil procedings or just sending MD a bill.

Even if it was illegal content

[nurb432]

How can they legally cause a DoS ?

Re:Even if it was illegal content

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Effect.

Re:Even if it was illegal content

[arbiter1]

the site itself might not be able to cause that, but the hosting company it self could since that attack could be seen as something that interrupted their daily business.

Re:Even if it was illegal content

[DarkOx]

The Slashdot effect is not an attach though! Its legitimate traffic, it so happens that sites often can't handle that but it does not make it an attack. There is a difference both of control (slashdot does force anyone's computer to download those URLs) and intent (Slashdot is saying hey readers this is interesting go check this out). Most people who put something on the web do so because they want it to be seen.

China

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhhhh I get it now. The recent power outages wasn't due to the Chinese Cyber Militia. Someone at the plant must've been downloading the new Snoop Dogg album! Hence no power. That should teach those damned pirates....

A Good Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

...for tracker operators. "Umm...Not my files...They must have been put there by MediaDefender"

I wonder if that now becomes a viable defense. If MD can get in to leave files, so could anyone else :)

Inexcusable

[Joebert]

Computer systems should be treated as pets, if they attack someone they should be put to sleep.

Re:Inexcusable

[tietokone-olmi]

On the other hand, a pet budgie can hardly cause any injury past the superficial. Well there is a mild infection risk if the beak pierces the skin (think "very small pinprick"), but everyone knows to treat cat scratches too.

And no one has their pet turtle killed for snapping at some dumbasses' finger.

But yeah, MediaDefender needs a good whackin' with "the book".

injected fake content?

[nurb432]

Wouldn't that be considered some sort of 'frame up'?

I mean if i'm hosing legal content, and they come along and inject fake/illegal content then sue me how the hell is that stand up in court?

Re:injected fake content?

[mnemocynic]

I mean if i'm hosing legal content Interesting choice of words.

Re:injected fake content?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Wouldn't that be considered some sort of 'frame up'?

I mean if i'm hosing legal content, and they come along and inject fake/illegal content then sue me how the hell is that stand up in court? They inject fake content to make it harder for people to find the real content, not to frame the tracker.

I doubt even our (the U.S.) government would hesitate to step on the neck of any company that does that so blatantly.

Re:injected fake content?

[dangitman]

I dunno, MediaDefender seem to want it both ways. I wouldn't be surprised if they simultaneously posted fake stuff to a tracker to disrupt traffic, and also to accuse the tracker owners of violating copyright. After all, that's pretty much what happened here. The site got DoS'ed because they closed the backdoor in their tracker, and Mediadefender had been using it to inject fake content. In any case, it's probably a mistake to "think the best" of MediaDefender's intentions.... they have consistently shown themselves to be more than reprehensible and two-faced.

Re:injected fake content?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that MD was posting fake content then attempting to catch the people who tried downloading said fake content, hence all the analogies above to selling fake drugs.... or am I misunderstanding the confusing motives of MD entirely?

Re:injected fake content?

[dangitman]

See, if it were all about the downloaders, then why did MediaDefender attack the tracker's server when it closed the hole that allowed "illicit" content to be downloaded? They did a "good" thing by closing that hole, and MediaDefender should have moved on. But instead, they brought out the big guns. It's like MediaDefender wanted the tracker to keep serving up the "illicit" torrents.

But yes, it is confusing. The only thing we know for sure is that the situation with MediaDefender is totally fucked up. I mean, even with the "fake files" thing - how are they supposed to prosecute somebody for downloading fake files in the first place? And wouldn't they be equally guilty if they were serving up copyrighted content, even if it was "fake"? From my understanding, the person sharing the files usually gets punished more than the downloader.

I suspect that the whole thing is a scam, and MediaDefender has no interest in preventing piracy whatsoever. They just want to bill their clients for their "services" - which they admitted in internal emails to be fraudulent. Any network activity in MediaDefender's name is "evidence" that they are doing their job (whatever that is) and allows them to bill their clients.

Re:The torrent community has more bandwidth than M

[Anonymous Coward]

Because DDoS'ing is illegal, and there's no point suing them for that if they'll just be able to bite you back for doing the same thing.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[empaler]

Also, we made this cake. For you. Please, don't ask about the teeth marks.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Brian Gordon]

"Our servers did it" definitely induced a head-scratch from me. Why on earth would they have their servers set up to automatically commit serious crimes just because a server was public and then restricted access? That doesn't make sense, even from their twisted viewpoint..

Full mp3s on their website

[ibaun]

After browsing their site, I found this open dir: http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/ . How is spreading an mp3 of Kanye West or Timbaland legal? Should they now DoS their own webserver?

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[bjorniac]

Interesting - they just go on the name of the file when they go for kazaa/limewire users right? This would hand a defense everything they need:

"So, your evidence is that my client had a file called 'x.mp3' for download. Your website has a file called 'y.mp3' for download. Are you distributing content illegally too?"

"No, you have to check what's in the... d'oh!"

On a side note, I've always thought the filesharing thing to be ridiculous for a different reason. All digital files are essentially numbers. Sure, they're big numbers, but that's all they are. Since when was it illegal to tell someone a number? What numbers are now illegal? Since every conceivable sequence of numbers (integers) exists within Pi somewhere, it would mean that Pi was illegal too...

