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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No matter what you do or what you download. You know that its not right if its something your downloading for free like music or a movie. Obviously Im talking about copyright material here. The ISPs are notified first and they notify you. However, the ISP will cut you off because they are babies… so if you have no internet, then the mpaa wins. I agree that these corps and businesses and even artists and actors make WAY TOO much money. Thus I hope, and know, that the general public will win the battle and always have a free solution to “pirate” copyright info. If I have to pay 12 to see a new movie at a theatre, or pay 22.50 for a dvd, somethings wrong. Maybe Jack Sparrow should only make 20 million for the movie instead of 28. I mean Jesus people… 1 million is ridiculous. our “stars” need to get a grip on reality. let alone the business and ceo’s that run the entertainment world.
guys, forget the legal issue, that’s what they are trying to get everyone focusing on, the MPAA attention whores
we need to focus on a *solution*
torrent search engines need to add some filters and designate few trustworthy individuals to report fake torrent so they don’t clog the result sets and get everyone pissed off
lets take their billion dollars solution and flush it down the toilet
it’s that simple
I should add that I was once warned by my ISP about accessing a shared file
I told them to go f*ck themselves and terminate my account if they had a problem
guess what, they stopped harrassing me instantly and I have an awesome contract with
do let them intimidate you show them who’s paying and who’s privacy they are violating !
HEY!
lets get some modified torrent clients going (that only download from mediadefendur), and lets cost the mpaa some bandwidth!
get to it!
Basically this is entrapment. no crime has been committed, because there is no illegal files actually being downloaded, attempting to download is NOT a crime, but entrapment is. This organisation is breaking the law and none of the evidence against users downloading torrents will hold up in British or American courts.
Also, i may be wrong, isn’t it illegal to collect personal information on web users without their permission?
I haven’t read the whole thread so I might state something already stated, but I would use the same defence as the hypothetical pedophile. You see I am a computer science student studying defences against the menace of illegal downloading. I don’t actually listen to the tracks, I run algorithms on them. Heaven forbid…
No I don’t have to show you the algorithm, you have to prove there is none. We have a very good legal system in this country, where I am not guilty untill proven innocent.
Any vile allegations that I am raised by a crime lawyer are obviously discrimination and prejudice that must be acted upon immediately. How close and actualy the truth they may be.
^^Y
And that persecution for intent, scaaryy, takes me right back to 1984. If I am still allowed to think that.
And by the by, isn’t it possible to make a sort of dating torrent for our dear and beloved MPAA torrenteers. Sort of bring them together…
The basic idea is that you take a torrent peer from the MPAA and stream it right back to the torrent peer, but after some tampering with its identity. That way the MPAA will be quite occupied with itself…
Though there are probably hundreds of people working on it already…
He he he…
Here’s an idea.
If the MPAA contacts my ISP, and manages to get my personal info to sue me, i’ll counter-sue my ISP for breach of the user privacy act.
If that doesn’t work, which it would, I could always sue for discrimination. Heck, i’m a white guy, and there must be millions of other people that would download, so why pick on me? It’s not ironclad, but the first one is.
[quote comment="56532"]Here’s an idea.
If the MPAA contacts my ISP, and manages to get my personal info to sue me, i’ll counter-sue my ISP for breach of the user privacy act.
If that doesn’t work, which it would, I could always sue for discrimination. Heck, i’m a white guy, and there must be millions of other people that would download, so why pick on me? It’s not ironclad, but the first one is.[/quote]
Yeah… good luck with that. Lol
[quote comment="52045"]Basically this is entrapment. no crime has been committed, because there is no illegal files actually being downloaded, attempting to download is NOT a crime, but entrapment is. This organisation is breaking the law and none of the evidence against users downloading torrents will hold up in British or American courts.
Also, i may be wrong, isn’t it illegal to collect personal information on web users without their permission?[/quote]
This is NOT entrapment, it is perfectly legal. Oh and collecting personal information on web users w/o consent is perfectly legal as well (And if you’re doing something illegal it makes it all the harder to cry to the judge on how the MPAA infringed upon your rights…)
This is stupid!
It’s like having a shop.. have a big label “Get them for free” above some stuff and then after some guy gets it , accusing them for theft!!
The MPAA and their kin apply aggressive tactics in their pursuit of the ‘elimination’ of copyright infringement. The goal of their IP collection system (fake trackers, etc), is to punish, intimidate, and ultimately to deter any entity that interferes with their profitability.
It’s simple. If Steve and his 50 friends are all running around downloading files illegally, and the MPAA knows all of their information (IP->ISP->Personal Info), they can sue for infringement. If they followed legal procedure, about half of Steves friends would settle out of court, but the rest wouldn’t. While the infringer’s themselves would lose several thousand dollars each in legal fees and settlements, the MPAA itself would end up LOSING at least a million dollars, if not more.
