Revision3 Sends FBI after MediaDefender
Written by Ernesto on May 29, 2008The popular Internet television network Revision3 suffered from a severe DDoS attack, launched by the infamous anti-piracy organization MediaDefender. After targeting The Pirate Bay’s trackers, MediaDefender apparently thought it was a good idea to spread their fake torrents through Revision3.
The CEO of Revision3 – Jim Louderback – was quite surprised when he found out that MediaDefender was the source of the attack that took down their entire network this weekend. He found out that MediaDefender used the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker for the fake torrents they upload to various BitTorrent sites.
In a lengthy blog post Louderback explains what happened, as he writes: “Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes , quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode , much like how a petulant toddler will throw an epic tantrum if you take away an ill-gotten Oreo.”
MediaDefender’s attack effectively took down the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker this weekend, and people were unable to grab the latest episodes. That was not all, the flood of SYN packets also took out their webserver and their email. These kind of attacks are illegal according to US law, and if Revision3 decides to pursue this case in court, it would not be the first time MediaDefender gets caught.
Only a few months ago, The Pirate Bay sued several media companies that hired MediaDefender, for exactly the same behavior. Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde said at the time: “They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff. We need to make a statement that just because something might be hard to fight it doesn’t mean that laws do not imply in the case.”
Louderback has no idea whether the attack on their network was intentional or not, but said he involved the FBI. “Was it malicious? Intentional? Negligent? Spoofed? I can’t say. But what I do know is that the FBI is looking into the matter , and it’s far more serious than toddlers squabbling over broken toys and lost cookies.”
This is yet another epic fail in MediaDefender’s history, and this might very well be the final punch to knock the company out. Most of you probably remember the leaked emails and confidential information, which cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and brought them on the verge of bankruptcy.
To quote MediaDefender’s CEO Randy Saaf: “This is really fucked.”
Update: Ironically Revision3 seems to be down again because of all the traffic the news generated.
Previously: Comcast Hacked in BitTorrent Throttling Payback?
Next: OiNK Investigation: Police Start Making Arrests
65 Responses
Lol mediaDefender bunch of noobs
Ouch :)
MediaDefender is dead LoL
Babye Teddy bear )))
MediaDefender is such a fucking waste of space!
That shit is priceless. Those idiots never cease to amaze me. They need to hire a few competent IT guys lol.
Or perhaps crawl into the hole they are going to wind up in anyway.
J.
MediaDefender is going down.
Where are ze MediaDefender-Defenders? :D
Nice words: “toddlers squabbling over broken toys and lost cookies”
Lol
Awesome news! Makes you kinda warm inside doesnt it? ;)
MD got quite alot of cash by quite alot of big names, imo FBI should be all over their *lots of beepers* aswell..
omg beepers.. xd
And file sharers are the criminals? Don’t make me laugh.
I don’t get the impression that this has MediaDefender going out of their way to screw over Rev3, I think it was just a result of incompetent staff and awful programmers. I don’t know if that makes it any better, but it does make it a bit less sinister.
Regardless, they hurt Revision3’s business and should have to pay them back for that.
@8
Why is it awesome? A legitimate company suffers an illegal attack?
That’s like saying that it’s good if person x kills someone and gets done for murder – because you didn’t like person x.
Has anyone seen the latest MediaDefender(ArtistDirect) quarterly report? Their income continues to plummet since the massive email leak last September and revenue from anti-P2P contracts is expected to decline even farther in the future.
In the 1Q-2008 Report:
[quote]“Revenues related to MediaDefender’s anti-piracy activities declined in 2007 as compared to 2006 and management anticipates a further decline in 2008.”[/quote]
Meaning that MD’s clients, mainly companies in the movie and recording industry, due to the leaked emails, learned what a bunch of lamers they really were. Who wouldn’t quit when they learn that they’ve not only been lied to, but ridiculed behind their back.
[quote]“To the extent that the Company is unable to complete a sale or merger or restructure its senior and subordinated debt obligations in a satisfactory manner and/or the lenders begin to exercise additional remedies to enforce their rights, the Company will not have sufficient cash resources to maintain its operations.
In such event, the Company may be required to consider a formal or informal restructuring or reorganization, including a filing under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.” [/quote]
In other words, they’re so far in the hole that it may take a miracle to save them from bankruptcy.
