MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims
Written by Ernesto on November 04, 2007Last Month The Pirate Bay filed complaints against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. The MPAA has now responded to these claims and deny that they worked with MediaDefender. Unfortunately for the MPAA, we have proof that they did.
MPAA attorney Espen Tøndel told the Norwegian newspaper Dageblatet that the companies represented by the MPAA never requested MediaDefender to do the things The Pirate Bay claims. This is a lie of course, and there is an archive of leaked emails to back this up.
To give an example, Universal Pictures - a company represented by the MPAA - contracted MediaDefender to protect movies, which basically means that they pollute BitTorrent sites with fake files to make the real files harder to find. There are several emails that prove this, and quotes such as “can you jump all over this swarm and try to kill it?” leave little room for speculation.
Universal Pictures is not the only MPAA movie studio MediaDefender worked for, the emails clearly show that they were also hired by Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures. I would suggest Tøndel to go through these emails before making ungrounded claims like this again.
Brokep, one of the Pirate Bay founders told TorrentFreak earlier that they decided to file complaints because they want to make these big media companies aware of their own wrong doings: “I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff,” he said.
It will be interesting to see how this case develops. One thing is for sure, it will be hard for these media companies to deny their involvement with these emails as evidence.
Previously: Canadian Study: Piracy Boosts CD Sales
Next: Warez Bust: MaGE Leader Sentenced to Prison
46 Responses
didnt think that the sites would ever go after the people trying to protect the copyrighted matierial
I never thought that the media distributors would go against their own consumers.
Never thought that doing something a corporation doesn’t approve of gives them the right to break the law… repeatedly, consistently, and irrevocably
Perhaps some enterprising journalist should forward a copy of these emails to the MPAA and ask for a response to the content of the emails. Was the MPAA aware? Regardless, now that they are aware by virtue of these emails, what is their response?
I would guess the response to whether or not they were aware in the past could be something like ‘well, we as an association were unaware of these independent actions of these member companies.’ And this may or may not be true… after all the MPAA is a trade association, not a record company, there is bound to be wheelings and dealings within individual member companies that the association is not aware of.
Hopefully in the end they condemn this type of shady behavior by member companies. I’m not holding my breath though.
it is by the way “Dagbladet”, not “Dageblatet” .. xD
‘well, we as an association were unaware of these independent actions of these member companies.’
Well. These parasites can not have it both way. Since companies are treated as people each person working for the company represent the company and whatever they do while working for the company make the company liable.
They are screw!
to say your unaware of companies in your org. action. is’nt that kind of what they are suing people for saying that aware or unaware you are responsible for what comes from your ip. Can any one say Hypocrites
Pirate Bay will win this, clearly they broke the law.
this is a battle that should not be ignored. This shall get interesting.
How is someone represented by the MPAA? Isn’t that like being represented by Congress?
keep torrent clean
And the dumbest thing about MediaDefender is that it just doesn’t work, period.
As tjena said, it’s spelled Dagbladet, not Dageblatet. :-)
Espen Tøndel can go to hell anyway.
[quote comment="203217"]As tjena said, it’s spelled Dagbladet, not Dageblatet. :-)
[b]Espen Tøndel can go to hell anyway.[/b][/quote]
I agree.
whats are the laws for evidence in sweden? iirc in america leaked emails can’t be used as evidence because their easily faked. Would they be able to get copies from media defender during discovery or something
Espen Tøndel said that none of the companies HE represents used Mediadefender to do what TPB said. He represents the MPAA, not Universal so what he said was strictly true. It’s a shame he wasn’t asked if any of the companies that the MPAA represents had done the stuff TPB said, rather than the companies HE represents.
@#15 David … see the “he said” link.
“TorrentFreak: What’s the legal status of the leaked emails, can they be used in the lawsuit as evidence?
Brokep: Yes. We have something called “fri bevisprövning” in Sweden which means that evidence, no matter how they’re obtained, can be used.”
“How is someone represented by the MPAA? Isn’t that like being represented by Congress?”
First of all, you ARE represented by congress. You pick them, they represent you.
Second, the MPAA is NOT a government agency or division. They are a private organization that WANTS people to think they’re part of the Government. That’s why they have those FBI Rip-Off windbreakers with “MPAA” on the back.
Unfortunately this story is completely wrong. To say they have proof that MPAA lied because there are emails from Universal Studios to MediaDefender is just plain ignorant. Universal Studios and The MPAA are seperate entities. The MPAA is only a trade organization just as the RIAA is. While both the MPAA and RIAA do act on behalf of some if not all of their member studios, each individual member studio is also free to and almost always will seek additional protection for their own titles. I know first hand that the MPAA used a diferent vendor for all of their copyright enforcement contracts. MPAA and RIAA used the same vendor for their litigation programs.
Mpaa: The emails were faked, there are no record of any emails on either of the mpaa or MediaDefender’s database.
Pb Loses.
Mpaa: The emails were the workings of one or two people in the company and does not represent the visions of the MPAA as a whole. The individuals have been disciplined accordingly.
Pb loses.
Or, Mpa, files formal apology, pays whatever insignificant fine is due, and keeps doing what they have been doing all along.
Don’t think for a second that this will shut down the MPAA for good, and don’t think that the heads of the MPAA will be raped in a prison shower because of these events.
Don’t be so stupid.
It’s just pointless to sue any of the media corporations. All they have to do is to buy a favorable court decision.
Everything has a price. Everything.
And they know it.
no one is saying that this insignificant battle will stop the mpaa or riaa. I will say this a recefnt study out of canada shows tha file sharing not the kind you pay for actualy helps the studios. It’s like radio when you used to stick your tape in and record a song. Stop one site anoter one will come up. If your in the know torrents is a second tier deal anyway. Just go straight to the source to get what you want because this has been around since before the internet.
