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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201 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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[quote comment="37998"]ping #30. the first rule of usenet: don’t talk about usenet. kthxbye.[/quote]
usenet people are idiots.
and it’s a pain in the ass to use and it’s NOT free.
Bluetack have had most of these ranges blocked for a while now.
umm.. I’m just thinking, if you put up a file named “starwars” and it’s just a blank file, aren’t you committing wire fraud?
Getting back to the fake file/real file vs. adult/minor discussion, the law looks at INTENT.
What was the online chatter’s intent? Did he intend to have sex with a minor? Of course. So he is arrested.
What is the bitTorrent downloader’s intent? Did he intend to download a junk file, or was he trying to score BattleStar Galactica Season 3 Episode 2?
The answer is obvious.
Hey, if copywriting a file with all 0s works, and is good enough to sue, then why don’t I just make a piece of music called “1″? Any CD anybody else made with 1 (on the track listing!) on the packaging would be illegal, and I could sue the RIAA to oblivion!
Ok, here’s a thought. What if you download one of the MPAA-torrents and you KNOW it’s junk? Can they then take you for the ‘intent’ to download copyrighted material?
look at the source code of mediadefender’s home page.
Catch 22 for the MPAA.
- If the files were real and not fake, then the MPAA is offering the movies for free, and would not prevail in court over a defendant who downloaded them.
- As the files are fake and not real, no copyright infringement takes place. The argument that the dummy file is itself copyrighted is moot, as they are offering it for free download, see above.
Therefore the real reason to upload dummy torrents is to annoy torrent users.
I’m sorry, but where exactly do you get around to proving any of the above story? Like with actual evidence? Cos all I’m reading is wild conclusions, unfounded jumps of logic, unnamed sources and paranioa.
Sorry guys but its places like these that are eventually going to make movies and mainstream entertainment obsolete, i mean how do you expect ppl to want to go out and make more movies for you to download if they can’t even make the money back they spent on making them, prepare for the end of mainstream entertainment as we know it.
[quote comment="38105"]I’m sorry, but where exactly do you get around to proving any of the above story? Like with actual evidence? Cos all I’m reading is wild conclusions, unfounded jumps of logic, unnamed sources and paranioa.[/quote]
I don’t. You’re free to think of it whatever you want.
For some people it’s never enough anyway.
@G - so you guys over at MediaDefender read /. too ? :)
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