In the words of Randy Saaf,
“Take a moment to laugh to yourselves”
Epic Fail… exactly the right words for this act…
I wonder if they’ll really go totally down this time, they are so annoying… but somehow I’ll also miss the hilarious news about their tries…
Well, justice wins over emotions… FBI, Go kill MediaDefender!
@11
It’s not like we only dislike MD, actually they are (were) a nice source for information and funny news, but using totally illegal methods against anyone is just bad and should be punished…
(even in the internet, there are unwritten rules of what can be tolerated and what cannot…=
Oh dear. Bye bye MediaDefender.
Poor Revision3. Hope they get some compensation for this.
Its obvious no IT technician that knows what there doing will work there.. what do you expect when your job description reads: malicious hacker wanted, must be able to hack back doors and spread spam and fake torrents. Paying $10 a hour.
The sad part about it is that I guarantee a 10 year old computer wiz could do far better of a job.
The problem is they are over there with all this pressure from these big companies that are like ‘WERE PAYING YOU TONS OF MONEY NOW STOP THEM’, so they in turn and trying to think of creative ways to spread there muck, then they claim that they have reduced pirates and ‘are doing something about it’. They make up a bunch of numbers (Like how they make up the amount to sue for) and claim the number as statistics for there work. They seem to think there are no rules or regulations in this type of work, as if everything is fair game.
The one thing that media defender needs to learn is this..
THERE ARE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.
Just because other countries do horrible war crimes does not mean we can just hit a big red button and drop a nuke over there. The same applies with this torrent war.
But by all means, please keep hitting yourself in the head, it makes what we do that much easier..
Media Defender you are a joke, your company is run by morons and I would seriously consider a change in employment, you will not have a job there for much longer.
zomg totally epic fail
DAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Dun-dun. Teh churchclocks are ringing, Media Defender is buried asap.
@11
Didnt get that realy but read the headline and maybe figure out why i think its awesome news ;)
Revision3 ftw but their just ->another<- victim by MD.
Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/virgin_media_daytime_restrictions/
bye bye virgin
If Revision3 is thinking of suing, they would be wise to sue the media companies that hire MediaDefender, rather than just MD itself.
This is because MediaDefender’s parent company, ArtistDirect, is close to bankruptcy, so it’s likely they’ll never pay out even a penny in a lawsuit.
All your torrents are belong to me now
Wow… what can I say. Hopefully MD will be out of business because of this. They deserve it and we all know it. I’m sure a lot of people will be watching this case closely. Fuck you MediaDefender.
if you destroy MD then you will be removing the biggest bunch of mpaa-related pussies from the usa, meaning more stronger cunts will come… just leave the fuckers there for comedy :P
Poor Randy and Octavio. Perhaps a stay in Club Fed will calm their nerves. I still say that they’ll end up as squeegee men on the street corner if there’s any justice.
Watch your back MD. (And careful picking up that soap!) :P
Alright, free mp3’s if you guess correct date they file for Chapter 11!!
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=spc5t1&s=3
“laws do not imply in the case.”
APPLY
So…. Karma is closing it’s circle…. squirm Randy Saaf!
MediaDefender will hopefully suffer for this bullshit.
Also Ernesto, just thought I’d point out that you wrote DDoS up top but this was actually just a DoS, as it wasn’t distributed. :]
Just because MD take up a stance against file sharing, cosying up with the cartels, and try to screw over file sharing concerns, it doesn’t mean they really care one way or the other. It may just be the business model they chose, in order to leech lots of cash from the game.
Like a cop who gets into it for the power trip and make cash at the same time. Does he care about law and order as they all claim? Not most of them, who are also corrupt, or become so.
These MD freaks of nature may just be a group of hackers who distribute viruses online just for fun, or who had some petty grievance with BT moderators or had chatroom arguments and made it their “mission” to “avenge” themselves.
What kinda dumbass company would have a system set up to do DDOS attacks…
Do we know who these MD freaks are, and their backgrounds?
Since my response was banned for some stupid reason, it can be read on the p2pnet article
It all started with my one complaint. Oops.
http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?p=369753
It is important that we stand for what we believe in: that file-sharing should not be criminalized.
There is the EFF, but they do not believe such a thing.
There is the FSF, but they are limited to software.
In the end, people for a free culture are not organized at all. There needs to be an Non-Profit Organization for the purposes of this. We need to all volunteer our time if justice is ever to meet the face of this earth.
Awesome news (finally!)
