MPAA Sets Up Fake Site to Catch Pirates 617
thefickler writes "Media Defender, a company which does the dirty work for the MPAA, has been caught setting up 'dummy' websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos. The site, MiiVi.com, complete with a user registration, forum, and "family filter", offered complete downloads of movies and "fast and easy video downloading all in one great site." But that's not all; MiiVi also offered client software to speed up the downloading process. The only catch is, after it was installed, it searched your computer for other copyrighted files and reported back."
uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, since it's offline, looks like all they'll get is a billboard of "AdSense For Domain Squatters" ads.
Re:Dateline NBC: To catch a paedo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dateline NBC: To catch a paedo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dateline NBC: To catch a paedo (Score:5, Funny)
No I don't - and I told you, don't call me Shirley.
Re:Dateline NBC: To catch a paedo (Score:4, Insightful)
This is great proactive behavior on the behalf of our government but i think we can do better, statistically speaking there is a percentage of people who will go to jail, the percentage is higher in some cities than others.. we could pro actively round up that number of people each year and put them in prison and save tons of police manhours.
OR even better put everyone in jail from age 8 on, and then the ones who exhibit good behavior can be released after 10 years or so (when they can become productive members of society, re:consumers/wage earners). Problem solved.
How did they spread the word? (Score:3, Interesting)
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You shouldn't be downloading "full movies" from these types of sites anyway. It's clearly illegal and only lets the MPAA say "See? These people are just common thieves like we've said all along". I mean, come on! You never bought a copy of the movie, so you can't be claiming "fair use, blah, blah, blah..." Good riddance to those who get busted, this may be dishonest of the MPAA, but it's also dishonest of you.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
When you download Kazaa, Limewire or most other clients they offer you the opportunity to scan your harddrive for content to share. That information is then available to the network, essentially reporting home.
How can anyone claim, in court, that action alone as being illegal? I posted earlier that if it scanned your harddrive it may very well be spyware and as such illegal, but I think I might be wrong on that.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the file they do let you download is a dummy file when they told you they were giving you a movie, then it is also fraud.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, here's the short version: it's good that files on modern OS have access restricted to certain users, but that's not nearly enough. Instead access to files should be further restricted by process so that eg. Firefox only has permission to read/write to its cache, bookmarks, and download folders and that's it. If you need to upload, it should be forced to use a common API to beg the user for permission to even view uploadable files. Why? Well, exactly to stop this sort of exploit where a trojan promises to do something useful, but actually searches (using fancy new Spotlight and Windows Search, no less!) for files called "my CC#s" to send back to the mothership.
In other words, I think we should Sandbox Everything.
Apparently, SE Linux is trying to do something like this, but OS vendors need to find a way to make this whole process seamless and easy, so that I can right click on an application, go to permissions, and say, "This program I will allow to read my home directory, but only write to its own directories; that one I will let write anywhere, but read only itself" and so on.
It will be really hard to implement this in a user friendly way, but it is clearly the necessary next step in computer security. Apple, Microsoft, and (consumer oriented) Linux devs should start working on this now.
Guilt or innocence? It's irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your answer is that it doesn't matter, they'll come after you anyway.
Are you innocent? They don't care. It's completely irrelevant, because you'll be given a choice: Pay us a couple of thousand dollars and this will be over with, or go hire a lawyer that is much more expensive and defend yourself. Pay attention the the news here, and read up on their tactics [blogspot.com]. The RIAA/MPAA has a history of going after people that it knows are innocent.
If you choose option #2, you'll waste all kinds of time and money, possibly even face financial ruin as a result of paying dozens of thousands of dollars. In the end, after the RIAA/MPAA's lawyers have extracted as much money from you as they can, the RIAA/MPAA will drop their case. It will all just silently go away, except for the bills from the lawyers.
You've mistakenly assumed that it's all about your guilt or innocence as an individual person. The real point is to keep up appearances for their extortion ring to continue to be effective. The real point is to scare the shit out of people so badly that whether you're innocent or guilty, you'll still pay up.
