MediaDefender Stock Plunges Due to Leaked Emails
Written by Ernesto on December 22, 2007It has been a rough year for MediaDefender and their parent company ArtistDirect. This September nearly 700mb of MediaDefender’s emails leaked to the public. Initially it didn’t seem to affect the stock price much, but after the financial consequences became apparent, their net worth plunged.
With still a few days to go it is probably safe to say that MediaDefender is one of the biggest losers of 2007. The leaked emails, published by the notorious “MediaDefender-Defenders“, gave away a lot of sensitive information and details about how MediaDefender sabotaged BitTorrent trackers and other file-sharing networks. Despite the fact that their decoy and spoofing operations were hugely ineffective on most BitTorrent sites, the company collected millions of dollars from the entertainment industry for protecting their content.
Unfortunately for them, one of their employees was stupid enough to forward all his work email to his Gmail account, without using a proper password. To make it even worse, more sensitive information started to leak as the email leak was soon followed by a p2p tracking database, a phone call and a collection of anti-piracy tools they used for their daily operations.
Soon after this sensitive information became public, the Pirate Bay launched a counterattack. They decided to use the information from the emails to file charges against some of MediaDefenders customers including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker.
The leak did not have any effect on the stock price initially, but after the company announced that it had cost them $825,000, it started to drop hard. It turned out that MediaDefender’s parent company ArtistDirect spent $600,000 to compensate their customers and the rest of the money was used to cover legal expenses. The investors weren’t too happy about this news as can be seen from the picture below.
So what will happen now, will the company walk the plank to bankruptcy? Many people think it will, but MediaDefender still sees a future in the anti-piracy business. Sure, they were devastated by the leaks, but remarkably, they believe that it didn’t hurt the goodwill of the company. Makes you wonder what is needed to hurt this then, because it can’t get any worse if you ask me.
I’m sure we will hear from them again in 2008.
Previously: Japanese File-Sharing Population Explodes
Next: Piracy, Morals and The Need for Change
81 Responses
Serves them right.
LOL!!! I dont know what else to say about this!
I’m not shure, but maybe the are referring to the financial term “goodwill”, not the commonly used meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_%28accounting%29
[quote comment="245368"]I’m not shure, but maybe the are referring to the financial term “goodwill”, not the commonly used meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_%28accounting%29/quote
They do, but I’m pretty sure that dropped quite a bit…
Outch.
No Porsche this year for the missus.
:)
I’m normally a very sympathetic person… Not for these people though.
They made money being anti-sharing. Disgusting.
wow they are screwed, that was one hell of a stock price drop
Please digg this topic,
and lets all burry this company into bandruptcy.
The best new news I’ve heard in months.
I think due to “Questionable” actions of MediaDefender (possible illegal) they should be required to pay stockholders a Premium, then shut down, befor they get shut down or go bankrupt. I would also encourage ANYONE who they tracked to file legal action against them. Even if is does not make it to court, they will spend tens of thousands again just answering and filing documents. (evil grin)
HA HA!
(points)
Hahahahahahahahaha this is good news.
FUCK MD :)
didn’t know MD was publicly traded…
When the trees falls, the Monkey scatters..
Merry Christmas, MediaDefender! :D
Thats what all the top executives get for wasting money on MediaDefender… Hopefully we will see less Anti-P2P in the future.
Touche!
Yoo mattey! They have been broadsided! Are they sinking yet?
“Merry Christmas, MediaDefender!”
Boom!
And Happy new year!
hope they all slip and fall into a rack of knifes and accidentally cut their nuts off.
happy holidays mediafags.
I love how some anti-p2p companies can actually try and get f’d over in the process. I want see what they are going to do in 2008.
Woo-Hoo! That calls for a cold one. Here’s looking at you, MD pinheads!
[quote comment="245497"]I love how some anti-p2p companies can actually try and get f’d over in the process. I want see what they are going to do in 2008.[/quote]
If there’s any justice, I predict Randy and Octavio will spend 2008 being the new squeegee guys on some street corner. :lol:
Hey Randy! How you like us now douchebag? Yarrr!
My wish come true :)
thanks god :) i owe you one :)))
I always asked god to fuck MediaDefender. LoL
God heard me ! now i am happy !
I think God gave me Xmas gift :)
Merry christmas MediaDefender!
