Anti-Piracy

[Andrew]

So this past week an anti-piracy group was outed. 9 months of emails (6621 emails) and phone calls recorded and released.

The entire email collection and phone calls can be found at torrent sites.

Here is the emails in html format. Today a phone call was released with the anti-piracy group and attorney general of new york. The big corporations such as Universal Studios contract out this work to companies and even provide them with the torrents to upload.

So much fun reading through this. Shows they upload fake files and try to corrupt (interject) as many files as possible. Collect information about users and other stuff

Now that they have been outed piracy groups are blocking and banning them :P

More refusal to supply consumers demands. I'd like to download high quality tv shows as they are released on tv, but it is not possible to legally do so. Am I supposed to wait 10 months for the DVD? I want to purchase the shows now, not in 10 months time.

Randy,

Did you change the registration info on miivi.com to put me as the contact?  I'm scared.

Thanks,

Ben

I did because octavio, jay and my names are too associated w mediadefender. I put fake contact info. Let me know if you are uncomfortable with this.

LOL. Although that is not even the funny stuff. Other people are finding comedy gold, such as when they say to give passwords over the phone because it is more secure, even though their phone records were taped and released.

Even excel sheets are there and all the personal info for the workers. Very interesting to know what the industry is trying to do about piracy.

Seems every big company has their hands in this industry. One email talks about Microsoft wanting IP information about the cracks uploaded for their software.

Microsoft is interested in seeing the geographic distribution of these files in Gnutella supply.  The nicest part about dealing with Microsoft is when I asked them point black, "What is the purpose of this information?" they basically just said "we're not sure, but the cracks department wants it."  Basically, they want this information, but it's unclear what they would do with it?!

Sony BMG is another one that was paying them off to upload fakes. See this email.

This was another popular email

After more in-depth analysis…we’ve determined that the new version DOES affect our interdiction in a negative way. They’ve added a new “bt.ban_ratio” field that takes into consideration how many good pieces a client has uploaded. On the older version, they would just kick any peer that uploaded bad data 5+ times.

This post gives some more explanation about the bad ratio field: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=249190#p249190

We still see a lot of hash_check fails…but now the only peers getting banned are ours. This also affects MediaSentry’s interdicted torrents. They are no longer effective on the newest version either.

-TH

Good job utorrent!

Looks like they got insiders in the oink private tracker.

from part of one meeting notes:

* Initiate exclusive accounts from private sites Demonoid, Torrentbox, Sladinki007, and Oink (to Torrents):

          o Cooperate with Leaks to initiate accounts.

          o Increase share ratios.

                + Appear as “normal” users.

    * Experiment with a dedicated tracker for public use, to get confidence at first, and then screw with their torrents later in time (to Gerald).

I laughed when I read the last sentence.

They are also setting up their own websites and sharing bad files. Sounds like entrapment to me. Offering "illegal" stuff to get information on users, then suing them.

Even when interviewing employees to hire they are told not to tell them what they do in case one of the interview people is someone trying to get info about the company.

Actually this company even uploaded and shared legitimate files. So if The big media corporations are paying companies to upload pirated material, wouldn't that make it legal to download it? They eevn use AVG free antivirus even though they are a company and companies are not allowed to do that. More pirating from anti-pirating companies...

Ah yes another famous email:

MiiVi got Dugg

Looks like the domain transfer has screwed us over:

http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-gang-launches-their-own-video-download-site-to-trap-people/

http://digg.com/users/AcePup/news/dugg

-Ben

This is really fucked.

Let's pull miivi offline.

now we're on zeropaid.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8877/Gotcha%21+New+MPAA+Site+Tries+to+Trick+Users+into+Downloading+Movies+Illegally

damage control?

Social website outs an anti-piracy group when they change domains. here is email and followups.

The company even finds out the information has made it onto wikipedia and they are sending out emails telling people to remove the information. emial. You can even check out the wiki article and find when they edited out the information.

Title: Re: MiiVi got Dugg

I will attempt to get all referenes to miivi removed from wiki.  I should easily be able to get It contested.  We'll see if I can get rid of it.

Funny, even someone from Digg.com sends them hate mail. Little did that emailer know that the media defender would be destroyed by the power of information.

Hmm, even shows the company when being targeted about working with RIAA/MPAA they want to talk to news companies to spread false information.

I think all this proves that people should continue and start pirating more. I mean if everyone stopped pirating an entire industry would be destroyed and lots of people would be out of jobs. ;) ;)

Found the famous interview email about not telling people what they do. here.

They get paid between $50,000 and $77,000 salary to do this work.

email that shows Sony pays them to upload files.

