Sony Pictures Leak Reveals Quashed Plan To Upload Phony Torrents

retroworks writes Motherboard.vice offers an interesting scoop from the hacked Sony Pictures email trove. A plan championed by Polish marketing employee Magda Mastalerz was to upload false versions of highly-pirated Sony programming, effectively polluting torrent sites with false positives. For example, a "Hannibal"-themed anti-piracy ad to popular torrent sites disguised as the first episode. Sony Pictures legal department quashed the idea, saying that if pirate sites were illegal, it would also be illegal for Sony Pictures to upload onto them. There were plans in WW2 to drop phony counterfeit currency to disrupt markets, and I wonder why flooding underground markets with phony products isn't widespread. Why don't credit card companies manufacture fake lists of stolen credit card numbers, or phony social security numbers, for illegal trading sites? For that matter, would fake ivory, fake illegal porn, and other "false positives" discourage buyers? Or create alibis?

Comments

Phony counterfeit currency?

[Bohnanza]

So, real cash?

Go for it Sony

[clickclickdrone]

Chances are the fake films are better than the one you thought you were getting.

Re:Dangerous faking

[ArcadeMan]

I tried to sell Ivory to a guy once. He was not amused.

Re:IANAL, but...

[ArcadeMan]

If someone uploads their own holiday video to the Pirate Bay then they've done nothing wrong

Unless your name is Chewbacca.