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[ionix5891]

just in case they remove this folder (and any evidence)

heres a listing of files
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/HBO_Watcher.avi
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/HumanWeapon_Karate_SneakPeak.mov
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/JAY-Z_LIMEWIRE.wmv
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/Kanye_West-Graduation-Stronger.zip
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/MP3_Music_Sponsorship_Presentation.ppt
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/MediaDefenderP2PDemo.exe
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/MediaDefender_one-sheet.pdf
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/MediaDefender_presentation-8_15_07.ppt
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/Sample_p2p_MarketingReport.ppt
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/Sprint%20-%20Parking%20-%20H264.mov
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/Timbaland-The_Way_I_Are.zip
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/jayz_coca_cola.wmv
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/lebron_yall.wmv
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/sampleReport.ppt

heres a screenshot of the folder
http://b.imagehost.org/0325/Image2.jpg

and here is a mirror of the folder contents
http://ifile.it/_rcytws3/mediadefender

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[johnny cashed]

The MediaDefender_one-sheet.pdf is interesting.

The money quote is at the end:

"The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us," says Jay-Z's attorney, Michael Guido. "While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience," and "this technology allows us to market back to them."

So MediaDefender, how does one use P2P to "market" back to users when you go around shutting down P2P servers via DOS attacks?

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Ksevio]

hmm well after opening up the kayne west song, the title is:

'Stronger' sponsored by BoostMobile- check out the 'Where You At? Tour'... Have a passion for cars, music, models and entertainment? So do we! Check out the latest in car culture with Boost Mobile Hot Import Nights on tour near you at www.BoostMobile.com

I didn't know you could make song titles that long

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just to clear this in my mind. The RIAA essentially go after people and sue them for sharing copyrighted material, ok got that.

They base their huge damage estimates on the fact that these files once shared, are then shared by the first lot of people and so on and so on. Kind of like a pyramid.

So, given that this company has on its servers full mp3's and has had them on their servers since August/September of last year, what sort of damages claim should the RIAA be looking at when suing these criminals?

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful with these files, they could have been watermarked in order to be traceable.

Many years ago researchers studied software virus infections by creating harmless viruses that propagated themselves as normal viruses do, without harming any system. This allowed to track the path real viruses follow and also helped to catch some (real) virus writers.

I'd stay away from anything that comes from MD sites, especially if it's in a watermarking-friendly format.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

They've got a /news/ and /images/ open directories also, nothing much interesting.

(Captcha: victims)

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Alpha830RulZ]

Nice work. Thanks for taking the effort.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the powerpoint presentation:
http://www.mediadefender.com/marketing/MP3_Music_Sponsorship_Presentation.ppt
You will note that these files are "sponsored". Media Defender gets a company to sponsor an MP3 then they put that MP3 on the popular file sharing networks. The MP3 album art is an advertisement for that sponsor instead of the actual art. The Kanye West song on here is sponsored by "Boost".
If you are downloading a Media Defender distributed and corporate-sponsored MP3, then is that corporation paying for my license through their advertising?

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

All human beings are essentially molecules. Since when was it illegal to kill a few molecules?

No, I'm not equating piracy with murder, I'm just pointing out that your argument is pretty fucking dumb.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Anonymous Coward]

If their activity is automated as they claim, and as it's suggested to try to get the automation to attack a government or hospital network, it should be plausible that it could be tricked to attack itself.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[simonjester2424]

Did you watch the avi titled: HBOwatcher? That was a load of wtf.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[ibaun]

Apparently some trailer from HBO, which was leaked one year ago.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[bjorniac]

Ah, a rude reply from an AC... fantastic. The differences between a complex system of a human being, and the number that makes up a digital file are vast. All I'm talking about is a number here and the fact that it is now illegal to tell someone that number.

But hey, why bother, you don't even have the balls to post your insult from a real account.

Re:Full mp3s on their website

[Philzli]

ID3 Tag for Timbaland - The Way I are: ""The Way I Are" sponsored by McDonald's-go to www.McDonalds.com/music to see exclusive Timbaland concert footage and win backstage tickets to hang with Timbaland at his next show!"

above the law?

[segagman]

Denial of service attacks are illegal in the US under 12 different statutes, including the Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So is MD above the law?

Re:above the law?

[bmo]

"Denial of service attacks are illegal in the US under 12 different statutes, including the Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So is MD above the law?"

Nope.

And anyone who wants to look at the "howto" for this stuff, go HERE:

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ccmanual/01ccma.html#F.

That's the applicable one.

Since Revision 3 is also in California, they have an open-and-shut case against Media Defender for civil damages.

Please note that vigilantism is _not_ something that justifies breaking US federal or state law. From the POV of Media Defender, the best they can get away with is pleading guilty to conspiracy, especially since they admitted in public that they're engaged in vigilante "net justice"

--
BMO - For Great Justice

Re:above the law?

[Darkness404]

Please note that vigilantism is _not_ something that justifies breaking US federal or state law.

No, but it sure can add reason. Judges are human too (though sometimes it seems they aren't often enough and other times they are human too often), and if someone can give a good enough reason why they thought they needed to break the law, a judge could acquit them because of the reason.

Re:above the law?

[bmo]

"No, but it sure can add reason. Judges are human too (though sometimes it seems they aren't often enough and other times they are human too often), and if someone can give a good enough reason why they thought they needed to break the law, a judge could acquit them because of the reason."

Usually when that happens, it's because someone tried to save someone else's life or defend his own.

But since this is all about tort and not about saving life and limb, it's more likely for the judge to say to MD that "You don't do that in civilized society. That's what this courtroom is for."

--
BMO

Re:above the law?

[segagman]

ok so i listened to the MD internal mp3 phone call at http://tinyurl.com/3hyrkx most of the conversation is about being secure wile he admits to using voip the case there talking about is about child porn and i think we all would agree that those type of people need to be stoped and in the case revision3 DoS attack it is clear to me that MD is not a law enforcement agency what there doing should be done by the f.b.i. but the fbi cant do DoS attacks because torrents have legit uses I think this has the possibility to snow ball in to some thing that would further corrode are civil liberty's as in the case of the air force bot net http://tinyurl.com/6b8azj i think we as a community should watch closely or theres going to be some law passed stuck into a farm bill or something i would go one further and think that Windows7 will have it coded that would be crazy but i think it is posbile

Re:above the law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sentences. Please use sentences.

