MediaDefender Walks The Plank to Bankruptcy
Written by Ernesto on August 01, 2008MediaDefender and parent company ArtistDirect have had some serious setbacks recently. Last September they suffered a huge security breach when internal emails and a phone call were leaked to BitTorrent. They received even more bad press recently for DDoSsing Revision3. As a result, MediaDefender’s parent company stock dropped from $2.00 down to just 16 cents.
Mediadefender has had a rough year, and the future isn’t looking much better. Last month, MediaDefender lost one of its larger customers. The business accounted for roughly 18% of MediaDefender’s revenues.
In a recent financial statement, the company stated that there is a decrease in interest for their anti-piracy services, and that the results of their p2p-advertising model are also disappointing. This news led to further decrease in the stock price, which was sitting at an all time low of just 16 cents this Monday.
Surprisingly enough, the company structurally fails to mention the email leak and security breach, which has cost them a significant amount of money. In September 2007, disaster struck. MediaDefender had made many enemies with its anti-p2p activities. One of them decided to teach the company a lesson by hacking into their systems and leaking their internal emails and closest secrets to the Internet. The effect on the company and its operations was dramatic.
In an interview with Portfolio, the hacker (using the pseudonym ‘Ethan’) explained how things led up to the leak. Ethan, a polite high-school student who lives with his family, was on his Christmas break when he first gained access to the anti-piracy company’s servers by exploiting a weakness in their firewall. This was at the end of 2006, at a time when business was still good for Media Defender with revenue standing at nearly $16m.
Soon after that Ethan got access to the company’s email, its networked resources and even its telephone system. Logging in a handful of times each month through the summer of 2007, he started to get bored with ‘Monkey Defenders’ - his pet name for the anti-piracy outfit. Deciding to go out with a bang, he and the Media Defender-Defenders gathered thousands of the company’s internal emails and published them on web.
Last November, MediaDefender said it lost $825,000 as a result of the leaked emails, and this amount has probably gone up significantly in the months after that. Its stock price is falling, and it’s beginning to look like the company won’t recover anytime soon. The Pirate Bay wished last year that MediaDefender would go bankrupt, and by the looks of it, they might just get what they hoped for…
Previously: Travis Defends Fan from IFPI Threats
Next: EFF Tool Hunts BitTorrent Throttling ISPs
56 Responses
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at long last.
hahaha mediadefender will die
ALL HAIL TPB ……
Dejavu anyone?
http://torrentfreak.com/the-piratebay-wants-mediadefender-to-walk-the-bankruptcy-plank/
Hope TPB dies with them!
slow news day me thinks
what the hell #3 the piratebay are awesome whats wrong with them !
@ #3
You hope TPB dies with them?
..and exactly how do you imagine that happening?
The case against TPB certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be won by IFPI.
Even if that was the outcome and TPB had to shut down in Sweden, they have servers in other countries, and wouldn’t have any problems setting up servers in just about all european countries.
TPB is here for the long haul.
why isn’t anyone pressing charges on them for the DDoS attacks? This is illegal, and you can bet that nobody on “their side” is willing to let anything go that could be prosecuted? I hope someone presses charges to protect the rest of us from companies like this.
I think #3, like myself is just tired with everyone boning TPB. Yes, they are successful; that’s good for them but TorrentFreak constantly praises them in alot of it’s news posting, infact atleast a good fifth of news content on torrentfreak usually mentions TPB. However TPB is just a small representation of the larger bit-torrent community. Personally I don’t hate TPB but I think the bias propaganda and visual representation of a site like TPB shouldnt be forced onto the readers here it as much as it is. We want bit-torrent news, not purely TPB news! lol =) Long live file sharing
@ HUH? and Lol
Well I understand your point that TPB are praised highly but there is a good reason.
They work together with TorrentFreak and other organisations. The likes of Mininova and Isohunt are big torrent systems but they are mainly interested in advert profits, I’m not saying thats a terrible thing but there not running with the community in the same way as TPB.
TPB is very individual, they host and track plus they allow 100% public usage even Demonoid has private restictions.
TPB like to keep everyone in the loop, I am for one thankful they spend so much time being informative. How many torrent admins contribute to documentaries?
Yes best news i heard in months finally a victory file sharing hopefully we can stay on a roll.
Well, the celebration is tempered by remembering how long SCO has continued to operate without revenues or products or any sense of purpose or mission. They just never go away. Will MediaDefender be like that?
They’re going to lose just like the rest of them, because genuine pirates aren’t in it for the money, they are.
@8
WTF? ‘Tired of everyone boning TPB’? Is anyone else actually doing anything?
It isn’t news bias if there’s no other vnews to report; no single torrent tracker is standing up and fighting for what they (we) believe in like the pirate bay are.
Let’s get back on topic: MediaDefender is going down. Praise Jesus, karma is a bitch!
Not yet bankrupt, but it should be soon, at least. I think that we should do more to make good things like this happen.
There is a simple anonymous (i. e. no registration) discussion board for how people can take action, here:
http://www.28chan.org/fs/
And I think that simply by discussing, and forming a community, that we can actually make things happen.
Didn’t this story appear here on TorrentFreak about 3 months ago? Well either way it’s good news. They won’t be able to DDoS any legit companies anymore.
TorrentFreak is a WEB BLOG not a fucking News site. This isn’t CNN. These are TorrentFreak’s opinions, if you are tired of them mentioning The Pirate Bay then go somewhere else. I’m seriously sick of people whining about the content here or saying stupid shit like “Must Be a Slow News Day”. Go to Reuters then if you want news.
@8
TPB is probably just often mentioned, because most special things happen around them, including their server raid, their /legal page, etc., and because they are one of the greatest, as well as the seemingly most community-active tracker/index site…
Finally they really go the way to the end, even though I hoped and expected it to happen sooner… but now, that so many failures happened to them, bankruptcy is just inevitable…
S_i_e_g h_e_i_l ALL PIRATES SHOULD D1E
#15, please stop spamming every thread with your shitty ‘board’!
@ 19 - asdfghjkjhgfdsa
all pointless losers please find a productive thing to do with your time.
@ seany
I’ll admit it irritates me too but he is still giving oppinions so it’s not totally spam.
I anally raped them!
@ 19:
WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!
“Anti Piracy troll detected off the
starboard bow!”
“Your orders, Captain?”
“Fire cannons, mateys!”
If I owned torrentfreak i’d stop comments.
They are abused so much and spammed.
@24
Hmm…
Well, what is the alternative?
Just some silent postings?
Discussion is a powerful thing in any case.
@17
It’s just a blog, isn’t it?
In any case, perhaps you could start your own blog. It is not so difficult, is it?
The more blogs and the more discussion/community about it, the better.
@20
Since when were blog entries called “threads”? I just think it is far easier to discuss things in a free-forum. And why would you call it “shitty” anyways? It’s a discussion board just like how we’re discussing things on the comments section of this blog.
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