Posted on 09/19/2007 9:38:05 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
Peer-to-peer (P2P) poisoning company MediaDefender has sent a flurry of takedown notices and legal threats to P2P web sites that are facilitating the propagation of a 700MB archive of internal MediaDefender e-mail that was leaked onto the Internet this week. The e-mails, which were obtained by a group that calls itself MediaDefender-Defenders, reveal that the company attempted to deceive the public after the disclosure of its affiliation with the MiiVi site and was providing information about file-sharing network users to the New York State Attorney General's office.
MediaDefender is now in damage control mode and hopes to slow the spread of the e-mails by intimidating P2P site operators. MediaDefender is represented by Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton (SMR&H), which is recognized one of the top law firms in the United States. The P2P sites are unimpressed with the empty threats.
Although MediaDefender president Randy Saaf was eager to tell us a fabricated cover story after the MiiVi incident, MediaDefender has not responded to our numerous requests for comment this week. Similarly, the New York General Attorney's office has declined to provide a response to our inquiries. MediaDefender has, however, contacted several popular P2P sites, including isoHunt, which provided us with a complete record.
"Despite security precautions by our client, a person or persons illegally accessed MediaDefender's email and other files," says a cease and desist notice sent to isoHunt and seen by Ars. In the notice—which cites various sections of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act—SMR&H attorney Robert S. Gerber requests that isoHunt "immediately and permanently cease and desist from posting, distributing or otherwise making available MediaDefender's trade secrets and confidential information."
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
lol. The P2P’s gave their critics a wedgie
"Apparently, MediaDefender employee Jay Mairs forwarded all of his company e-mails to a Gmail account, which was eventually infiltrated."
To all you sys admins out there here is your ammunition when you go to the business groups and say 'Im blocking gmail, yahoo, ....' Just show them this!
Im not comfortable with people going around craking mail accounts and the like, this was not a laked memo, it was a stolen one..
I actually don’t have a problem with what MediaDefender claims to do (what they actually do is another story). P2P poisoning of copyrighted works is a rather clever and ethical way of protecting that content. And I have a huge problem with people taking content which they have not paid for.
But when they put up this bogus site and had people install spyware (yes yes, the people should have been smarter but..) they crossed the line. On one hand I am happy this info got out so they could get caught as the lying B-startds they are but I dont think cracking an email account was a good way to get them.
I wasn’t taking sides, I also believe in intellectual property rights
They failed when it comes to ethics and got burned. Too bad. Otherwise, I would respect them for protecting their client's copyrights.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.