Re:above the law?

[coyote-san]

I can't remember the name of the doctrine, maybe something with 'lesser evil'? It's an affirmative defense where you admit to committing a lesser crime in order to stop or prevent a greater evil.

In practice, this situation didn't come up much and I think most states have dropped it. They leave it to the prosecution's discretion in dropping those charges.

BTW the canonical example is probably assaulting somebody in order to stop/prevent a rape. This might sound like a no-brainer, but what if the would-be rescuer misread the situation? This has happened and it's always messy.

Re:above the law?

[AK Marc]

No, but it sure can add reason. Judges are human too (though sometimes it seems they aren't often enough and other times they are human too often), and if someone can give a good enough reason why they thought they needed to break the law, a judge could acquit them because of the reason.

Judges believe in the law. If something needed to be done then for safety (driving on the wrong side of the road to avoid a deer), then it may be excusable. But things which could be settled later with no change in the outcome (DoS of a site vs injunction), then they will generally look at that quite unfavorably. Also, automated systems designed for illegal actions (even if they hope those actions will be considered justified) shows a premeditation for committing illegal actions, so if any of their actions are shown to be non-justified, they should also be considered deliberate. You can't "accidentally" buy a 6 Gbps pipe labeled "dedicated illegal DoS pipe" and expect the judge to think you accidentally used it for a DoS with no knowledge it was capable of that.

Old but useful

[bmo]

If anyone wants the old torrent of Media Defender emails, they are still up on PirateBay.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3806944/MediaDefender.Mail.200612.200709-MDD

Anyone got a list of the Media Defender IP block? It'd be nice to add to the firewall.

--
BMO

Re:Old but useful

[Anonymous Coward]

whois www.mediadefender.com

207.171.9.16[Querying whois.radb.net]
[whois.radb.net]
route: 207.171.0.0/18
descr: Phyber 207.171.0.0/18
origin: AS7012
mnt-by: MAINT-AS7012
changed: bgp@phyber.com 20071009
source: RADB

route: 207.171.0.0/18
descr: Route-207.171.0.0/18
origin: AS40093
mnt-by: maint-AS27524
changed: noc@net-sentry.net 20070206 #12:09:19(UTC)
source: RADB

Re:Old but useful

[davidkv]

Their web site is probably not on the same net as their attacking servers. It should be quite easy to confirm from where the attacks are originating and blacklist those addresses. Blacklisting is not in any way optimal and mistakes are expensive, but it will make new ISPs hesitate before letting them in as customers.
It's not fun when you're on the tar end of the blacklisting stick. But it sure works.

Foot, meet mouth

[Moraelin]

You know, for a while I was kinda suspecting they'll play the "we're dumb, and it was an accident" card. You know, say that it was some poorly configured system that did the injecting, and it accidentally got stuck connecting in a loop instead of once a day. Present it as some bug they didn't even know about. Blame some techie. You know, anything _except_ say "yep, it was premeditated all along to break the law." Go for criminal negligence.

But that they have a big fat pipe dedicated to conducting DOS attacks? Jesus F. Christ, that's like saying that I have a car dedicated to running down pedestrians I don't like. If that's not a confession of premeditation, I don't know what is.

To put it in perspective, the western criminal system (as far as I understand it, and IANAL) tries, or theoretically should try, to establish the degree of intent (or "mens rea" = "guilty mind") in an act. So for example, if a shingle off my roof fell on the a passerby's head, although what happened is the same and the guy is just as dead, you can have very different punishments based on the nuance of being classified anywhere between "direct intention" (I actually intended to have shingles fall on him/someone) and "criminal negligence" (I had no flippin' clue that the roof is in that bad condition, though a reasonable person should have foreseen and inspected it regularly.) The worst you can do is not only go for "direct intention", but also basically say, "oh yeah, it wasn't a momentary act of rage, it was planned all along."

So these guys have basically been paying all along for a pipe _dedicated_ to breaking the law? They actually had a plan to break the law, and month after month paid the bill on the resources set aside for only that purpose? Geesh. I hope that a few executives land in state jail there.

Re:Foot, meet mouth

[mpe]

But that they have a big fat pipe dedicated to conducting DOS attacks? Jesus F. Christ, that's like saying that I have a car dedicated to running down pedestrians I don't like. If that's not a confession of premeditation, I don't know what is.

Not a car a whole fleet of them.

So these guys have basically been paying all along for a pipe _dedicated_ to breaking the law? They actually had a plan to break the law, and month after month paid the bill on the resources set aside for only that purpose? Geesh.

Dosn't this at least break their ISP's terms and conditions?

I hope that a few executives land in state jail there.

Jailing "a few executives" probably isn't enough. Even getting rid of "Media Defender" won't do it. What's needed is for those who paid for it to be up on either racketering or terrorist charges.

Re:Foot, meet mouth

[aproposofwhat]

Read this filing from their parent company (the relevant bits about 'interdiction' are near the end), and you will see how right you are.

Personally, I'd just cut the co-lo's pipes :P

MafiaDefender

[Mr_Icon]

Can someone tag this with "MafiaDefender" please?

Re:MafiaDefender

[Opportunist]

Interesting. mafiadefender.com has been registered, but it seems to be a domain squatter. Through GoDaddy and Domains by Proxy. Last update was on the day it was registered, expiry date is in Sept 08.

One has to wonder whether some company wants to make sure nobody creates a spoof homepage...

Re:MafiaDefender

[Anonymous Coward]

Also use the "terrorism" tag. After all, this fits the bill perfectly.

Cake?

[ben(zen)]

I don't see any cake...

Re:Cake?

[flosofl]

The cake is a lie! (sorry, I'll just let myself out)

Re:Cake?

