11 replies to this topic

[BobtheSquid]

A Look Inside The Major Labels' Creaky "Whack-A-Pirate" Machine

Over the weekend, some enterprising hackers weaseled their way into the e-mail system of MediaDefender, a Southern California-based company that works with major labels and movie studios to try and make stealing those companies' products a little bit harder. As Douglas Wolk described the company in Spin: "The bread and butter of MediaDefender's business is interfering with unauthorized file-sharing: disseminating fake files, clogging uploaders' queues, disrupting downloads. To advertise their services, they provide record labels and film and TV studios with information on exactly when and where releases have leaked." (And in their off-hours, they go and see Chris Kattan perform!)

A good chunk of the e-mails are banal in the way that only interoffice correspondence can be, but there are some interesting tidbits buried within, first and foremost among them being the fact that MediaDefender's operatives have infiltrated pretty much every filesharing service/torrent site/leak bulletin board out there--including those whose users are pretty convinced that they're operating "in secret," like OiNK and Soulseek. (Better change your usernames!) And the albums listed in the long rundown of e-mails reads like a rundown of the past few months' highest-priority releases: Ne-Yo, Feist, Brad Paisley. .And Nine Inch Nails, which is surely thrilling Trent Reznor.

Mediadefender's response to Kanye West's Graduation leak seems to encapsulate the company's SOP: Members of the company's "leak team" have every Rapidshare-linking, torrent-seeding site in their bookmarks, and when an album (or a song that's been designated by the labels the company works with as a single) gets out there, they notify the label; then MD operatives start flooding sites with decoy copies. As this e-mail describes those decoys, "The file is real for 45 seconds, then goes to crap and sounds skippy, glitchy, etc." While the company's attempts to upload those bad files have been pretty much unsuccessful on more boutique sites--there's even a chain from a SonyBMG employee berating them for not getting their shit together as far as faking out SoulSeek users--the glitchy files have, apparently, been "flooding" sites like eMule and Gnutella. (Do people still use those sites? Maybe that's the reason for the flood. Just saying.)

Whether or not these tactics work is up in the air; after all, with so much music that sounds like absolute garbage these days, a song that sounds "glitchy" may not cause devoted BitTerrorists to run for the hills (or their local Best Buy) the way that the labels are hoping, and it seems that quite a few admins of file-sharing sites have recognized MediaDefender's IP addresses and kicked the spoof torrents off their servers. But the majors must feel really good that they're throwing a lot of money on at least trying to solve the piracy issue, instead of doing something silly like working out a longer-term solution that doesn't involve basically deceiving people who are interested in their product, if not interested in the price point being offered. (They're hardly the only short-sighted companies out there, either, it should be said.)


[here are the e-mails in question: http://mediadefender...om/threads.html ]

[BobtheSquid]

Meant to put this on the Music side, if someone wants to move it...

[ParticleHustler]

No mention of newsgroups at all. Sweet! Sure, it's more like fishing than "on demand," but most new stuff shows up on newsgroups fairly quickly. Unless there's something specific I absolutely have to have immediately, I'm content with staying away from the torrent sites.

[Freddie Freelance]

ArsTechnica collects responses to MediaDefender's DMCA takedown notices.

From IsoHunt:

"This e-mail serves as a counter notification under USC Title 17 Section 512 ©(3)(A)(iii) that you have failed to properly identifying links to content that allegedly infringes your copyright/trademark/rights (or, in this case, has something to do with really embarrassing trade secrets *and* employee social security numbers) AND you have failed to address your e-mail to the appropriate agent, namely copyright@isohunt.com, so I invite you and your clients to take a long walk off a short pier, since you and/or your clients might actually manage to NOT get something that simple wrong."

From Meganova:

Dearest little asstunnels, Let me start off by thanking you for your pitiful attempt to have your e-mails removed from the entire internet. In case you haven't noticed, this site is located in Europe (I hope you can point it out on a map) where your stupid copyright claims have no base. But fair is fair you guys did suffer over the past week so here's bit of advice to you guys: F*** you! F*** you again! F*** you again and again and again!

I love that one, I've read it three times a Monty Python French accent "Send me another DMCS notice & I shall taunt you again!"

[Sid Hartha]

Ne-Yo, Feist, Brad Paisley. .And Nine Inch Nails

looks like I'm safe.

Seriously, this is why I'm sticking with Soulseek. If you're unsure about what you're getting, all you have to do is browse through the other user's shared files. Users who aren't "real" stick out like a sore thumb.

[yancy]

Slsk is so great that I'm sort of glad everyone else hasn't figured it out yet. More queue slots for me.

[BobtheSquid]

Slsk is so great that I'm sort of glad everyone else hasn't figured it out yet. More queue slots for me.

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

[Sid Hartha]

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

"How MediaDefender battles leakers". The article is about Mediadefender's methods of flooding the internet with corrupt music files.

whether or not "they" are monitoring Soulseek is a different kettle of fish.

[BobtheSquid]

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

"How MediaDefender battles leakers". The article is about Mediadefender's methods of flooding the internet with corrupt music files.

whether or not "they" are monitoring Soulseek is a different kettle of fish.

...and the article also states they're on Soulseek.

[Sid Hartha]

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

"How MediaDefender battles leakers". The article is about Mediadefender's methods of flooding the internet with corrupt music files.

whether or not "they" are monitoring Soulseek is a different kettle of fish.

...and the article also states they're on Soulseek.

Yeah, I read it. And I explained why it's relatively ineffective on that client, compared to multi-source networks and torrent sites.
But, yeah - you're right. You're better off staying away from Soulseek.

[yancy]

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

I should've clarified... meant that some normal users still shy away from P2P networks.

[Simakos]

i love this continuing battle about file-sharing... i really wonder how it's finally gonna end after all these years. will the battle end when major labels die? good article...

You really think they're not monitoring Soulseek?

"How MediaDefender battles leakers". The article is about Mediadefender's methods of flooding the internet with corrupt music files.

whether or not "they" are monitoring Soulseek is a different kettle of fish.

how the fuck do they think this could possibly "fight" leaks and help their artists. oh, great idea, let's flood the internet with shitty sounding versions of our artists songs! is it no wonder why the major labels are about to die? spend millions on recording budgets and then circulate shitty, fucked up versions of those same recordings...

looks like they out-smarted file-sharing again.