After suffering humiliation at the hands of a hacker in 2007, the future of anti-piracy company MediaDefender is in serious doubt. Its parent company, ARTISTdirect, has called in a team of specialists to “assist in the exploration of strategic alternatives.” That’ll be alternatives to liquidation, then.
In September 2007, anti-piracy company MediaDefender’s emails went public after a hacker gained access to their systems. The attacks cost the company a huge amount of money, not to mention acute embarrassment. Now the person behind the attacks speaks.
It has been a rough year for MediaDefender and their parent company ArtistDirect. This September nearly 700mb of MediaDefender’s emails leaked to the public. Initially it didn’t seem to affect the stock price much, but after the financial consequences became apparent, their net worth plunged.
Last Month The Pirate Bay filed complaints against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. The MPAA has now responded to these claims and deny that they worked with MediaDefender. Unfortunately for the MPAA, we have proof that they did.
Last week, The Pirate Bay announced that it filed charges against against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. We asked Brokep, one of The Pirate Bay founders to give us some more background information on this counterattack that will, once again, embarrass the entertainment industry.
After declaring their own war on BitTorrent, players from the porn industry have been debating The Pirate Bay’s calls for police action after major media companies tried to illegally sabotage their operations. Surprisingly there are huge divisions, with many players openly supporting the operators of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker and some are even donating.
MediaDefender’s email and anti piracy tool leaks gave the world a unique insight into the workings and the effectiveness of their BitTorrent decoy operations. So how effective were they? And which sites were best protected against these fake torrents? Let’s find out.
The MediaDefender-Defenders have released the source code for the “trapping” and decoy software that MediaDefender uses to spread fake files on P2P networks.
Buried away in the leaked MediaDefender emails is the End User License Agreement for MiiVi. Like most EULAs it’s long and boring but this one has a sting in its tail. If MediaDefender catch you engaging in copyright infringement with the MiiVi app, they state in black and white that they will report you to the relevant authorities.
