05.29It’s time to put MediaDefender out of business
Over the past weekend, the online video network Revision3 fell victim to a distributed denial of service attack that took down their entire site and even crippled their internal email servers. And upon investigating the source of the attack, they discovered it had originated from MediaDefender, an antipiracy “defense” firm (owned by digital media entertainment company ARTISTdirect) that claims to use “non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content.”
What they really do is poison peer-to-peer networks with blank files, decoy files, and use what amount to targeted denial-of-service attacks to prevent users from accessing, uploading, or downloading files that Media Defender has been hired to protect. And what they did in the case of Revision3 was inject a bunch of torrents into a Rev3 p2p server that the company uses to legally distribute its own video files. And the way they injected these torrents was by exploiting a vulnerability in Rev3’s server configuration. And when Rev3 stopped its servers from pointing to MediaDefender’s faux torrents, the MediaDefender servers went DDoS nuclear. So, first they hacked Revision3, and then they trashed the place, all in the name of copyright “protection.”
A little history, if you’ll bear with me: According to this article from Ars Technica, MediaDefender counts almost every major record label and movie studio as a past or present client, and it charges from $5,000 and $15,000 per title for its various protection schemes.
After some 700MB of internal email data from MediaDefender was leaked online in 2007, it was revealed that MediaDefender was secretly operating a video site that let users upload and download copyrighted content, presumably as an entrapment scheme or, some have speculated, as a way to enlist zombie PCs for future DDoS attacks (MediaDefender denies both charges). The emails also revealed that MediaDefender was gathering information on file-sharing users who were accessing pornography and negotiating with the New York State Attorney General’s office to share that information. And MediaDefender reportedly launched DDoS attacks on sites attempting to host the leaked emails.
Since then, the company has essentially gone underground. But they’re back in the spotlight in a big way now, and I think we can all agree that this ought to be the point where someone comes in and shuts this operation right the hell down. I don’t know much, but here’s what I do know, to quote Jim Louderback: “Denial of service attacks are illegal in the US under 12 different statutes, including the Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.” And whether their setup of a hidden honeypot video-sharing site or their injection of decoy torrents into networks both legitimate and illegitimate (and even “legitimacy” is up for debate) rises to the level of outright fraud, “deceptive” is a fairly mild label for MediaDefender’s overall activities.
I also know that Bittorrent technology is perfectly legal, and is in use by a variety of companies for legitimate content distribution, including Brightcove, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, Comcast, and of course, Revision3. And if MediaDefender is wantonly targeting p2p networks and servers, injecting torrents into them, and DDoSing them out of existence if they shut off access to those decoy torrents, isn’t it risking an attack on the very companies that pay its bills? More importantly, isn’t it about time the entertainment industry stopped paying the bills to this digital-era goon squad?
It’s bad enough that legitimate p2p nets are getting caught in the crossfire and shot to pieces by these ridiculous and possibly illegal tactics. But it’s downright insane to keep uncovering piece after piece of evidence of this secret war against file-sharers, and to see that despite all the “progress” we’ve supposedly made — the near death of DRM, the fact that iTunes is the biggest music retailer in the world, and the widespread adoption of digital distribution — there’s still this horrid little Black Ops company out there spying on you and poisoning legitimate businesses and building fake video sites that either entrap you or turn your computer into a zombie mindlessly carrying out future attacks. All in the name of making sure you pay for mindless-pap movies and overengineered pop songs. How sick is that?
13 Responses to “It’s time to put MediaDefender out of business”
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I read Jim’s post earlier this morning and was baffled that such a company would do this kind of crap! I hope the feds, who were looking into this take MediaDefender down!
Great article!
May 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I twittered it to all my friends and am taking the time to explain it to my fellow workers at the Local Library cause this issue affects them too. I am constantly answering questions about why they can not use audio books the libraby distributes on their iPod.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
‘this ought to be the point where someone comes in and shuts this operation right the hell down’
Sadly, shutting MediaDefender doesn’t do enough. Without charges in either criminal court or suits directed against the owners of MediaDefender themselves, the owners are likely to simply dissolve this operation and spring up as a new entity. Since their ‘customers’ seem to approve of their tactics there is little lost when a shady operation like this shut down unless it can affect the owners personally.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Perhaps they really are a digital goon squad. Anyone think that perhaps these companies keep paying MediaDefender under threat of DDoS attacks on their own sites.
Imagine if MediaDefender were to take down one of the major network sites, or a joint site like Hulu.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I think there’s a little piece of the story that many people may be missing so let me quote from MediaDouchefenders’ website: “This last year, we have been leveraging our anti-piracy technology to market and promote on various Peer-to-Peer Networks.” My guess is that they not only put decoy torrents on Rev3’s network, but they have also likely been injecting torrents to “market and promote” their old media clients by hijacking/attacking their direct competition in new media. I also do not think it is coincidence that Revision3 was attacked given the founders’ connection to Digg, and we all know how much the AACS LA consortium (including MediaOffender client Sony) loved Digg after that encryption key was released. I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking too hard, but that’s just how I see things.
-Roy
May 29th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
[...] my feelings in the form of a comment (currently awaiting moderation) I left on Molly Wood’s Culture of Ownership blog: I think there’s a little piece of the story that many people may be missing so let me quote [...]
May 29th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Criminals are criminals, regardless of the “cause” they may try to hide behind.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Let’s bring this a step further: If the RIAA or the MPAA are currently funding MediaDefender, and MediaDefender engaged in illegal activity at the behest of either, or both, organization(s), then the funding organizations are involved in an illegal enterprise. That’s what RICO is for. I really hope the feds investigate this to the fullest extent.
And for anyone who hasn’t read the Revision3 blog to see Jim Louderback’s description of this event, take the time to go read it. It is a brilliant piece of writing.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
I think it’s time to look into ways of preventing MediaDefender from launching more Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in the future. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m guessing what they did to Revision3 would be considered actionable. Revision3 should sue for compensatory damages to cover lost wages, bandwidth costs, loss of revenue, etc. They should also hit them with punitive damages to discourage this sort of behavior in the future.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Molly, I’m not sure if it’s fair to say that Mediadefender “hacked Revision3″. Revision3 was running an open tracker, and many people were using it to publish movie, warez and porn torrents. BTmon.com lists as many as 22,000 torrents associated with the Revision3 tracker, and you can tell by looking at the file names that a good amount of them definitely don’t have anything to do with Mediadefender.
What the company probably did was scour sites like BTMon for new torrents, generate a list of all the trackers associated with those torrents and publish their own material on those trackers. Now that’s obviously no excuse for the fact that Mediadefender knocked out Revision3’s servers, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions just because we don’t like the company.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Great post, Molly. So uhm, what do we do now?
May 31st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
MediaDefender can be trivially shut down – whatever ISPs are providing bandwidth and service to MediaDefender can say “F you!” to MediaDefender and refuse to provide them any service. Just disconnect them from the Internet. They may in fact try to spring up somewhere else but there are enough smart people around who could track them down and then all MediaDefender access to the Internet could be stopped.
In fact, why stop there? Cut the record labels and the RIAA off the Internet too! Why not? Screw ‘em – they are happy to use the government to disconnect individuals. We know for a fact they launched a DDos attack against Rev3 – any responsible ISP should simply cut them off.
Bye!
June 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
[...] on Sun 16-11-2008 MediaDefender = Spawn of Satan Saved by kathykavan on Fri 14-11-2008 It’s time to put MediaDefender out of business Saved by shazzar on Mon 10-11-2008 WEEKLY RECAP Yahoo’s Poison Pen Pal; Free Internet but No [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 3:19 am