MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents
It is no secret that the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations track down alleged pirates by uploading fake torrents. Up until now it was always unclear where those files came from, and how to identify them.
The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs try to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They hire a company to put up fake copies of popular movies, music albums, and TV series. They even use pirate like filenames such as “Battlestar Galactica S03E07 REPACK DSR XviD-ORENJi” and “Miami Vice[2006]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo“.
One of the btjunkie admins has found a unique way to identify trackers that host these fake files, which makes it easy to efficiently remove them.
Virtually all the servers that spread these fake files are located in Southern California and Las Vegas. The administrators of these servers follow patterns that make it easy to identify them. The content of the trackers and seed amounts make them stand out. There are more unique characteristics, but we wont reveal all the tricks because they could take counter measures. Here are some examples of servers that host and track fake torrents:
Tracker 1, Tracker 2, Tracker 3 & Tracker 4. (Screenshots: One & Two)
All the information was provided to me by one of the admins of btjunkie, who works together on this with other torrent site admins. He says that the MPAA and friends use a variety of tactics. The tracker will either stall everyone at around 90% or the content will just be a blank monochrome screen.
“I really think this is being done by professionals with a budget, that’s a lot of servers to setup and it takes some expertise to setup in the manner that they did it,” says the btjunkie admin. “I don’t think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this.”
Here are some good examples of how these fake torrents clutter up the search results. Virtually all of those X marked torrents are coming from the ip-ranges we mentioned, and are fake files. The good thing is that Torrentportal’s report system is well used by their users.
The server boxes that host these torrents fall in serveral ip-ranges. Here are a few of the ranges that were discovered recently. You can easily add these to the blocklist of your torrent client (if it supports one), filewall, or blocklist manager.
The anti-piracy servers use hostnames like 101tracker.dhcp.biz, aplustorrents.qhigh.com, bitnova.squirly.info, bittorment.ocry.com, and pirate-trakkrz.leet.la. All these hostnames can be traced back to the same IP Ranges, these ranges contain possibly hundreds of fake trackers, so feel free to block them:
A list of infohashes of fake torrents can be found over here.
Note that it’s not only MPAA material that is hosted on these fake trackers. It is more likely that the servers are owned and operated by an organization that logs IP addresses for several copyright owners and or anti-piracy organizations.
Update: according to one of out readers these ip-ranges belong to “Media Defender“, a company that is hired by copyright owners, to log IP-addresses. This reader, who worked for Media Defender until recently, confirmed that some of the torrents that were mentioned, are indeed on the MPAA’s list.
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Here at mininova we blocked over 260 trackers (some of which are complete ranges) and way over 2600 ip’s of the submitters, and have been doing so since when it started about 1,5 year ago.
And about finding them; just look for tracker announce like http://bittorrent-relatedname-here.free-dns-service.com:6969/announce (also quite allot of real trackers use these services, but they often use different tracker software so they don’t have the :6969/announce part).
I must admit they are quite creative with the names sometimes, for example one was http://b00bs.hobby-site.com:6969/announce (if I remember correctly). Furthermore they have many of those free dns services point to the same ip (also quite an effective way to find them).
“The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs try to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP adresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They hire a company to put up fake copies of popular movies, music albums, and TV series.”
I don’t understand? If the stuff they “offer” is not the copyrighted content the downloader is seeking, how can they claim that some copyright infringement has took place? I don’t believe the MAFIAA applied for copyrightregistrations for some junkfiles!
So your claim that they sent letters to ISP’s for Downloading fakes makes IMHO no sense, please Ernesto explain further.
kdsde wrote:
A great part of their job is to scare people. Most of the time they try to settle before these things are played out in court, so they don’t need that much info. The MPAA (or other anti piracy lobbies) has proof that IP xxx tried to get file yyy. The name is enough to send out a letter that alleged copyright infringement has taken place.
Of course it is unsure how this will hold up in court.