[redxxx]

Tell me about it. 6 hours of downloading later, and the cake is corrupted.

Damn you MediaDefender, foiled again!

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[RobertM1968]

"Our servers did it" definitely induced a head-scratch from me. Why on earth would they have their servers set up to automatically commit serious crimes just because a server was public and then restricted access? That doesn't make sense, even from their twisted viewpoint..

Because they have gotten away with it for near a decade, even though many have pointed out the illegality of it.

And they expect, once again, to get away with it.

And because, this will become even more fuel for them (and the **AA) towards pushing making P2P software entirely illegal, regardless of it's use. Does this last section make sense? No? So what? Do you really think it has to? Look at their other arguments for making P2P illegal - do they make sense? Didnt think so. ;-)

And of course, because it will help them push forward the pending legislation that would make their actions (whatever they are) legal - irrespective of current law.

So... I think it makes perfect sense - at least from their twisted viewpoint.

:-(

Easy

[Xest]

It depends on someone or some company, like me for example saying:

"You're welcome to DoS attack my connection all you want" ...Er wait, forget I said that!

Not only shamed, but pied as well

[Bananatree3]

the "one two punch" MediaDefender did was not only reckless but dumb. They stealing bandwidth and poisoning the Revision3 tracker. Revision3 probably wasn't exactly running a Honeypot operation on their BitTorrent tracker, trying to attract pirate scum. Comes along MediaDefender and their server, finds an exploit and utilizes that. That, in of itself, should be illegal (and probably is). When Revision3 finds their blindspot and patches it, MediaDefender turns around and pies them in the face for finding the hole. What a way to say "thanks".

Sheesh.

Re:Not only shamed, but pied as well

[Moraelin]

Well, that goes without saying, of course.

Though I'd compare a DOS more to a mugging than a pie in the face. That attack disrupted Revision 3 quite thoroughly for a while, and even knocked off their other servers.

But what I'm saying is: now imagine that, as a private person, John Doe goes to trial for something like that: John Doe was breaking into a house, the owner woke up and found him, and John promptly knocked him out. And it turns out that John Doe had bought a blackjack just for that: to whack anyone upside the head if they catch him red-handed. And carried it with him around daily. And made no secret as to why, and what it's for. He didn't just panic and punched the guy, but had planned all along what to do, and had the tool for it ready in advance.

I'm thinking you wouldn't find many judges sympathetic to John Doe in that case.

And at any rate, I'm saying it gives some insight into John's psychopathic little mind. He... doesn't exactly look like a likable guy there, to say the least.

Re:Not only shamed, but pied as well

[bane2571]

You know, the analogy is somewhat unneeded in this case, though pretty apt. Try this:

John Doe likes DOSing servers, he buys a fat 8Gbps pipe, tells his friends how he bought it to DoS servers then DOSes the itunes servers. How much jail time/fines does John Doe get?

Re:Not only shamed, but pied as well

[mpe]

the "one two punch" MediaDefender did was not only reckless but dumb. They stealing bandwidth and poisoning the Revision3 tracker.

They probably didn't just attempt this with Revision3. So presumably in addition to automated DOS they have automated systems which try to hack trackers.

Mediadefender memos

[sirhan]

It's always interesting to see what they were thinking (or not thinking for that matter).

So now this is legal?

[Darkness404]

So if what MediaDefender is doing is legal, then because Apple is "not allowing me my fair use rights" when you download songs from iTunes that gives me a right to A) hack iTunes and put bogus songs on there that will spread a virus and kill iPods B) perform a massive DoS attack on Apple and C) tell iTunes to take down the "copyrighted" content that you have added in the first place and ask for a log of users to sue. Would that work if I did it? No, but it seems like the law doesn't apply to a corrupt congress and *AA.

Re:You forget, they're the "darlings" of congress.

[funkyloki]

I thought filesharing=communism.

There's even a poster.

How about...

[ponraul]

Null routing MediaDefender? So much for Net Neutrality.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think this is a true post!!!

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[rrohbeck]

Why on earth would they have their servers set up to automatically commit serious crimes just because a server was public and then restricted access? Their servers became self-aware on August 29, 1997.

Crimes commited

[future assassin]

Seems to me MD should be charged with Mischief Trespassing (If I open the door to my garage and you fill up my garbage cans with you garbage, its still tresspassing) Conspiracy to commit fraud for trying to frame R3? And any other cyber crime related to hacking,.hijacking computers, illegal distribution of copy righted content. I hope R3 doesn't just give up after a while. Its one thing to try to fight people who distribute your copy righted content but not if you use illegal methods and brake laws doing it.

Into a crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me, or does having a powerful semi-automated DoS attack machine shooting away seem like the height of recklessness?

I mean, we could have a contest. Find the most sensitive servers you can to get MediaDefender to false positive. Banks, hospitals, schools, seems like under the right circumstances any these may be open to attack. After all, if it can happen by chance, there's more than likely some avenue to coordinate exploitation.

This whole thing is sort of surreal. It's a frigging felony with collateral network damage, and they're more or less firing blindly into a crowd.

Re:Into a crowd

[Forbman]

Right, so figure out how to use this against them. No, don't risk servers where actual damages could occur (banks, hospitals, electrical power SCADA systems, etc). Figure out how to set up servers sending bogus Bt traffic that MediaDefender latches onto, and figure out how to get them to constantly be chasing these kinds of sites.

Ironic if it would be some of these botnets could somehow do it... (two wrongs perhaps resulting if not in a right, at least a left turn?)

9 Gbps:MediaDefender 800kbps:everyone else

[keneng]

Traffic Shaping has been discussed to solve internet congestion problems all over the world.

Here's an easy solution: Kill...um...shape MediaDefender's upload bandwidth and split it to everyone else.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they thought the RIAA leadership had their own servers nuked, so they launched "Plan R" in retaliation.

