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
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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.
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