Get some trees like thepiratebay did, don’t think alot, you are already fucked up, not possible to come back to anti piracy business again.
Get some trees and enjoy your self !
Awwww. poor MD. :( .
LOL.. nah F*ck ‘em . They deserve even more than this.
Well it’s a good thing they have “Goodwill”, it is an asset – an intangible one :) :)
SHORT the shit out of the Mediadefender stock and get rich while p2p wins! It’s a win-win :D
MD is heading to bankruptcy sooner or later anyways ;)
ahahahahahahahahahahaha
just awesoome
hahahaha
BURN! BURN! BURN!
wow, I can’t believe these comments. You can’t blame media defender for trying to prevent people from stealing. Yes I said stealing, not sharing. Sure there are legit uses for bittorrent (linux distros come to mind), but most of you are thieves. If you’re not, then you wouldnt worry about MD. I can’t believe you’re rejoicing over this news. It’s disgraceful. This is not justice.
BAHAHAHAHHAHAH!! OH PRECIOUS! Randy Saaf? What have you done with our money or your employees privacy?
> wow, I can’t believe these comments. You can’t blame media defender for
> trying to prevent people from stealing.
Read this then repost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
@jd – Go spam another site you anti-p2p stooge.
“Oh, its soooo sad that the people are getting back a little control over their media. They should continue to pay top dollar for the crap that is shoved down their throats because they are all drones.”
I still go to movies, I still buy music and I still buy software. The difference is now that I can choose wisely and not get duped by these companies who have more money than god.
Good! LOL.
I was just wondering, doesn’t the MPAA lose out to stuff available at blockbuster? I spend $6 to rent a movie and watch it, and lets say each dvd there is watched at least 75 times, now doesn’t the MPAA lose alot from that while Blockbuster rolls in the cash?
The most devastating aspect of the internal leaks demonstrated that MediaDefender was screwing over their customers. They lied and deceived their clients into believing that MD was highly effective, while at the same time MD employees privately admitted among themselves that their efforts were all but useless against the most popular torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova and Torrentspy – sites which employed administrators to actively seek out and removed fake content as well as block their IP addresses.
The leaked emails showed that Mediadefender went to great lengths to keep their customers from learning the truth. To add insult to injury, MD openly mocked their client’s naivety behind their backs. “take a moment to laugh to yourselves”, one of their emails snickered.
MediaDefender’s clients were certainly stupid to rely on MD to provide the testing parameters to them that would allow their clients to “independently” judge MD’s effectiveness. These should have been immediately recognized as sham tests from the start. For instance, MD insisted that their clients use MD’s own list of fake Edonkey servers for their tests – which naturally would show zero copyrighted files being available on the network – instead of the real edonkey serverlists that most edonkey users were using.
It seems obvious that the $600 thousand in credits MD doled out was needed to keep their clients from walking out the door en mass after learning they’d been cheated. (obviously, P2P’ers, torrent site admins and copyright pirates were not the only ones reading MD’s leaked emails!)
The business that Mediadefender operates is virtually 100% based on trust. These clients have really no way of knowing how effective MD has been at preventing copyright infringement in the internet universe – other than what MD tells them. MediaDefender had always hyped itself as the premier expert at defeating internet piracy, but the mail leaks burst this bubble, exposing them as a modern-day version of the Keystone Cops.
MediaDefender’s utter incompetence might be forgiven, but once the truth slipped out that MD had built their business on feeding their clients a pack of lies — it’s all over. MediaDefender will never be trusted again.
Why did my last comment not get posted and instead say “Your response is awaiting moderation” ?
this reminds me of the titanic except they hit the iceberg head on full throttle so now they’re royally fucked. doesn’t Christmas bring out the best in us all turns out their best was damn ugly
Just wondering – Do I need to break up long posts into several small parts so they can be posted without having to wait for approval?
(feel free to delete post after being answered)
[quote]Yes I said stealing, not sharing.[/quote]
Sorry, but you’re mistaken – we are not stealing by sharing data on the internet. Theft implies that I have taken something from them, which I’m sure you will agree is physically impossible as I’ve never been to hollywood to take anything from any movie studio.