Let's not fool ourselves, this is organized crime, plain and simple, except that for now, it's still legal. (Organized "Legal," I guess you'd call it.) What can you do about it? Well, if the thought of paying a lawyer to defend you and, if you actually want damages from the RIAA/MPAA for screwing around with you, paying $114,000 to a lawyer (the amount that is at stake in the most famous to date case of Capitol v. Foster [blogspot.com]), then you need to support organizations dedicated to changing the laws to make this type of extortion illegal. I would suggest the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org], who has a pretty good record of success, but at the very least, you need to write to your Congresscritters and let them know that the current situation is unacceptable.
Option #3 (Score:3, Funny)
But if you do, please shoot a video and post a torrent. That would be entertaining.
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Yes. Unless you have permission from the copyright holder.
Both are illegal in the US.
There is a popular myth on slashdot that you have a legal right to rip music or movies that you've bought. There is no such right. [copyright.gov]
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The law is murky on that point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Informative)
In general, your liability only exists when you *share* items. That is, all the legal actions by the RIAA / MPAA have alleged illegal distribution. Essentially, your behavior exposes you to legal action only when your behavior might negatively impact the market for an item. Arguably making yourself a copy of an item can deprive the owner of the item income, thus negatively impacting intellectual property owner. However, one can argue that in fact you would have never paid for the single copy, and therefore you haven't negatively impacted the IP owner at all. That's why photocopy machines / VCRs, etc. can exist. It's not because the IP owners don't mind, it's that they've (thus far) been unable to convince the courts that such copying negatively impacts their market.
Giving away copies, however, is a very different matter. No matter how "non-commercial" your activity is, if you give away enough of a product, you'll reduce the amount of money the IP owner can charge for the item, or put the IP owner out of business. So distribution gets you at the top of legal liability list.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although, if Media Defender are financially profiting from illegally offering copyrighted works, I would think they are in a much worse position than any users who downloaded the media.
I'd be more interested in the legality of the software. It is spyware, reporting personal identifying details about the users. Wouldn't this be an illegal search of some kind even with a ridiculously cryptic/solid looking EULA. I Seriously doubt it would be used in court. Its more likely to be useful as someone else said for hard statistics about actual numbers of users. It would be easy to make the data show anything they wanted, as evidence in an attempt to get even more laws passed. I bet also that more than a few users will soon cease downloading possibly illegal media.
If this is an attempt to get evidence for lawsuits/collection letters then I hope any users contacted by the MPAA collection squads do fight, as the number of questionable actions made here would I think make it a very hard case for the MPAA to win. Any filenames, metadata, checksums or search queries collected would certainly not be proof of infringement.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now of course the criminal action they will have been likely to commit is invading the privacy of 'minors', which is of course where child molester comes from.
Also where children where using the parents computer and the RIAA agents failed to ensure that the person entering the contract was legally entitled to enter the contract, that failure of jurisprudence results in criminal trespass and technology crimes with regards to hacking computer networks.
There is also the question of fraudulent misrepresentation as well as entrapment. These people really need to feel the full weight and measure of the law, a few years cooling the heels in jail, should wake them up to the fact that they are not above the law.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Cherry blossoms all around
Upload and be sued.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Write haiku. Just stop at the
Seventeenth sylla
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
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It just so happens that the industrial revolution made us
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I think this implies that you simply shouldn't copy the file then, not that you can.
The internet works by copying information from one computer to another so the default is to assume that everything can be copied. If this were not true then even simple web browsing would be impossible.
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Additional: It's fine if you copy my wallet's contents and give it to your friends. But if you or any of your friends were to use those contents in a way that could be construed as fraud, you can expect to be strung up by your shorts and your curlies.
Related to another comment: Filesharing is the opposite of theft in that you are providing copies of something to others at no cost. In contrast, theft is removing from som
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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In living in Victoria myself, and have in fact taken a "found wallet" to the police before with no id in it, they gave me a call a few months later(well, a friend who works there did at least) to advise me that since it hadn't been claimed I could submit a request for claiming the funds.
Its not always a bad thing to help, but check your local laws first (remember, ignorance of the law is not a defense).