You might want to check out this post by New York lawyer Ray Beckerman
It’s about the RIAA litigation process.
Ernesto is right, this is exactly how they do it, regardless of how legally sound the idea is. About a month ago my roommate downloaded what he thought was the Star Wars: Empire at War computer game. When the file completed it turned out to be comple junk data. A few days later however, my internet connection mysteriously cut out. I called my ISP (Cox) and they said they had received an infringement notice regarding that exact file. I played dumb and said someone was using my wireless connection to download files and I got my internet back up but the point is it doesn’t matter if the file is real or not, even if I’m not breaking any copyright laws by downloaded junk data, the file name is enough to scare the ISP when it receives a letter and that is enough to get my account banned which is bad for me. So regardless of if it could ever hold up in court it’s just a crappy situation for the person who doesn’t want to lose their internet connection.
No being a lawyer or other form of blood sucking life… here’s my 2¢ ;
I’ve been watching Dateline NBC and they have this sting operation where they get adults to chat with ‘teens’.
The adults ‘THINK’ they are typing to 13 year old girl/boys and the adults describe all the nasty things they want to do to these ‘13′ year kids. Who are actually NOT kids but adults pretending they were kids.
The pretend kids then setup a meeting with the real adults and Dateline is there to interview the adults to ask them why they are there, what are their plans are etc., etc. Of course none of them planned to do anything, they were just here to make sure the ‘kids’ were alright etc. Then when the adults leave, the police are there to arrest them for their actions against a minor, even though there is NEVER a minor involved! The online chat people are adults, the person they meet at the door is a young looking over 19 year old adult, yet they still get arrested because they ‘thought’ it was/is a 13 year old kid.
So I suspect that if you downloaded a planted movie, if you buy oregano and thought it was pot, you’ll still be arrested for attempted whatever the charge is…
In one state, just chatting with the person you thought was 13 gets you arrested and put on the sexual predator listings…
thanks for the info and the link
“Here are some good examples of how these fake torrents clutter up the search results.”
torrentportal should put up the red-cross and the green check mark in the icon legend, as there is no tool-tip which comes up on mouse-hover over these icons.
If the file is junk, it is not copyrighted - therefore they shouldn’t be able even to suggest to the ISP that you are downloading copyrighted stuff.
If they actually give something that is copyrighted, then they could be also sued for copyright infringement, isn’t that true?
Is that kind of like a pedophile hooking up with a teenager to have sex which turns out to be officers setting up a sting?
“Well, ossifer, technically, I didn’t have sex with a 10 year old since there was no actual 10 year old that was present.”
Long long time ago, I had a Hotline server which hosted movies, music, tv eps, software, whatever. I got a letter from Time Warner saying the RIAA had contacted them and I had to pull the music off or legal action would be taken. So I took down the mp3s and no one said anything. Of course this was around the Metallica days when no one cared about bootlegs dvds. Im talking about movies like gladiator! Good work guys!
heres a tracker for those ip’s. My friend made it and i placed it on my server.
http://digg.com/security/PeerGuardian_2_MPAA_Fake_Torrents_Tracker
Movie Companies have been paying millions for this to happen for years, there are people out there who make a killing by having servers located all over the world seeding and sharing blank files etc, not just for logging at all, but more to flood the market with so many fakes that users end up having to try several times and waste a lot of time/bandwidth.
doesn’t matter that the content is not real (copyrighted material) it’s the “intent” that would stand up in court. The “intent” of downloading, what was perceived as the copyrighted content by the individual downloading, which constitutes the alleged infringement or crime.
Example: a police woman can pose as a prostitute, the potential customer solicits her for services, hands over the cash, then is arrested for the intent. The police woman is not a real prostitute, nor did she perfomr the service. So, it’s the “intent” of accepting something illegally/illegal, even though the product/service is a fake.