[quote comment="245725"][quote]Yes I said stealing, not sharing.[/quote]
Sorry, but you’re mistaken – we are not stealing by sharing data on the internet. Theft implies that I have taken something from them, which I’m sure you will agree is physically impossible as I’ve never been to hollywood to take anything from any movie studio.[/quote]
As much as I would love to agree with you, different rules are applied to what is known as intellectual property.
That graph is quite deceiving. The Y-axis is oddly distorted and starts quite high in numbers.
And a happy new-year!
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer buncha guys…
BWAHAHAHAHAHAetc…
Merry Christmas, MediaDefender Assholes. Let’s hope you’re all laid off by the New Year…
(Ain’t schadenfreude grand…?)
[quote comment="245765"]That graph is quite deceiving. The Y-axis is oddly distorted and starts quite high in numbers.[/quote]
That’s the way stock graphs are represented. Imagine the size a graph would have to be if a stock went through the roof. Therefore, they’re artificially ’squashed’ through the vertical plane.
HTH
what nobody has mentioned on here yet is while the MD stocks are sooo low we ALL should buy them take a controlling share of the company and close the fcukers down or use MD to change the law
oh and btw nave its not deceiving at all basically every time they take a small trophy the stock price almost hits $2.50 once they take a hit they are down 2 basically nothing
and it is SHARING not stealing stealing means that everyone who ever downloaded it would have gone to see it at the movies most of the people who download it will go and see it at the movies anyway but want to see if its worth there money and dont start about IP laws they are diff state 2 state and country 2 country and usually it doesnt stand up in court anyway
@jd
Die.
@MD
Die.
@uNoWho
If we buy stocks, not only will they get money, but their stock price will go up and they will actually look good. Besides, unless you buy a significant portion of the company, you’re gonna have as much a say as a janitor in congress.
They will end up bankrupting, after the leak every company with any common sense knows that they can’t trust MD with shit. They’re probably selling their stocks, just like Enron CEO’s, before they declare bankruptcy.
And as far as the stealing-sharing conflict, jd, any software worth playing is worth buying. Same with movies, series, music, etc. Not the best place to flame people who use bittorrent, considering the domain and all.
Tis the season to be jolly….unless you’re in Randy Saaf’s house where it’s the night before xmas and not even a mouse was heard….cept the creaking of the rope from where the cunt hung himself….
100 Media Defender employees at the bottom of the ocean = A GOOD START.
#47, I agree. As far as media defender goes, I have only one question. You like that hard cock inside you mother fuckers?
@ 31 Billion Dollar Turkey,
I’d not heard of Hollywood Accounting before. Thanks for the info. Seems everyone’s screwing everyone else in the entertainment industry. My heart bleeds…NOT.
[quote comment="245828"]@uNoWho
If we buy stocks, not only will they get money, but their stock price will go up and they will actually look good. Besides, unless you buy a significant portion of the company, you’re gonna have as much a say as a janitor in congress.
[/quote]
in a way you are right in a way you totally missed the point of what i was saying
what im saying is if ALOT of BT users brought shares yes the price would go back up but the BT users would have a say as to what the company does its basically a silent takeover which alot of companys do and if we really wanted 2 fcuk em over we could all “donate” our MD shares to TPB and give them basically control of the company
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You steal (those who do, know who you are), then wish ill on those trying to stop you, yet you think they’re the ones who deserve to be punished? P2P isnt all bad, but we all know most of it is. Shame on you people.
[quote comment="245910"]You steal (those who do, know who you are), then wish ill on those trying to stop you, yet you think they’re the ones who deserve to be punished? P2P isnt all bad, but we all know most of it is. Shame on you people.[/quote]
dude honestly stfu u dont know what your talking about ALOT of people here SHARE nobody STEALS and yes we do wish ill on those trying to stop it when its some company trying to intimidate/force governments that they have no jurisdiction over to try to close something thats not even illegal to begin with just because its interfering with some companys cash flow if anything they are the ones that are breaking the law not us and the MD emails proved it
made pisss :P
jd=MafIAA
Hahaha BURN!!
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[quote comment="245642"]wow, I can’t believe these comments. You can’t blame media defender for trying to prevent people from stealing. Yes I said stealing, not sharing. Sure there are legit uses for bittorrent (linux distros come to mind), but most of you are thieves. If you’re not, then you wouldnt worry about MD. I can’t believe you’re rejoicing over this news. It’s disgraceful. This is not justice.[/quote]
Eat a dick Randy. My country’s laws permit me to legally share, and it is your company’s actions which are illegal and immoral!