I doubt that they will be declaring bankruptcy this year. ArtistDirect signed an forbearance agreement with their creditors in March, that in return for paying a higher interest rate on their outstanding debt, their creditors would not forclose on them through December 31.
The company is drowning in debt, and presently with no buyer in sight to bail them out, unless they can turn the company around and increase their revenue substantially in 2008, bankruptcy is almost certain in early 2009.
Epic Frickin’ Fail
http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/mediadefender-remixes-chopped-screwed/
MediaDefender keeps breaking the law. Not civil law. Federal Law. When is the FBI going to arrest these guys?
Louderback is full of crap.
Oh no! MD is hitting our server, it’s going down, it must be an intentional. DoS attack! You might believe him until their server went down from the Digg effect from their blog post.
WTF do they have their server running on? A 10 year old server with a gerbil powering it?
@10: File sharing hurts artists’ businesses, (http://badgerherald.com/news/2003/05/01/local_musicindustry_.php) are you saying Torrent users owe them money???
@42: You do have a point, a site like rev3 should have a decent IT staff that knows something about throttling and network security. You don’t hear of DoS attacks that often anymore because IT Depts take measures to prevent them… most IT Staffs anyway.
However, I don’t think rev3 is as “squeaky clean” as they claim to be. A “friend of mine” downloaded a bunch of tv shows and movies using that tracker and unless rev3 owns the rights to Lost and Desperate Housewives, they appear to be a little shady themselves. It’s too bad though, it was a pretty good tracker :(
oops, my previous comment was supposed to be @43 not @42
“Ironically Revision3 seems to be down again because of all the traffic the news generated.”
lol
As long as anti-piracy organisations keep the likes of MediaDefender and Web Sheriff around, I’m not too worried for the future of filesharing.
@51
Do you still think that such anti-piracy organizations should continue inflicting the injustice upon others as they had for so long? Just because the future of filesharing is good, there still should be some justice in this world.
I’ll try to comment again, as my previous entry NEVER made it to the page!!
While I’m not siding with MD, Rev3 was careless for openly broadcasting their OPEN tracker! Why do I know it’s open? Because I’ve used it and I’ve seen it used by other groups, like Axxo!
Go search for it yourself if you don’t believe me.
Sure enough, when they decided to make their tracker private because they just realized that their tracker is being used by other people, their servers crashed.
Any idiots know that when you put something online, it’s “free” for all. Isn’t that what BitTorrent technology is all about? SHARING! The difference is that Rev3 didn’t know they were sharing anything with the rest of the world.
Despite the fact that getting caught is like getting a lightning strike the lightning is already bad enough. Will you not stand for your fellow file-sharers and demand justice for them? Do you people have no care about those unfortunate individuals who are a victim to this injustice?
I say that it is a time to pursue all means to destroy the propaganda regime of those “anti-pirates.”
For we must set up NPO’s for the purpose of advocacy and legal defense. For I had not seen a single NPO for this purpose. The EFF is not for this purpose. They do not care about file-sharing. The Free Software Foundation does not care about people uploading albums, only software. Let us all volunteer our time to help those unfortunate individuals, for their propaganda and persecution has already gone on long enough.
For this purpose, I propose that we start collecting a list of volunteers for the establishment of an organization for the rallying of the cause.
For the anti-pirates cannot be allowed to have a monopoly on saying that we are criminals, any more. We have no voice, but we must, for we must get out to the public that we believe we are good and righteous.
ha- ironic ending…
so this means i’m not aloud to play with MD anymore?
sux2bme(comcast)!!!
think of it this way.. how many of you heard of revision3 for the first time reading this blog, or through digg? This can only be good for Revision3 in the long run.
MD doesnt get that doing stunts like this only fuels the p2p filesharing world.
slow news day, right torrentfreak? :P just kidding, nice to see an assholes caught in their own shit.
They Should change their name to media surrender LOL!!!!!!
I never knew about this site.
Its not bad. It seems like nothing
on it realy copyrited stuff.
Links to podcasts of the like of
what was tech tv casts newer stuff.
I’m sure those folks are glad to have
there stuff d/L .Just so folks know there still on the map.
“Imply in the case”? He means “apply”. Swedes and their overestimation of their English skills – it’s almost funny.
Where are the “This is really fucked.” MD t-shirts?!
Hah! Mediadefender thinks that arranging spam trough Rev3 is going to take down trackers!! Jesus christ..