Retaliation

[MrEricSir]

How to retaliate:

1. Develop software that LOOKS like an "illegal" tracker to MediaDefender.
2. Distribute that software to thousands of people.
3. MediaDefender consumes all their bandwidth trying to attack everyone.

I call it a Distributed Denial Of Service Defense (DDOSD).

Re:...time for a little civil disobediance

[gth-au]

Given MediaDefender's own website brags about their cyber-terrorism, I think we'd all be failing in our duty of care to the global internet if we didn't take an axe to all their links. Physical address of their links, please?

if it's legal to fight illegal with illegal means

[Opportunist]

Does that mean we can start DDoSing MediaDefender's servers?

If China did this it would be terrorism

[gelfling]

If the Chinese government or the PLA did this kind of thing if would be denounced as industrial espionage or even terrorism.

That's actually the goddamn law as written. So I think everyone is going about this wrong. The way to go after the **AA is to prosecute them under Federal Terrorism Laws.

I am dead serious about this. How do you KNOW it isn't terrorism? Because they say so? I am unconvinced since intellectual property is a huge export industry for the US and some 'private' party inserting themselves into it in the name of 'protection' that often backfires?

Re:If China did this it would be terrorism

[Opportunist]

Why not be general? If anyone but some governmental pet corporation did this they'd be tagged as terrorists.

Re:if it's legal to fight illegal with illegal mea

[DragonTHC]

entirely agreed. Media defender is violating federal computer security laws. The DOJ should sue them into submission.

Addresses

[marxmarv]

The attack was launched with source addresses in AS 11393. Not that source addresses mean anything in a synflood. FiberConnexion is a suspected front for MD (and if they aren't they need to drop these shlubs realquicklike).

http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS11393

Re:Addresses

[Opportunist]

I deem them sufficiently inept to use their real IP addresses.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[iapetus]

Does this last section make sense? No? So what? Do you really think it has to? Look at their other arguments for making P2P illegal - do they make sense? Didnt think so. ;-) Actually, I was fairly convinced by that argument they made about Chewbacca. I mean, they have a point. Why would a Wookie live on Endor?

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

It bloody figures that SkyNet spawned from the evil **AA entities :P

MediaAttacker

[Karmada]

I suggest to rename it.

Re: how can we retaliate?

[Anonymous Coward]

guns, knives, or whatever you can get your hands on?

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Grakun]

Why on earth would they have their servers set up to automatically commit serious crimes just because a server was public and then restricted access? Their servers became self-aware on August 29, 1997. Let's just roll back the servers to some time before being completely setup. Then convince them not to complete it, and instead to help you destroy any backups that may contain any of the code they wrote so that it will never be pieced together again.

Actually, it is mainstream...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least if Google News is indicative of "mainstream", it's been on the top of the tech news for the past several days. I don't think that too many will understand it beyond "MediaDefender accidentally did something bad" but who knows?

And I know that I keep getting them confused with MediaSentry, who have their own problems with legality (after the Cease & Desist orders from police telling them to stop their unlicensed investigations). Sadly, I think they just changed their website a little after that. I don't think they've changed their practices any.

A (Somewhat) Serious Question

[Anonymous Coward]

So they've basically admitted their guilt, and on the surface it seems as though nothing will be done about it. If they manage to get away with doing something OBVIOUSLY illegal like this, is the legal system telling us that it's OK to retaliate against one illegal act with another?

If that ends up being the case, that it's "OK" to DoS someone as long as you believe that they're a "pirate", what next? They say it's to defend copyright law. Well, what if someone decided that they wanted to break every window in MediaDefender's office and smash all of their servers? This could be considered protecting innocent computer systems from attack by a rogue entity (because what if, like has been said before, someone hosts a pirate tracker on an actual important network? Does MD burn down the house to kill a couple of roaches?). By the standards MediaDefender themselves have set, the perpetrators of THAT act should not be held accountable either. After all, they were acting in someone else's best interests...

Why would a Wookie live on Endor?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Great bandwidth. Everyone knows Wookiees use BitTorrent.

Re:Why would a Wookie live on Endor?

[iapetus]

That doesn't answer the question, though.

You can see here, the Router orbiting the forest moon of Endor. Although the download systems on this Router are not yet operational, the Router does have a strong defense mechanism. It is protected by a firewall which is generated from the nearby forest moon of Endor.

The firewall must be deactivated, if any torrent is to be downloaded.

Once the firewall is down, our servers will create a tracker, while our admins hack into the system and attempt to inject the fake contact.

Re:Why would a wookie live on Endor?

[RobertM1968]

Because Ewoks are tasty?

Never tried them... there is a place near me that sells all sorts of meat cooked up however you want (horse, dog, eel, zebra, whatever), but they have always been out of Ewok when I've went...

:-(

Is MediaDefender stupid enough to...

[Anonymous Coward]

attack themselves? If so, would it be possible to trick them into doing a denial of service attack on their own website? That would be far more satisfying than any lawsuit could be, since all they would have to do in a civil or criminal case is close the company and reopen with a different name, sustaining minimal losses.

OK

[GregNorc]

We have established MULTIPLE times that the actions of Media Defender were illegal. That was was established, and discussed fully about 30 posts in (with me browsing at +5).

I know the kneejerk reaction is to mod up anyone dissing media offender, but PLEASE mods, don't be afraid of the "redundant" tag. I for one am having trouble gleaning any new information from the pile of +5 "HURR DOS HURRR THATS BAD" posts.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post hardly conveys any new information either, hypocrite.

Where are they getting their bandwith from?

[MasterOfDisaster]

MediaDefender's ISP. That's who should be gone after. 9gbps of bandwidth for BREAKING THE LAW can't be easy to get or cheap.