Your rationale is EXACTLY the same used by Germans during the Nazi regime to excuse what was done to the jews.. “If you’re not one what should it matter to you?”
Really, eat a big old dick you facist fuck.
lmao:D
[quote]As much as I would love to agree with you, different rules are applied to what is known as intellectual property.[/quote]
Those rules go against two things that I cherish; Freedom and Sharing, therefore I do not obey them.
The government can try to change the definition of theft all they want – I’m not going to go with their new definition. I’ll stick with the true definition.
Let this be a lesson to all who oppose us. You will be hacked, you will be destroyed.
fuck you MD
Let criminal gang md go bankruptcy. This “company” is fucked up.
@uNoWhO: I’m not taking sides, but I have to add that you guys really don’t know what “stealing” is for digital content. Yeah, if your friend steals a TV, you can share it in a group cause there is only one. But, with something like digital content “sharing” is “stealing” since you are just copying it over and over and over.
Now, since I didn’t start this with “fuck MD”, let the “@ROFLcopter: fuck you!” pounding begin.
(BTW, how many of you are digitizing your home movies and sharing them with BT? ’cause I think that’s the sharing that you are thinking of.)
[quote comment="246344"](BTW, how many of you are digitizing your home movies and sharing them with BT? ’cause I think that’s the sharing that you are thinking of.)[/quote]
And what makes you think we all live in America? Pull your head out of your ass, American laws mean nothing in my country.
Haha MD you got what was comin to ya!
Is not about free or about money
Its about control and slavery of the people
We’re no longer stupid
We’re no longer controlled by these dictator
We do as we please
Free like oxygen
Free as a bird
Screw greedy scumbag
I don’t even watch any movies
I just share wuahahahahahaha
[quote comment="246344"]@uNoWhO: I’m not taking sides, but I have to add that you guys really don’t know what “stealing” is for digital content. Yeah, if your friend steals a TV, you can share it in a group cause there is only one. But, with something like digital content “sharing” is “stealing” since you are just copying it over and over and over.
Now, since I didn’t start this with “fuck MD”, let the “@ROFLcopter: fuck you!” pounding begin.
(BTW, how many of you are digitizing your home movies and sharing them with BT? ’cause I think that’s the sharing that you are thinking of.)[/quote]
actually no your wrong as far as digital content goes the ONLY way it can legally be classed as stealing is if somebody buys/downloads something and then releases it and says its theres for example if i changed the startup screen on windows and changed everything that said windows to uNoWhO and took out the logo and then started selling it saying i had made it THAT is stealing me sending little bits and peices of data to somebody else which may or may not turn into something made by somebody else isnt stealing its sharing information
You Ho! Ho! Ho! MediaDefender, if I may be so bold as to *leak* this holiday message to all: Merry bit-mas everyone and a happy new y’arrr!
And it’s so true, these chumps deserved everything they got!
F*ck you Randy *evil laugh*. Even funnier if you think that he probably spent a large portion of his life setting this company up, trying to capitalise on suing torrent users. Yay, they’re going down *Salutes as the MD ship sinks to hell*
Even funnier is if he reads this. (Hi Randy; I hate you!)
[quote comment="247975"]F*ck you Randy *evil laugh*. Even funnier if you think that he probably spent a large portion of his life setting this company up, trying to capitalise on suing torrent users.[/quote]
Even funnier is how quick it was all taken away from him. Who says there’s no karma?
[quote comment="247975"]Yay, they’re going down *Salutes as the MD ship sinks to hell*[/quote]
I believe that’s a one-finger salute? :)
[quote comment="247975"]Even funnier is if he reads this. (Hi Randy; I hate you!)[/quote]
Me, too! Happy New Year Randy! You pwned putz.
Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Be a nice new year’s gift to read about MD getting raped in court by their investors and clients.
mediadefender=criminalsdefender
“If you’re not, then you wouldn’t worry about MD.”
Wrong. MD never should have existed in the first place.
may be…
more like torrenthijacker or torrentterrorist
what a bunch of low life scumbag working for the evil media nazis
They got what was coming to them!
defendmyasslol.rip.
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