I mean, look at piratebay:
When their servers were confiscated by the police, they just set up new ones after 3 days!
If any anti-torrent organisations sees my comment.. ” Sharing is Power “. Remember that, you twats.
-Sincerely, yours
POOLSUPORTER
I love how they can commit fraud and violate privacy acts all over the place, but the minute somone shares a single file they go all ape-shit crazy to take them down and what worse they have the industries backing them their activities.
“I love how they can commit fraud and violate privacy acts all over the place, but the minute somone shares a single file they go all ape-shit crazy to take them down and what worse they have the industries backing them their activities.”
That is what pisses me off about MediaDefender and the other companies like it: they are ALWAYS, ALWAYS trying to catch people, to the point of doing things that make it unreasonable for them to be allowed to sue those people.
Example: seeding a file on a Bittorrent site that is the actual movie, then trying to go after the people who downloaded it…. they should ALSO be gone after for doing that in the first place, because THEY violated the law as well…. the MPAA NEVER gave them permission to do things like that.
In year 2009, the number of lawyers increased by 33% due to huge demand.
Hahaha and the funny thing is I’ve never heard of revision 3 before, but just now I watched 3 of their shows. I don’t see why media companies are so scared of file sharing. Revision 3 uses bit torrent to make money. Why can’t other companies do this? Well I say if other companies aren’t willing to change and adapt to the new environment, fuck em!
@44, I don’t think torrent users owes any money to the artists, they been ripped off for so many years by those record companies, its just unbelievable. I cant remember the name of that band that recently put their full album for dl from their website, guess what, I’m sure they made more money from the donations than what they would have received from their record company, I hope it does get to all other artist and band, I’m sure if they just charged a 10 or 15 cents for each dled song, end the end it will come up with the same revenue they would have made through their record company and probably more if you just take into account they have no headaches with their rec. cie demanding them to appear on shows, interviews, public appearances, etc to promote their album. Now the promotion is on their website, and like they said in that interview I watched, what brings them more money has always been the tours. Imagine such a promotion, letting the whole world listen to your music, then they show up in some town, everyone knows the music, means more peeps will show up, knowing they will not be deceived! Follow me? Why should p2p users be ashamed of sharing songs that belongs to the artist but not really hurting them that much, they most likely don’t even get 2 bucks for each cd sold. They have been abusing and extorting the talent of our beloved artists and we should feel sorry for the record companies. In IMHO, they are of no used to the talented artist. The only singer that got lucky, is probably Celine Dion, she married her manager! Therefor earning a larger share of her real earnings. But even though she is rich now, how much rich do you think the record companies made over her talent. IMO it doest take much talent to sell songs when the artist has so much talent, its just a waste of resources and these blood suckers should get a real job, sweat some like the artists does when on the stage.
I asked that all singers would not renew their contracts once it ends and get their promotion done like that other band did. If someone remembers who they were please post it, I think it would be the best thing for the singers/band to go with, I know I would be one to pay for these songs, knowing all proceeds will go to the artist not the talent suckers, who only wants our money and they don’t care about others belongings. I bet there are already a lot of users who got their comp infested by these assholes, if not screwed totally. They have no respect for the fans none what so ever, trust me.
These “greedy” media & recording companies are middle men and they know they are no longer needed. The amount of revenue they take from the artists and actors/actresses is “gob smacking”. They are not concerned about how much the artists or actors/actresses are losing at all, they are frightened because they know their jobs/companies are at stake thanks to progress (p2p).
It is not about winning or losing its about a natural progression of life and p2p is as natural as breathing. If i download a file i have NOT stole it because they still have their copy, i have just replicated it.
These artists will do better without these greedy companys if they were to really think about it. Most of the people i know on the internet and in my walking life refuse to “buy” music or movies now as a protest because we dont like people who takes the law into their own hands.
who do these companys think they are taking the law into their own hands yet excluding themselves from the law? It appears to me that they are giving the judges some sneaky back hander pay to get their own way.
These agencies are old fasioned and are no longer needed, time to go down with your ship. Ddos? last i heard it was ilegal to do that im pretty much most countrys so i guess if its ok for them then its ok for us right? I too run a p2p site and if it were forced to close it would be up and running again next day on a new server and may even be in a new country. If these companys are really losing so much money then why waste whats left on useless court battles where they know they have no way of getting money back from it? Most of the people they sue are pennyless thats why they cant buy the music or movies.
Long live Torrent 8-}
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