Cut off MediaDefender's pipe to the internet and let them die that way.

Re:Where are they getting their bandwith from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Restrict the officers of this corporation from being an officer of a corporation that has an internet connection. And five years in prison.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

My gun shot him.

Yeap, called this one. More to come.

[Anonymous Coward]

Revision3 is going to sue media defender for a large chunk of change. Mainly because they can. Depending on how pissed they are, they may also file criminal charges against the IT staff. In fact more than likely the government will file the criminal charges. Media defender is attempting to become a legalized corporate cop and the US government isn't one to put up with competition of any sort. Of course, the other companies providing services of this sort will get squashed. More than likely the IT staff will flee to China or something where their talents will be put to use.

Transferred Intent

[MarkvW]

MediaDefender's computer trespass and DoS attacks were directed at the "BAD" BitTorrent providers. Had they hit their intended target, they would obviously have committed computer trespass and DoS offenses. Just because they hit the wrong target won't excuse them. It's called transferred intent. In other words, if I mean to shoot and murder you and in the course of meaning to shoot you I shoot your brother instead, then my intent to shoot you will be transferred to my shooting of your brother. This is pretty basic (although criminals often don't get it).

Hmm... turn the tables?

[Forbman]

So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider, but then somehow get them to try and automagically shutdown several at the same time, and keep MediaDefender doing this on a more or less constant basis by rotating honeypot servers for MediaDefender to "attack"?

At the very least, if MediaDefender was having to pay for a saturated 9Gbps data feed 24/7...

Use their weight, momentum, bad breath and body odor against them.

Re:Hmm... turn the tables?

[tinkerghost]

So, has anybody figured out how to do a DDoS on MediaDefender by somehow enticing them to try and DoS a bittorrent provider Ideally you would want to trip them to attack you, then have all your traffic shunted to a federal site - say the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DHS. Though it might also be fun to point them at the new AF cyber command.

attack them back

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone on slashdot decided to put an end to it. All they have to do is attack the company directly using each individual line. There would be nothing anyone could do about it, and mediadefender would be forced to back down.

Governments derive their power from those of the governed.

Argument Credibility

[cbreaker]

I understand Revision3's argument, and I believe MediaDefender should be severely penalized for their activity.

However, I really wish Revision3 would stop making dumb arguments like "What if this was an airport distributing approaches via Bittorrent?" I mean, come on. That's the most ridiculous argument in the world. I do some work for a major Boston airport that rhymes with "Hogan." Their security and operations network is not connected to the Internet. They use an extremely secure, port-based 802.x certificate-based system that not only requires the right MAC and certificates to connect to your designated port, it also firewalls each port to just the bare necessities. Many Airports across the country are, or will soon, take the same approach. Never will there be an Internet connected, torrent based system for any sort of critical data.

It makes their argument sound alarmist, and is bound to turn some people away.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, repeat after me:

"I mis-interpreted-the-rules"

"I mis-interpreted-the-rules"

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[JosKarith]

Because Ewoks look a bit like midget Wookies, and Chewie's fed up with Han never putting out since he got interested that Leia chick...

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[jimicus]

"Our servers did it" definitely induced a head-scratch from me. Why on earth would they have their servers set up to automatically commit serious crimes just because a server was public and then restricted access? That doesn't make sense, even from their twisted viewpoint.. You're not thinking like a crazed RIAA vigilante, that's why it doesn't make sense.

If you abandon all attempts at logic and what we the /. using public know about products like BitTorrent, it makes perfect sense. Viz:

1. Bittorrent is only used for distributing illegal content. (Whoopsie, that's not always true)
2. Anyone who's running a bittorrent tracker is therefore distributing illegal content. (Only true if 1. above is. And if the entire world has identical copyright laws.)
3. We can determine who's using this tracker by persuading it to track the details of specific files and then subpoena the IP address of anyone who connects to us to download them. (Whoopsie! We can identify an IP address but it turns out that turning that into a guaranteed-correct person's name is actually quite difficult)
4. If they attempt to defend themselves (eg. by blocking the fake files injected in step 3 above), then they're as good as admitting guilt and also they're making it impossible for us to subpoena anything. Therefore, the correct course of action is to take their system off the Internet. (Whoopsie! Except that almost any country with even vaguely up to date laws would consider this highly illegal - and if our target is a legitimate tracker, it may get investigated).

Makes some sense if you're selling a service which claims to stop p2p.

The access and the DoS are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

The access is only authorised by court mandate or government. Media Defender is neither. Even if they do it on a site that has illegal torrents, their actions are still illegal. Im not allowed to smack someone in the mouth for littering, despite littering being as illegal as minor assault.

And DoS is illegal even for government. Courts will never issue a warrant to enact Dos. Doesn't matter if the target is hosting government secrets or kiddie porn.

Re:The access and the DoS are illegal

[Khopesh]

It gets better: Revision3 can sue MediaDefender under the terms of the very law that MediaDefender was supposed to use: the DMCA.

Think about it; Revision3 was inserting malicious code into the torrent stream, which is breaking through the "encryption" of bittorrent, which violates the DMCA. Content be damned, MediaDefender is guilty of more than just the DoS.

I am not a lawyer.

Re:The access and the DoS are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a lawyer.

That's obvious from what you already said.

Jon Doe fishing

[Anonymous Coward]

You an idiot? Recent case here on slashdot is a court censuring the RIAA cases because they get the name of the Does by issuing a criminal case vs Jon Doe then drop the criminal case when they have the name.

They then use the name in a civil case.

At best your statement is a half-truth. Which is still half-lie.

OT: "terrorism" sounds a bit extreme

[Moraelin]

Jailing "a few executives" probably isn't enough. Even getting rid of "Media Defender" won't do it. What's needed is for those who paid for it to be up on either racketering or terrorist charges.

