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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."
Seems like this is as least as destructive as 1 billion people "illegally" downloading digital media .
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
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!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
...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
"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..
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?
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.
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.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
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.
If you abandon all attempts at logic and what we the
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.
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.
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.