[Megashrap]

Thing about a GOOD torrent site is..If there is one single bad file or bad hash check, then it will quickly be labeled a FAKE.It is then no longer even touched. And trust me, it doesen't take long at all to find out if it is a legit or a fake/corrupted file. That crap may have worked on programs like Kazzaa ok and I can understand why..it just sucks period. GOOD torrent sites weed out the bulllshit very fast...in fact as fast as it's uploaded.

[Andrew]

Ha, the last email that was released was on September 10. So this is some very recent stuff. I can't wait for more phone calls to be released.

EDIT:

Let's not also forget newly released

US labels to Canada: stop giving us free money, we prefer to sue

So basically for the last 15 years RIAA/MPAA wanted Canadian blank media to be taxed (the RIAA/MPAA got this tax). Now with portable music players and stuff they don't want that taxed because it could make downloading "legal" in Canada. They would prefer to sue Canadians instead of taxing Canadians and getting a guaranteed tax revenue (which obviously does not go to artists, but to shareholders).

[gunner154]

The corporate world can't ever be clean, can it? It's all about the money. Very interesting information about how anti-piracy has lost a battle.

[Andrew]

More!

P2P sites ridicule MediaDefender takedown notices in wake of e-mail leak

Media Defender sent out improper DMCA takedowns and is committing DDoS against websites that are hosting the emails.

The new website is http://www.mediadefender-defenders.com/

And the have the phone call in plain mp3 download format. Funniest part about phone call was around 13 minute mark when the phones stopped working.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Arrrggh... These land lovers be walkin' the plank at next sail!

[Andrew]

I almost forgot today was talk like a pirate day. :)

EDIT:

http://www.miivi.org/

LOL

Media Defender at google finance. There stock went down this week. Suckers.

[Andrew]

MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked

This gets better and better.

[Andrew]

The Pirate Bay files charges against media companies

Awesome! At least someone is fighting for consumer rights, and interestingly it happens to be pirates.

Another email proving the Media companies use piracy to make money. email here

Nicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called “whatever u like”.  It’s not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio.  A song called “Baby Love” just leaked (I don’t know how long ago).  Interscope wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p.  They need to make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this song as the single.  Please get me a score comparison on Monday for these two tracks.  Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly furtado singles as comparisons.

They also give out pirated music at the office to anyone who wants to take it.

Remember if you want to search through the emails for something specific you can using google.

[Andrew]

Different story:

Canadian Heritage Copyright Policy Rocked By Conflict of Interest Concerns

An MPAA member having a relationship with someone in control of Canadian media rights? More corruption from the industry.

Bill C-59, the anti-camcording legislation was passed in 3 weeks in Canada when she was in power. Wonder if her boyfriend had any influence in this decision.

Misleading RCMP Data Undermines Counterfeiting Claims

Canada's RCMP took piracy numbers from some blogs or something which were incorrect. So they were basically making numbers up like the rest of the industry.

"estimated direct losses in Canada between $20 billion and $30 billion annually." The source for this claim?  According to Mr. Myers, it is simply 3 to 4 percent of the value of Canada's two-way trade.

Yep, piracy accounts for 4% of trade with the USA. Nice to know they pulled that number out of their a$$.

[Acriku]

Oh, they love estimating how much they are losing to piracy. Legislators are shocked at the numbers, not asking where they came from, and to the hopes of MPAA and RIAA, et al, draft legislation to fight back against piracy. It's disgusting.

[Tatar Khan]

Artists while lose money to piracy are not losing too much since they make less than a dollar on each CD. Most artists make money off the concerts. The loosing companies are recording companies.

For movies it is the secondary people who work in movie industry who suffer from piracy

Finally the software companies do not suffer as much as they make it out to be, most people do not have money to buy the latest software. So if all people had to pay for the software we would be stuck in computer stone age because new programs would not be demanded due to lack of their compatibility with ordinary person's computers and this will destroy the network externalities principle.

[Andrew]

OiNK.cd Servers Raided, Admin Arrested

Huge pirate music site shut down

Everyone panic!

Seriously. Biggest private music torrent tracker got shut down.

EDIT:

BBC youtube video of arrest

[gryphon]

Reminds me of The Shareconnector who's hosting servers have been confiscated.

Personally know the owner of those servers. Was nice to hear the story from another side back then.

[Andrew]

I guess the people that used oink will have to go buy the latest Britney Spears album now.

It will probably be more difficult to learn about independent music, will have to settle for whatever the RIAA tells radio stations to play. Hurray more Nickleback! And in Canada nickleback are the plague, they are guaranteed to be on one of the local stations at any given time, which is due in part to Canadian regulation which requires 35% of songs played to be Canadian. Although it does mean we get lots of kickass 60's/70's music.

[Andrew]

Official Oink blog

The person that was arrested is free on bail and setup a blog to spread the truth and not the media misinformation.