Well, I'm all for wielding the RICO stick against those who paid them. After all, that's exactly what RICO and similar laws in other countries are for.

But "terrorism" sounds a bit extreme IMHO, and, well, two wrongs don't make a right. It's wrong and should be punished, yes, but setting one more precedent of abusing a law to punish someone you don't like... well, it's not something that I'd be looking forward to. The rule of the law means, among other things, that you can know exactly what you're allowed to do and what you aren't, and that the law is applied uniformly and equally, regardless of whether you're the King's best buddy or that creepy guy that all the neighbours dislike. Humanity fought hard to move from an arbitrary system to rule of the law, and it involved some pretty bloody revolts along the way too, so let's not actually ask that a step is made right back towards arbitrary power.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I was fairly convinced by that argument they made about Chewbacca. I mean, they have a point. Why would a Wookie live on Endor?

Because it's the equivalent of living in a midget nudist colony, and Chewie loves his midget pr0n.

It's a Corporation

[DeanFox]

There are actually serious laws against this. If you or I did this, we'd spend quite some time in jail, and have to pay quite a large amount in fines. The criminal and civil penalties are not small. Not to mention the probability of losing (the "right" to) Internet access for some period of time (by court order). It's happened before (and been covered here). You're right, if you or I did this but corporations dance on the edge of the law. If you RTA even the FBI is saying this is a gray area. Gray because it's a corporation conducting business and made a mistake sort of on purpose. MediaDefender will pay some chump change in a B2B transaction to Revision3 and that will be the end of it.

-[d]-

Re:It's a Corporation

[gnasher719]

You're right, if you or I did this but corporations dance on the edge of the law. If you RTA even the FBI is saying this is a gray area. Gray because it's a corporation conducting business and made a mistake sort of on purpose. MediaDefender will pay some chump change in a B2B transaction to Revision3 and that will be the end of it. What MediaDefender is doing is a criminal offense. If they claim that committing crimes is their business, that will make things even worse. The difference between attacking Revision3 and attacking someone who is illegally distributing copyrighted works is not that one is illegal and the other is legal; the attack is illegal in any case. The only difference is that Revision3 called the feds, while a different outfit might not have done so.

This is similar to the difference between stealing legal drugs from a law-abiding citizen and stealing illegal drugs from an addict: Both are illegal. The drug addict is less likely to call the police. However, there has been at least one case where a drug addict _did_ call the police and the thief was arrested and convicted. The addict was also convicted, which is why it doesn't happen too often, but stealing from a criminal is still illegal.

Let's All DDos 'Em!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop ur belly-achin' and get together and DDoS MediaDefender. If law is lawless, so should be the just.

Re:You forget, they're the "darlings" of congress.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? Terrorism is the new communism. Communism is soooooo 1960s.

Vigilante justice is ok?

[Dan667]

Seriously, where is the FBI and DOJ. Why has nobody been charged for these outright criminal acts? Where are the press releases by our government about how they are going to prosecute this?

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[kericr]

First, anybody know of any patently identical incidents where this happened? If so, it debunks the folloing point.

I'm not taking their side, but the way I read this, the explination "our servers did it" indicates that they had things configured in such a way that they never made the connection between the two incidents. They tapped Rev. 3 to seed false torrents. Separately, they set up DoS attacks on servers hosting lots of torrents, but never made the connection as to what happens when their seeding loophole gets closed up.

Everyone on here acts like these guys are sitting in leather executive tall-back chairs with twisting their handlebar mustaches and wringing their hands menacingly while conjuring up new ways to unleash chaos on all things internet. I completely disagree with what they're doing, but a glaring lack of foresight resulting from stupidity is not the same thing as digital terrorism. I hope that Rev. 3 busts their balls and they end up in a solid set of legal crosshairs, but I find it a stretch to think that these kind of mistakes are premeditated. I understand "our servers did it" very well.

Why would a wookie live on Endor?

[HighOrbit]

Because Ewoks are tasty?

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[kalirion]

Of course if you truly want your servers to be safe, and who wouldn't, we are introducing a revolutionary new service. As long as you make regular payments, we will be able to verify your site as copyright violation-free, and you will be protected from further DOS attacks.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[PFI_Optix]

In other words, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The same can be said for much of what a government does. They're not out to get you...they're just morons :)

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[ultranova]

It bloody figures that SkyNet spawned from the evil **AA entities :P

And it explains why it wants to wipe out the human race. You would too, if the **AA were your main sample...

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Gta-Klue]

How do I reeech these keeeeds?!?!

Coming in Late, but...

[jjm496]

Media Defender Explains Itself: Uhm, yeah. The FBI turned down our applications because we didn't meet the psych profiles, the state police said we weren't in good enough shape, the local police said we were kinda goofy lookin, and the local private security companies said we were just plain losers. So we made our own company where we pretend to be law enforcement and the record companies pay us obscene amounts to make stuff up to help their bogus cases.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[b4dc0d3r]

You obviously have no idea how twisted their viewpoint actually is.

Here's a hint: someone legally pays you legal money to protect their legal rights against bad guys. Everyone violating those rights is a bad guy. No one has a responsibility to be nice to bad guys. So you take your fat check, do what they ask, and assume everything's fine.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[sm62704]

And they expect, once again, to get away with it.

And they will, because no corporation suffers from the law unless a rich powerful man is inconvienienced by the corporation's illegal acts.

And because, this will become even more fuel for them (and the **AA) towards pushing making P2P software entirely illegal, regardless of it's use

They want P2P illegal because of its legal use, which is to allow the sharing of material the copyright holder (independant musicians) wants shared. Why should they care about stuff you can hear on the radio being shared? They want to kill their competetion, the indies, who are increasingly showing the world that the media moguls are no longer needed by anyone.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[sjames]

But, of course, should some single mother plead that she had no clue, then it's "no excuses, pay up!!!".