Instead, the MPAA (and its agents)report the IP addresses to their respective ISPs, and then back off. What good does this do? Instead of solving the problem within the constraints of the legal system, they instead take advantage of ISP usage policies. Many Isp’s will send two warning letters, then begin shutting of the users internet access for incrementally longer periods of time, before finally “alerting the authorities”; although, in most cases, copyright infringement is a civil dispute between the infringer and the copyright holder, and not a criminal offense (unless said material was reproduced in volume, and sold for profit, I think).
This tactic is far cheaper, more efficient, and much more effective than any more ‘ethical’ technique, without the costly legal proceedings.
When you look at it,every man and his dog are illegally downloading something,mp3s,movies,software,ect.using all sorts of ways to do it.Now if the ISPs were to cut every body off they’d go fucking broke within a week,so it ain’t gonna happen,the MPPA,or whatever can go fuck themselves.
If these are fake torrents with nothing to download and this is being used against an individual to show intent haven’t we just had our very own minority report?
Someone needs to come up with an anonymous way of downloading a torrent.
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.
Thats the point, these people ARE NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT. If you sell me drugs then tell the police that you sold me drugs you have broken the law too just like me.
No matter what they (MPAA) does, it doesn’t stop anything and it’s just a scare tactic, because right now there are no legal laws about using p2p.
I’ve been p2p for over 2 years now, and on average, I’m downloading 10 movies per day. In other words, in the last 12 months, my torrent client wasn’t used for a total of 30-45 days. I torrent every-single day. Be cautious, but don’t feed into the fear they’re pushing out.
Legally, there is nothing they can do to prosecute you for downloading anything, provided you take these steps to help insure your privacy.
Although none of the below is 100% guaranteed, but it’s been working well for me.
no#1. NEVER sign up on any site and use the email address your isp assigns to you. ONLY use your isp email address to check emails that they send you. I’m on 2 isp’s and both of them send me spam every day. Since I never in my life used those email addresses, they have to be the culprits of me getting spam. Big deal. As long as you don’t get any infringement letters, you’re fine.
no#2. Use ip blocking software. I use PeerGuardian 2, and have been using it for 2 years. The groups behind it are constantly adding those ip addresses to the blocked lists, saving you time of having to research them. You can get PeerGuardian 2 at http://phoenixlabs.org
no#3. Use a proxy tool, like Tor.. You can get it at http://tor.eff.org. Tor is good for surfing. While you’re surfing, your ip addresses changes from site to site, and at the same time, your isp can’t track where you’ve been while you’re surfing.
no#4. Unless you’re absolutely sure of the torrent/uploader… NEVER, EVER download a torrent that has only 1 seeder. That’s where you are likely to get accused. Let me explain what the RIAA/MPAA doesn’t want people to know, and especially your isp.
a. If you download a file from 1 seeder, you are in fact in violation of copyright infringements, and they will have a case against you.
b. If you download a torrent from more than one seeder, you’re in no violation at all because in order for you to infringe you will have to get the complete file from any one source, and since every torrent is broken into data bits, and distributed amongst many people, you are not violating any laws. You’re getting data bits from numerous locations and sources, and it’s just recompiled to create the file. The fact is that you never downloaded any copyrighted material. You just downloaded bits from numerous people… and that’s what the RIAA/MPAA doesn’t want anyone to know.
So, point and case?… Stay away from torrents that has only one seeder, because you can’t deny that.
no#5. The computer you use to download torrents should NOT have any personal or identifying information about you on it. Invest $40 or so, and get another hard drive.. install your os on it, then your torrent client. Use that hard drive for your torrents, and when you’re done, dump the data from that hard drive. The point is this… no matter what they suspect, or ip address they log, they still have to prove you did what they claim, and if you were to get a knock on your door, at least it won’t have all your torrent downloads on it (hopefully if you dump the data often).
These things have kept me in the clear so far. At one point on my isp service I’m on, I’ve downloaded 106 movies in 6 days :)… Sooo, if they’re as aggressive as they claim, they would definitely be catching more people than they do now… and the people they do catch, those people settle out of court.. which they should fight them to the end, because as of now, they’ve lost more cases than they’ve won. They are the ones hurting the Industry, it’s not us,, it’s them.
And another thing to keep in mind…. there isn’t enough man power on planet earth for them to monitor every-single torrent out there. They can only monitor their own, and a few others…. but if every site owner that hosts links to torrents use ip blocking lists, they will ensure the great reduction of those groups from even uploading to the trackers, because their ip’s will be blocked.
I have a few torrent sites, and I block them from even entering my site, and that’s what all of these torrent sites need to practice. It’s all about the quality, not the quantity.
But whatever you do, at least get PeerGuardian 2, and load all the lists that they have (21 of them) and your torrenting will go so much smoother, and less worrying about if they’re connecting to you. I block MediaSentry, Media Defender, and a host of others groups every day for the past 2 years, and nothing has ever happened to me, nor my isp accounts.
Hopefully the information I provided will help many of you out and help make your torrenting much safer and more pleasant.
Way to turn the internet against you, MPAA…
Amazing post Jasontor
good informative article
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