Made PeerGuardian file with all these address ranges Ernesto posted. Save this text to a file, name it FakeTrackers.p2p or something similar (the .p2p extension is important) and then you can add it to PeerGuardian :
FakeTrackers:66.172.60.1-66.172.60.255
FakeTrackers:66.177.58.1-66.177.58.255
FakeTrackers:66.180.205.1-66.180.205.255
FakeTrackers:209.204.61.1-209.204.61.255
FakeTrackers:216.151.155.1-216.151.155.255
Thanks for the good post!
thanks for this very informative post. i will block those ip’s with PG2. so i guess if a torrent has way to many seeds, just be suspicious and think twice.!!
Well, there are laws that include “intent” such as solicitation of sex, attempted murder, intent to distribute… but those are specific laws. If you’re carrying around an ounce of splenda that you think is coke, you won’t get arrested for attempted drug possession. Even though there may not be a law against attempted copyright infringement, the scare tactic is what works.
I think it would be a good idea if admins of dumps like Mininova and Fenopy do not demonstrate they have such control or knowledge of the content listed on their sites ;)
But this is a good article. It is also a shame that 95% of torrent downloaders do not even look which tracker is listed in the torrent they are leeching. I’m afraid this majority is a sitting duck
Also with this technique they are trying to delay your download. With this, they are hoping that ppl will try to download the file 5 times and wont get it and they will just say, hey this sucks. I will rather buy it on iTunes :).
But most of my friends actually do call me after they download a blank file and ask me whats wrong with their comp…
No, not just intent. I saw that show too…
When a policewoman pretends to be a prostitute, the exact crime they are searching for is “soliciting”. It is illegal to offer money for sex, or sex for money. (In public, only, in Canada. A few years ago, it was ruled that when a hooker stuck her head into the car, she was in a private place and therefore not soliciting in a public place). Similarly, if the decoy cop mentions money first, it’s entrapment.
Many states have a law that “soliciting a minor” (enticing, with or without money) is a crime. If you entice what you believe is an underage person, you are committing a crime, due to “intent”. But that’s intent to solicit, not intent to have sex. Their action online provided the crime. There’s no doubt you asked for sex with a minor if (a) you thought they were underage, and (b) you said things that were reasonably intended as “wanna do it?”. Showing up at an assignation is just icing on the cake - it simplifies proving that yes, you were the one on the keyboard, not the neighbour using your Wi-fi. Especially if the conversation after “hello” indicates you know the details of the online chat.
Of course, in the catch-all state laws, even soliciting sex with a minor is “put-me-on-the-perv-list” material.
Similarly, selling oregano is covered because offering to sell drugs is a crime, even if the drugs aren’t real. Possesion of oregano (oddly enough) is NOT a crime. Heck, in Canada, offering to sell information on where to find someone who can sell you drugs is also a crime. (In a bust a while ago, they cops rounded up 10 dealers and a loser buddy of one who said to a guy at the bar, “for $20 I’ll tell you who to ask for a good score…” What are friends for?)
What about downloading a fake file, or one offered by agents of those representing the copyright holders? Unless the law of the state is well written to cover this, I doubt it. Either (a) the bozos don’t have permisson and should face the same penalty as you (joint and severally liable?) or (b)they do have permission, and so by implication do you since they offered it. they have to prove that you KNEW (or really ought to have known) it was copyright, or they told you “this is not for you”. Of course, they need to show intent, because you could have an automated random file picker. (”I’ll download torrents then delete, to help others”) Also, now that we know legitimate agents of the owners are offering files by that name, where’s the intent to breach copyright?
Considering the MPAA has never actually tested their claims in a fair trial, I doubt any **AA lawyer would want to touch this with a 10-foot brief. They’re just trying to scare everyone and their ISP.
Maybe someone should copyright a file of all 0’s?
btw, this is nothing new. it was reported back in 2005
heavybags wrote:
That story never linked it to anti-piracy organizations though
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