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.
Previously: The Pirate Bay: Sponsored by Wal-Mart
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What lengths thieves go to keep steeling.
[quote comment="38126"]What lengths thieves go to keep steeling.[/quote]
Dad? I taught you how to use the spelling checker, didn’t I? Tell Mom I’d like spaghetti for dinner.
To Kirt:
Sorry man sexual preditors and copy rights do not swim in the same pool. Copy rights are only there to ensure that something someone produces gets them the recongnition the deserve. So what I don’t get is how can the RIAA and MPAA try and bully their customers? Move to Canada if you want to live without copyright, we have no copy right laws, regarding downloading music and such and the RIAA has nothing north of the border, or in any other part of the world. I will start buying CD’s if 2 things change. One lower costs (for everyone) including lower recording prices, and lower royalties. And 2 if they pay the artists more!! Artists are ultimatly the one’s who get screwed, they only make at max a buck a cd, and then they still have to pay back the hundreds of thousands of dollars they owe due to recording costs. No on likes you RIAA go home.
LOL…
MPAA stinks, thats all
If the movie industry is successful in making it too difficult for your average non-technical user, then they will get what they want, which is to marginalize the distribution out of their control. Maybe I am being over-optimistic, but I think this is more about anti-marketing P2P (making it suck to the average joe who was lucky enough to get Azureus to work) than it is about entrapment.
Of course it is easy to block IP address ranges and it will always be possible to filter out the bad trackers, but most people are too lazy or ignorant to bother. They’ll follow the path of least resistance and go watch it on Netflix or iTunes or something.
[quote comment="38106"]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]
Is that a promise? Movies in 2006 were shite!
>”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 perform the service. So, it’s the “intent” of accepting >something illegally/illegal, even though the product/service is a fake.”
What all these ‘real world’ examples of conviction based on intent have in common that is arguably not there in the case of torrenting, is that there is an instance where law enforcement creates an explicit moment of intent… for instance, a police woman posing as a hooker must get verbal confirmation that the person is willing to exchange sex for money. Without the explicit intent expressed by the individual, there is no ‘intent’. This type of interaction doesn’t happen in the process of file sharing ’stings’ - If one went to download one of these fake torrents and was accused of attempting to illegally access copy-written material, the accuser has no ‘real’ knowledge that you thought it was copy-written material because there was no explicit expression of intent… Are you attempting to download the Warner brother movie, “Happy Feet” without payment?… No, I’m trying to download a fake file with a similar name that I can use to learn about an interesting facet of the interweb culture!… hmm.
Think about the dateline crap - If some dude was chatting to screen-name “tinybabe13″ and she never mentioned her age, they would have an impossible time trying to get a conviction against anyone except a court appointed moron. They not only state clearly the age that they are pretending to be but also surely try to get the subject to confirm his understanding… “I’m 13. Do you want a 13 year old? Yes>>> done - admission of understanding.
The litigation (and simple scare tactics) of the MPAA and RIAA are completely out-of-bounds when one compares the procedures that undercover operations typically have to follow. If the US government wasn’t beholden to these corporations they would have shut down these fear-mongering, harassing tactics.
Wouldn’t offering fake files be a form of entrapment? After all they are the ones making the files available online. If the files were not there, then copyright infringement would not take place.
“If the officer mentions money first…”
Amazing article and reactions, time for the forum to go public ;)
A lot of people are reasoning that the **AA want your IP address. C’mon, thats a lot of people to have to go through don’t you think? It’s much more effective for them if they convince the ISP they will prosecute versus convincing the average customer. Why? The point at which the provider is willing to pull the plug on you to avoid legal wrangling is much lower (and takes a shorter time) than the point of getting you to realize that downloading isn’t worth the risk.
And, while pressuring your ISP they have probably gotten you (an average customer)to assess the risks quite a few times enough for you to think about stopping or curbing your torrent downloading.
Because the ISP knows who you are, they will (un)wittingly play apart being able to pressure you directly, thus contributing to the pressuring tactics of the **AA.
correction — that the ** want to know who you are (your address, etc)
[quote comment="38074"]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![/quote]
yes! sue them to hell where they belong!
…wonder why they do all this work…how much is to keep such companies like **AA??…it is all about loosing profit for people that created the product…lets pay the copyright fee to you monthly bill from ISP :-)
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