[Andrew]

EMI Caught Offering Illegal Downloads

I hope the artist sues for $1000 for each time someone downloaded a song from EMI. Because that is how much the artist lost each time someone downloaded it. ;)

[Andrew]

MPAA Forced To Take Down University Toolkit

So the MPAA created a website that they used to distribute a customized version of Ubuntu for university administrators to monitor and shape internet traffic. Of course they did not bother to provide the source code which violates the GPL or whatever Ubuntu is licenced under.

MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns

Washington Post article on the university toolkit.

Once again the big companies are breaking the law, but that is ok since they are big companies. Monopolies are great for the economy and the consumer.

EDIT:

The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do

Eww, my government is trying to introduce its version of the DMCA for the third time. I don't want to lose more freedoms so monopolistic corporations can profit even more.

Hell they don't even offer some of their products in Canada in digital form so how the hell are Canadian consumers supposed to legally purchase exactly what they want? Supply/Demand. There is demand for digital downloads, so create a supply you dumb corporations.

I'm guessing the politicians are getting bribed once again to do this like they did before (and got voted out for doing so).

[Acriku]

The Jammie Thomas case has been met with progress (for the RIAA, it seems) where the jury's estimated statutory damages of 220,000 for the songs Thomas made available to distribute on a P2P program were found to not be unconstitutional, largely due to Thomas not objecting to the jury's instructions on the range of damages to be priced. At least, that's what the Department of Justice includes in his amicus brief to the court.

[Sneakgab]

In all honesty, I'm pretty much as ignorant as the next mountain orc bandit when it comes to computer issues. I've gathered that anti-piracy companies seem to be making illegal uploads and manipulating piracy fears to introduce profitable legislature, but other than that I have little clue what you guys are speaking about, especially with all these unheard of (to me) abbreviations flying about.

Don't suppose one of you minds explaining things a bit more clearly for those who are not particularly familiar with this topic?

For one thing, what's a torrent?

[Andrew]

wikipedia is great :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_Protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpaa

You should learn, because for all you know you could be doing something illegal and get sued into oblivion by large corporations, especially in the USA. They sue dead people, children, the elderly, people with no computers etc. They also illegally collect your information (AT&T had a room for NSA to spy on American citizens, which is illegal). here for story on NSA.

And at $10,000 per song, it doesn't take much to make an example of someone.

Torrents are one of the most innovative file transfer protocol to come around in a long time.

Lets say a linux distro releases a new operating system. Let's say the file is 700mb. They will release it via http, ftp etc (the way you normally download files), and they will also release it as a torrent. With a torrent you download the .torrent file. Open it with a torrent program, and then connect to lots of other people trying to download the same file. With many people connected and sharing, the speed of the torrent can be extremely fast (or slow). It is a good way to distribute large files without having to worry about the main server going down. So if the server only has 1mb bandwidth and you get a large amount of  people trying to download from it, the speed will be slow. With torrent everyone downloads/uploads from each other.

I probably confused you with that explanation. The wiki is better.

Also Comcast corporation restricts the use of bit torrent traffic. They do not differentiate between legal and illegal traffic, so they are basically screwing their customers over. If they can do that then they could block sites or make certain websites load slower or have less priority than other websites. This has to do with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality_in_the_United_States

[Andrew]

RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized

Ever rip mp3 from a cd you legally purchased? Well the RIAA wants to make that illegal.

[Timenn]

Shouldn't that provoke a respone from MP3-player manufactors?

[Andrew]

Leaked RIAA Training Video: Find Pirates, Find Crack-Dealing Terrorist Murderers Too!

2 minutes of comedy gold!

[Megashrap]

Damn, that was some funny stuff.

Maybe it's just me,but I find it very hard to believe a real crack-head would even own a damn PC, let alone doing what they are trying to pull out of their butts and try to spew up the publics' ass.

Lol, holding up those 2 CD's like it was Anthrax or something.

As far the person above asking about what is a torrent and such. Well it is the only way to fly, so to speak for downloading any large files such as a movie or large game with great speed and ease.Hell even the large gaming comps.Even EA does Implement the torrent way of downloading now even the online bought games, movies etc,etc. For example the other day I decided to get the Matrix Trilogy set in dvd PAL format, burn and make the dvd's for use on my nice big flat screen in the living room to enjoy. it took roughly about 4 hrs. to get around 8 dvd's I think it was total. It took muchhh longer to do the burning of them all 10 fold. But it was a very HUGE set of dvd's also. Also just depends how many are seeding the file in it's entirety for others to download.

As far a RIAA goes. Man they need to just except nowadays that they just got pwned on this fight...pure and simple. I also utilized my 1394 firewire and bridged it with the other network cards and I can now get in advanced settings for the 1000 Mbps.full duplex speed, were before I was only getting around 100 Mbps. tops. For a single full length dvd quality movie, I can get it in around 20 or 30 minutes max.