In addition, MediaSentry is lacking the proper license required in some states to actually perform the evidence gathering. Michigan is such a state, which spurred a father of an alleged file-sharer to dispute the legitimacy of RIAA’s (former) partner so the evidence provided by them can be discounted.

If found acting as a Private Investigator within the state, the company committed a criminal act. That would have a significant negative impact on any evidence they provided to a court case, indeed it might disqualify it entirely. Without the evidence of the alleged infringement provided by MediaSentry, there is no case to answer.

Enter the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth’s (DELEG) Bureau of Commercial Services (BCS). They regulate and maintain the lists of professional licenses in the state. Their investigation has turned up no license, but more critically, no evidence of payment from the RIAA either. Without that, there’s no business being performed, which means there’s no need for a license. As such, the BCS has closed (thanks to Ray Beckerman) their investigation.

However, while the case is closed for now, the letter does say it can be reopened if new evidence on payments is produced. Since the case came out of a current lawsuit (SONY Music Entertainment v. Kruger) it shouldn’t be hard to get evidence of the business relationship admitted into evidence. Once that’s done, MediaSentry might be in some hot water.

As the BCS later states, “The Court may impose a civil fine of up to $25,000 for a violation of the Act. The Court may also find a person practicing without a license guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment.”

MediaSentry’s pirate snooping amateurs might be working for free – but that’s unlikely – as we all know the RIAA’s position on getting anything for free…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Following the departure of its two founders, MediaDefender CEO Dimitri Villard said MediaSentry had been bought for $936,000, comprised of $136,000 in cash and an $800,000 1 year note.

“The combination of MediaDefender, the leader in Internet Piracy Prevention (IPP) with MediaSentry, the leader in business and marketing intelligence derived from P2P channels, creates a true powerhouse in the field of intellectual property protection,” Villard said. “This acquisition will enable MediaDefender to dramatically expand its effectiveness by providing customers with a wide range of options to meet the constantly evolving challenges in copyright protection and enforcement.”

Among file-sharers, MediaDefender grew to become one of the most hated anti-p2p companies but always maintained that it did not track individuals or report them to the authorities or copyright holders. With its acquisition of MediaSentry, a company designed to do just that, MediaDefender now boasts the full range of tools to hinder, mislead, track, monitor and report copyright infringers.

Previously a SafeNet Inc. subsidary, MediaSentry became well known as the RIAA’s main anti-piracy partner, providing crucial support to the lobby group during its aggressive litigation campaign against file-sharers. The RIAA dumped MediaSentry in January, choosing to work with Danish tracking company DtecNet instead.

MediaSentry is best known for harvesting IP-addresses of alleged copyright infringers but their methodology has been questioned in court by several experts. On top of that, Mediasentry’s investigation tactics were deemed illegal in several states because it operated without the appropriate and required paperwork. According to some, this was why they were ditched by the RIAA.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sometimes anti-piracy outfits use their own trackers to gather evidence. Last week we reported that The Pirate Bay started to actively remove these suspicious trackers from their torrents, with some help from torrenteditor.com. Running a tracker is not required though, to collect information from BitTorrent users. In fact, many attempt to use publicly available trackers such as The Pirate Bay to do so. However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.

Polluting the evidence works like this. When a client asks for a list of peers who are downloading the same torrent, the tracker software automatically inserts several “random IP addresses” that are not in the swarm. They are based on existing sub-nets, but might be from people who may not even be aware that BitTorrent exists. This means that the evidence that’s being gathered by anti-piracy companies includes IPs that belong to people that were not downloading the movie or album they are accused of. Perfect deniability, as the people who coded the tracker software explain.

Of course, this doesn’t work when the pirate-tracking company requires itself to connect to the peer, before the IP-address is collected, since it is impossible to connect to a non-existing peer. A representative from BayTSP told TorrentFreak that they have such a requirement, but several others are less thorough, which makes their claims useless, and impossible to defend in court.

The best solution is of course to ban these anti-piracy companies from using the tracker in the first place. This is something The Pirate Bay is working on as well, and they have blocked many IP-ranges already, but it’s impossible to ban them all. Unlike most of the suits in Hollywood, the companies that go after illicit file-sharers are experts in their field, and know more about BitTorrent than many users. They try to circumvent blocklists such as PeerGuardian whenever possible, and change IPs when they are marked.

Pirate Bay co-founder TiAMO told TorrentFreak that he has several criteria on which he can pick out the suspicious users that might be collecting IP-addresses. He also said that he’s working on a automated warning system which will operate as a sniffer on a monitor port. That project is far from complete, but has the potential to detect suspicious behavior more easily.

Nevertheless, it is impossible (as the name might give away) to keep the prying eyes of Hollywood off public trackers. Even private trackers are far from secure, as most anti-piracy companies have accounts at the larger communities. The private in “private tracker” merely refers to the fact that you have to login, and has nothing to do with “security”. The Pirate Bay (and other tracker owners) take several measures to prevent their users from being tracked by anti-piracy outfits, but there’s only so much they can do.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Among others, the RIAA hires the US based company MediaSentry to monitor file-sharing networks for infringements of their client’s media. MediaSentry’s job is to identify and trace IP addresses they claim are engaged in such activity.

MediaSentry’s effectiveness has been called into question by Dr. Pouwelse in Foundation v. UPC Nederland. It was concluded that the “shoddy” way MediaSentry collects and processes IP addresses has no lawful basis. When the US court reaches the same conclusions, this will have great implications for many other RIAA lawsuits.

As Jon from P2Pnet puts it; “Pouwelse’s evidence will be a landmark and it’ll be re-employed by attorneys the length and breadth of America who are working to prove the innocence of their clients who, like Mrs Lindor, are falsely held up to be unprincipled, hard-core criminals and thieves.”

Pouwelse is founding father of the Tribler BitTorrent client and currently employed as an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Stay “tuned”.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.