“which basically means that they pollute BitTorrent sites with fake files to make the real files harder to find.”
that’s illegal?
They will try to twist it so that they can claim they didn’t know what exactly md was doing and that they certainly were not aware illegal actions were taken.
After all they really just hired another company to do their dirty work… my guess would be they did it for this exact reason - plausible deniability ftw. No big surprise actually.
[quote]First of all, you ARE represented by congress. You pick them, they represent you.[/quote]
No. You pick them, they represent their corporate buddies.
[quote comment="203264"]whats are the laws for evidence in sweden? iirc in america leaked emails can’t be used as evidence because their easily faked. Would they be able to get copies from media defender during discovery or something[/quote]
In Sweden, anything that has come up can be used as evidence outside some very particular circumstances where it cannot. This is called “free evidence gathering”.
If the accused parties wish to argue that the e-mails aren’t genuine, then can certainly do so in court. This sort of argumentation doesn’t have a good history however, considering the “evidence machine” case and all.
(Oh, and the very particular circumstances I mentioned above? Those basically can’t ever apply to you unless you’re a cop, a doctor or a lawyer. The latter two have x-to-client privilege, and the first is an official of the state.)
Cheers Torrentfreak, whatever is going on is going on smooth like Chivas
Angelina Mina
http://www.happy-funtime.blogspot.com
There is actually a lot going on here, much more than first meets the eye. It isn’t just that the MD were engaging in immoral and illegal behaviour, they are functioning within a capitalist logic, and as such not doing anything unusual or unprecedented. The problem with the analysis so far of the MD leak is that it operates within the capitalist logic, and thus explaining the existence of an MD is difficult and problematic. Capitalism is about power, and MD was merely exerting this. If anyone is interested I am currently working on a full interrogation of the leaked texts and a subsequent analysis, implicitly providing a critique of capitalism. It isn’t finished yet, but come December you may want to check out http://iqdupont.com/essays/ .
Well it’s important that we keep an eye on this story, we need to get the whole p2p community involved eventually. The Pirate Bay can’t carry all of the weight!
Two wrongs just don’t make a right.
The MPAA (US Based and focussed) and the MPA (US Based, but Internationally focussed) are Trade Associations, which, although the 6 major Hollywood studios make up the membership, are wholly separate legal entities from those studios. Each entity, trade association and studios, are entitled to act independently to pursue means of anti-piracy, HOWEVER one major exception is that Trade Associations are not allowed by US law to engage in “interdictions” the very kind of services MD sells. Sure every Hollywood studio and most major record labels (RIAA members) contract with firms, including MD, to conduct interdictions, but the trade associations as separate entities, and by their legal nature are strictly prohibited to do likewise by US anti-trust law.
You might see them as one monolith or as a cartel perhaps, but US law sees them differently. I cannot comment on Swedish Law. Nonetheless, what is the real penalty that Universal and the like could face if found in violation of Swedish Law. If it’s just a fine and some embarrassment, perhaps that was part of the risk assessment made by these ‘evil’ capitalists. So, ultimately they see the result as just the cost of doing business.
By the way, Capitalism is about opportunity. Power is about ego. Abuse is abuse. And Idealism has nothing to do with Reality. Thank God everyone is entitled to an opinion…and I’ll take capitalism anytime.
Man this is just like a case where a crack dealer goes to the police because some crackhead owes him money. Its just stupid shit.
[quote comment="203488"]Two wrongs just don’t make a right.[/quote]
3 lefts do though.
Unfortunately, stolen data is not likely to be accepted as evidence in any court of law. Also, emails are plain text that can be easily modified and/or forged entirely. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but all they need is plausible deniability. To be honest they don’t even need that.
Fortunately, Swedish law is mostly built around justice, not lawyer wars or company interests. This is why the filed complaints are against companies with a swedish presence and thus must abide by swedish law. If you commit a crime, you will be held responsible even if the evidence aginst you was obtained illegally by another criminal - why should you go free if you broke the law? Also, the content was confirmed by MD wasn’t it? So if it isn’t forged it’s as good evidence as the screen dumps the anti piracy organisation used as evidence against a “pirate” recently…
Back to the congress representing us analogy. Isn’t suing the MPAA for something that the people it represents did Kind of like suing congress because a random person (someone they represent) nicked your car?
I think that was the original point trying to be made, not that congress doesn’t represent us.
Have a look at Mediadefender http://mediadefender-defenders.com/
“2007-11-09 11:00 Had a HD crash, new disks are orderd and hopefully will arrive soon!
2007-11-09 14:00 The disks will arrive monday (2007-11-12), so the webserver will be down until then =(
Mail and databases are still up and running. ”
They have just one server? When I was network admin I had mirrored servers. They dont have RAID hard disk arrays to stop data loss if one drive crashes? Tape backups and spare hardware on the shelf?
Amateurs or liars they are.
They have incriminating data files they wish to claim “lost”?
Chosse one from above that seems most likely.
[quote comment="202952"]Never thought that doing something a corporation doesn’t approve of gives them the right to break the law… repeatedly, consistently, and irrevocably[/quote]
Sums it up well
[quote comment="203344"]“which basically means that they pollute BitTorrent sites with fake files to make the real files harder to find.”
that’s illegal?[/quote]
Yes, it’s called cyber crime, and it’s an invasion on the rights and paid activity of untold millions of people.
Class action suits should be organized all over the World on multiple grounds.
Not to mention the fact that if you delete the decoy files, your tracker will get DDOSed, even if your tracker is for legitimate files only.
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