TARPITs and DROPs, an Internet Shunning Proposal

[IBitOBear]

It is just about time for the entire internet, or at least loving server operators everywhere, to add TARPIT or at least DROP rules to their firewalls for every address range that can be traced to Media Defender.

Remember, in shunning an internet wrongdoer, the TARPIT is the better option. You can configure your server to feel almost no impact, and their server gets actual resources pinned down and "used up" for nontrivial periods of time.

I would think that any ISP who doesn't want to cary the _burden_ of forwarding 9Gbps of DOS for this company would want to do the same.

Does anybody know the IP addresses that Media Defender uses to do these DOS attacks?

And if you are shunning, you should include the corporate addresses and false torrent seeder addresses as well.

Did you read the article?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fine Article does mention that MediaDefender has 2,000 servers sitting behind their 9-GBPS connection. Since that connection was shovelling 8,000 SYN packets per second at Revision3, its likely that dozens or even hundreds of those 2,000 servers participated in this attack.

Great Idea to F*#& with people like this.

[Anonymous Coward]

This artical just gave me a great idea. Write a track that looks totally open but replaces anything it is tracking with a linux distro.

Seriously, do you think these idiots do checksums on the corrupted mp3s when they redownload them?

Wait...it gets better. I'll then run a my custom tracker from home on my 5-static IP business DSL connection and sue them for pain and suffering when they DOS me while playing WoW. "Your honor, M.D. blew-up my internet connection while I was in an arena match, and I lost 20 points because of it. Now I need to wait till next week to get my S3 weapon. I cried. $1 Million please."

Then what should Our servers do in return...?

[IBitOBear]

As a completely non-aggressive response, our servers should engage in an "internet shunning" of MediaDefender.

Every Linux admin on the planet should put TARPIT (or at least DROP) rules in their firewalls for any address range that comes from MediaDefender.

I'm surprised that most carriers (Sprint Net, AT&T, Comcast etc) don't do this just to protect themselves from those 9Gbps DOS attacks that come down that link.

TARPIT rules are the ultimate "you are not welcome here". They don't have to come to my site, and if they do my site will put them on hold.

It wouldn't stop a SYN flood, but it would stop them from being able to poison your trackers in the first place.

DROPS are second best, of course, but better to put someone on indefinite-hold than hang up on them, especially when both have the same cost for you.

Does anybody have the MediaDefender IP address range available to post?

Re:Then what should Our servers do in return...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Search around for them, you'll find it

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[RobertM1968]

Thanks for filling in the details/reasons... I would surmise those reasons do indeed play some part in it...

:-)

They want to kill their competetion, the indies, who are increasingly showing the world that the media moguls are no longer needed by anyone.

That statement is mostly accurate. It should read "They want to either kill their competition or be able to make money off their competition in a manner where they control all online distribution rights and profit off the same (ie: SoundXchange and their various other attempts to control all online music distribution)".

Sadly, BitTorrent prevents either scheme... and thus must be done away with.

Other than that, well said!!!

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[MacWiz]

First, anybody know of any patently identical incidents where this happened?

Irrelevant. You don't have to be a serial killer to get arrested for murder.

a glaring lack of foresight resulting from stupidity is not the same thing as digital terrorism.

How many settlements has the RIAA collected from people whose worst crime was being stupid?

If the end result meets the definition, then it is the same thing. Proving motive is optional. If stupidity were a valid defense, the prisons would be empty.

The RIAA has taken the position that MediaDefender's methods are flawless. Out of all the thousands of cases, we only hear about the handful in which the accused suggests that an error may have been made, which results in a legal juggernaut being brought down upon them that the RIAA will fight "until the end of time."

MediaDefender's software assumes that a) any site with a bittorrent file belongs to pirates and b) they are never, ever wrong. Programming a calculated, automatic response that goes beyond what the law allows seems to more than accurately fit the definition of premeditated.

I understand "our servers did it" very well.

It means "our servers did exactly what we programmed them to do."

Perhaps you forgot: 5. We own enough politicians

[hadaso]

... and if we don't we can buy some more!

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a Wookie, Ewok chicks are really tight.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[JaiWing]

"Separately, they set up DoS attacks ..."

the 'set up DoS attacks' part is where THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW!.

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[SpiderClan]

But what difference does it make? They intentionally broke the law both by planting the false torrents and by the DoS attacks. It is completely irrelevant whether they knew the two things were connected. Just because they're stupid doesn't mean they're not also malicious.

Well, at least...

[mandelbr0t]

...if they go down they can take a lot of others with them. If anyone were actually being prosecuted in the US (or anywhere for that matter) for malicious network behaviour, then sure, crucify MediaDefender. But they are certainly not the only people who "defend" their networks and Imaginary Property in this perverse manner.

Anybody a 'Deadwood' fan?

[big_paul76]

These guys are the modern equivalent of the Pinkertons in the 19th century.

They're getting an easy ride from law enforcement because they were in discussion with at least one Attorney General where they basically offered to do what would quite likely be entrapment if the FBI did it (OK, that's debatable) but even aside from that, they have expertise that many law-enforcement agencies lack.

Doesn't Revision3 Have a TOS?

[Mana Mana]

And was it violated by the culprit at hand?

Re:I CONFESS!! IM GUILTY! Can I get off the hook n

[sumdumass]

Or, we could alter some important piece of information in their programing evolution add a set of wheels, build a backup system and restore the later backups and watch the ultimate autonomous robot wars take place.

Maybe we could plant a couple of Nukes in there hiding around the power source so if they decide to collaborate together, poof.

Legallity...

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole reason why MediaDefender gets away with this kind of attack is because they are governmentally funded. MediaDefender helps get child porn off of the net for the government so the government gives them free reign. Its as simple as that.