The Media Defender Leaks

Update: Media Defender Emails
Update 2: P2P sites ridicule MediaDefender takedown notices in wake of e-mail leak

Unfortunately for Media Defender – a company dedicated to mitigating the effects of internet leaks – they can do nothing about being the subject of the biggest BitTorrent leak of all time. Over 700mb of their own internal emails, dating back over 6 months have been leaked to the internet in what will be a devastating blow to the company. Many are very recent, having September 2007 dates and the majority involve the most senior people in the company.

(Source)

Up to about three hours ago, 700MB of internal emails from Media Defender were openly readable online at a site I’d planned to link to for this piece. As I was going to print, I discovered that the server hosting these emails has gone offline.
I suspect that
the future of the internet, which sounds a lot like
year zero, has just gotten a lot closer thanks to this leak. I wanted to link to jrwr.hopto.org/ msg01968.html, where Media Defender was instructed to track down and block the Nine Inch Nails Year Zero torrents, and that included ftp data to Interscope servers as a way to illustrate the fantabulous trainwreckery that is this case. Admittedly, that’s hardly the most important detail in amidst the overwhelming mass of data that’s come to light, and perhaps the fact that the server in question isn’t resolving can get me past the convulsive logic that would have a media company blocking its own promotional efforts. Still, simply because this one server’s dropped the material doesn’t mean these emails are gone for good. (Update: now at http://88.80.4.15)

You apparently won’t be hearing about this on the news, what with the Britney and the OJ sucking up all available bandwidth leaving Greenspan coverage padding out the segments. The only mainstream press coverage is the Wall Street Journal and Bruce Sterling’s comment for Wired. (I suspect that G4 might give this some coverage this evening, but hours of television viewing so far as resulted in zero reference to this developing story.) But as far as impact goes, what happened over the weekend represents a massive escalation in the online cold war between those who share and those who sell.

I’ve spent the last two days tracking this story, and hopefully these links will help bring this situation into focus:

This is the company that gives false IP’s to the lawyers that then go chasing after people to extort money out of them claiming they have been file-sharing. Of course, the RIAA and MPAA keep losing in court and getting tossed out, but that doesn’t stop their mafia methods from continuing. It’s only a matter of time before they start breaking down doors with SWAT teams and arresting people, or shooting them. Oh wait, they’ve already mis-used SWAT teams around the world to break into homes of suspected file-sharers.

(Source)

For example:

(Source)

Most people would see this, and other practices revealed by the email links to be a kind of entrapment. The fact that a phone conversation, also leaked, which shows that Media Defender is right now working with the New York General Attorney’s office on a sting operation further blurs the line between entrapment. It’s also somewhat amusing, as the phone conversation is a heated discussion regarding the security of Media Defender’s internal email. Here’s how this leak appears to have happened:

(Source)

And here’s the result:

It is likely that many additional details about MediaDefender’s operations will be disclosed to the public as new secrets are uncovered in the e-mails. The rate at which these e-mails propagate across the Internet may also stand as a testament to the difficulty of trying to stand between consumers and their torrents.

(Source)

Bear in mind, Media Defender is the same agent that is referenced in this Wired article:

Sprint and Atlantic Records will use ArtistDirect’s Media Defender software to push 16 million copies of the song onto P2P networks over a three month period, each of them with the Sprint logo embedded in the song’s tag, which is apparently impossible to edit.
As part of the deal, Sprint will pay a “substantial six-figure” fee, to be split between Plies, Atlantic, and Media Defender.

(Source)

This convoluted approach to marketing, mixed as it is with anti-piracy enforcement, coming from the same source, creates some interesting issues. This bit of discussion from Slashdot sums it up nicely:

“If this company, acting as an agent for the plaintiff (a movie company, for example), participated in the distribution of this content via P2P, then that constitutes a tacit approval of P2P distribution of the content by the plaintiff, thus making any further P2P distribution of that content potentially authorized by the copyright holder, and thus not a copyright violation.”

(Source)

Ultimately, this entire situation, even the lack of mainstream coverage, is part of the clusterfuck. Media Defender is playing the torrent game from both sides and their emails reveal a cavalier attitude in their approaches to collecting ‘evidence’ alongside the even more damaging concern of all the Social Security Numbers of their employees. This means that once the mainstream news does pick up on this story, it will be spun as those dangerous anonymous hackers stealing the identities of corporate employees dutifully doing their part in the war against Child Pornography. There won’t be analysis of the questionable practice of installing software surreptitiously on a suspect’s computer without warrant, or the curious legal quandary of attempting to both stop and initiate file-swapping online.

That debate will happen, however, and it will happen here, in blogs, online, where it matters. Even I have sympathy for those employees who saw the job as a paycheck and who don’t deserve to discover they’re somehow owners of a new car in Russia or a lifetime supply of infoproducts from Indonesia or whatever the hell it is that anonymous hackers purchase with stolen SSN’s. At the core of this cold war is a conflict between paradigms, between world views and unenforceable laws producing a stop-gap mentality that ignores the larger picture.

The people behind the leak, the Media Defender-Defenders have indicated that they’ve a lot more material pending release, supposedly even more damaging. Media Defender, and the money that supports their business, isn’t going to disappear. But neither is the networked culture going to vanish. This is an important story, and a developing one. Never mind OJ or Britney, this is the story that the internet is talking about.

For More: Slyck Forum Discussion
Phonecall Torrent
Email Torrent

MiiVi.Org: A tribute to the fall of MediaDefender