John Giacobbi
(Credit: Web Sheriff)The names of some of the top antipiracy companies--MediaDefender, Web Sheriff and MediaSentry--evoke the images of muscle-bound, caped crusaders who swoop in to rescue copyright content from masked Internet bandits.
It appears now that the kryptonite for some of these companies is hackers. Just more than a week ago, someone swiped 6,000 of MediaDefender's e-mails and published them on the Web.
In what has turned out to be an embarrassing revelation for the company, the correspondence shows that the firm employs controversial methods to fight piracy, such as honeypots, decoys and denial-of-service attacks.
But John Giacobbi, president of Web Sheriff, a British company that has worked to protect the music of such artists as Moby, The White Stripes and The Shins, said not everyone in the sector takes such a hard-line approach to file sharing.
"We're trying to be more civil," Giacobbi said. "We have good relationships with most of the file-sharing and blogging sites, and when we ask them to take down material, the vast majority of them respond straight away. In some cases, the sites give us access to their databases, and we remove content ourselves."
Movie studios and record labels hire Web Sheriff and other antipiracy companies to act as sort of bodyguards for digital content. Typically, they are asked to protect the entertainment industry's most valuable digital material: unreleased songs or films.
Giacobbi said a song from a popular artist leaks to the Web, on average, between two and four months before its release date. Journalists who receive early copies of a song to review are suspected of being the source of many leaks, according to Giacobbi.
Antipiracy firms patrol the Web looking for unauthorized copies of the music or movies they are hired to protect and must act fast when they do. Giacobbi's staff rushes to send a takedown notice to tracking sites like TorrentSpy and IsoHunt. These search engines don't host any copyright material but are often used by file sharers to track down pirated movies or songs they want.
Giacobbi's secret sauce is relying more on phone calls than automated systems to spit out takedown notices. The former music industry attorney said his company relies on relationship building more than technology.
"Most file sharing is done by highly enthusiastic fans," Giacobbi said. "We just (try) to educate them about the harm they might be committing. I don't want to appear as if I'm criticizing MediaDefender, but we try to use a much more tempered approach."
Gary Fung, IsoHunt's founder, calls Web Sheriff the white hat of antipiracy companies.
"Web Sheriff, in my book, are the good guys," Fung said. "What they do is send takedown notices for copyright owners, which is perfectly legitimate. This is far different from MediaDefender, which (is) using tactics that are probably illegal and for sure aren't really polite."
This doesn't mean that Web Sheriff is totally toothless when it comes to piracy. The company announced earlier this month that it is helping to launch lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay on behalf of rock star Prince. Giacobbi accuses each of the sites of promoting copyright violations.
Giacobbi acknowledges that all of his approaches have so far failed to convince the operators of The Pirate Bay to work with his company. He said he reserves a special dislike for that site.
"We have civilized relationships with everyone except The Pirate Bay," Giacobbi said. "It's estimated that they make about $75,000 a month from advertising. How come they are allowed to make money from copyright content, but the record labels can't? Well, they are going to face the music soon. They'll be taken down eventually."
Operators of The Pirate Bay could not be reached for comment.
The irony of the MediaDefender case is that while one segment of the entertainment industry huddles with FBI agents over the theft of e-mails, another segment has acknowledged purchasing stolen e-mails.
In court papers made public last month, the Motion Picture Association of America disclosed that it paid a hacker $15,000 for private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent tracking site. The MPAA, which said it was unaware that the e-mails were stolen, has accused TorrentSpy of encouraging copyright violations.
Then came startling revelations about the tactics employed by MediaDefender, an antipiracy company that tries to thwart illegal file sharing on behalf of movie studios and record labels. This week, someone calling themselves MediaDefender-Defenders grabbed more than 6,000 of MediaDefender's e-mails and circulated them on the Web, a story first reported by the blog TorrentFreak.
Revealed in those e-mails was information about MediaDefender's extensive use of controversial tactics--creating honey pots and launching what are essentially denial-of-service attacks--that are more often associated with cybercriminals.
The entire mess shows that at a time when the music and film industries continue to lose ground to piracy, the guardians of copyright appear more willing than ever to get their hands dirty.
This mindset is self-defeating, according to John Palfrey, director of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He said that by adopting a bare-fisted approach to piracy, the entertainment industry is driven from the moral high ground and undermines its own attempts to convince the public to behave ethically with regard to copyright.
"How can they go to people with the idea of responsibility if their hands are unclean?" Palfrey asks. "It has the feeling of an argument imploding in on itself. I think (the MediaDefender case) is proof that these kinds of tactics aren't good long-term answers to the file-sharing problem and neither are they good in the short term."
To be sure, there are plenty of questions about conduct on both sides of the piracy argument.
MediaDefender-Defender admitted stealing the company's e-mails and exposing numbers and personal information belong to non employees. They posted to the Web a recording of what appears to be a phone call between a MediaDefender executive and representatives of the New York state attorney general's office about a joint investigation into child pornography.
I know the idea behind publishing the e-mails was to embarrass MediaDefender, to expose it as incompetent and hypocritical. Okay, the e-mails accomplished that. But was it necessary to undermine a criminal investigation or involve those who have nothing to do with the piracy wars? Is this acceptable collateral damage?
Still, I'm not naive enough to think anyone on either side is going to let up soon. That's not how crusades work.
"My guess is that neither side of this issue is bothered about their activities since both see their activities as the righteous ones," said Hilary Rosen, who was chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America for 17 years before retiring in 2003, in an e-mail. "The Defender-Defenders think they have caught a big one, but copyright owners aren't embarrassed by these leaks. Why should they be? They are protecting their content."
Rosen did save a parting remark to take a slight dig at those whose job it is to protect copyright holders: "Perhaps Media Defender needs to spend more time defending itself."
MediaDefender, a company that offers to protect copyright content from illegal file sharing, saw private internal e-mails leaked to the Web over the weekend. The e-mails appear to reveal some controversial tactics used by the firm to fight piracy.
The e-mails indicate that MediaDefender, which works closely with the music and movie industries, may have been secretly behind MiiVii, a Web site that promised to enable people to upload and download copyright movies, TV shows and music, according to a report Sunday evening in The Wall Street Journal.
The e-mails indicate that the site was a ruse. The MiiVii software would allegedly track a user's activity without their knowledge and report the information back to MediaDefender, according to the Journal, citing copies of the e-mails circulating on the Web. Executives from MediaDefender told the paper that the company was only testing MiiVii.
A group called "Media Defender-Defenders took responsibility for posting the e-mails to the Web.
"By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users," according to a statement from the group that was posted to the Web.
The event could prove highly embarrassing for MediaDefender, which exists to safeguard other people's digital information. It's could hurt the company's reputation if it can't even protect its own data.
The Journal also reported that hackers may have obtained a recording of a phone call between a MediaDefender executive and someone from the New York State attorney general's office.
Some of the tactics employed the movie and music industries in their fight against copyright infringement have come under scrutiny of late. The Motion Picture Assoc. of America acknowledged recently that it paid a hacker $15,000 to obtain private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy, a company accused by the MPAA of encouraging file sharing.
The MPAA said it believed the e-mails were legally obtained.
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