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I watch a TV show live, It's okay. (Even if I don't watch the commercials.)
If I record a TV show with a VCR and watch it later, It's okay.
If I record a TV show on a DVR and watch it later, It's okay.
If I have a friend record a TV show (VCR or DVR) and give me the recording so I can watch it later, It's okay.
BUT...
If my 'friend' is an unknown person sharing a bittorrent, it's NOT okay?
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Informative)
No, going 100% by the law, that isn't okay. Fortunately, it's only illegal if you get caught, and short of 100% surveillance, there's no realistic way to catch people doing it.
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If I watch a TV show live, It's okay. (Even if I don't watch the commercials.)
If I record a TV show with a VCR and watch it later, It's okay.
If I record a TV show on a DVR and watch it later, It's okay.
Everything up to this point has been OK.
If I have a friend record a TV show (VCR or DVR) and give me the recording so I can watch it later, It's okay.
Narp. That's the bit that's not OK. Well, I'm pretty sure it's not legal anyways. If your friend actually hands you his only copy then sure, but if he copies the tape and hands you the copy (as happens in a torrent) then you're making an unauthorized copy and therefore violating copyright.
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Nope. Coming from a Canadian, who's looked into these laws a fair amount:
If your friend burns you a copy of Metallica's CD and gives it to you, it's illegal. If your friend gives you his original to borrow for a day, and you burn yourself a copy while you have it, it's legal.
Stupid distinction, I know. But, you know how politicians think.....
Something I'm
Re:uh oh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So why is it a problem if the "really long cable" happens to be part of the public Internet? Well, a computer is involved. This creates a powerful Reality Distortion Field where normal laws and common sense absolutely do not apply, and any analogy with a non-computerised situation is null and void.
Re:uh oh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The same principle also applies in civil cases. If the plaintiff intentionally induced the defendant to commit the act for which the plaintiff is now suing, the court is going to take a very dim view of the suit.
I'm not saying it applies in this case, because I don't know how much "inducement" went on, but the principle is there.
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Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:2, Insightful)
OTOH, it's not like the people who would have been caught by this were innocents. I dislike pirates only a bit less than I dislike the scumbag tactics the MPAA and RIAA have been using to try to catch them. I'd have liked to see how they were trying to entice people to pirate movies and how their site was set up before I judged how wrong this was on a scale from 1 to 10.
--Greg
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Funny)
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The worst kind would be "The only catch is, after it was installed, it searched your computer for other copyrighted files and reported back."
I've read the article and glanced at many google links and does anyone have any evidence of this other then a quote on a website?
If the MPAA tricked me into downloading a bogus file and stored my ip, well, that would be my fault. Such is life. Everyone who visits my website has their IP recorded too. They have that right.
If the progra
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Cost? (Score:2)
it's not like the people who would have been caught by this were innocents.
Really? The MPAA is giving their movies away and you did not take one? Does this cost them their copyright?
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Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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A court would laugh in the face of anyone claiming this to be entrapment.
ARE YOU A COP? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ARE YOU A COP? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is absolute legal for a cop to lie about it. If you are say a drug dealer, and you ask a potential customer "are you a cop", that cop can lie about it, straight to your face, in front of a dozen witnesses, and when you try to sell him drugs, he can then arrest you. Perfectly legal.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ARE YOU A COP? (Score:5, Funny)
Your naivety amuses me.
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Interesting)
First, if I download copyrighted files from a site run by the RIAA, then this is _completely legal_. What is illegal is downloading such material without permission of the copyright holder. The way this was described, I would have the _permission of the copyright holder.
Second, if the RIAA installs spyware on my computer, they are in deep shit. Especially if there is nothing illegal on my computer that they could use to blackmail me.
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's actually an interesting question... The police have successfully put out honeypot cars (attractive and maybe a bit easier to steal than normal) to catch car thieves, and those convictions have been upheld AFAIK.
OTOH, I remember in a community college class on criminal law, they discussed when the cops sent a guy out with 20 dollar bills visibly hanging from his pockets and pretending to be drunk, arresting people who tried to roll him. That was ruled as entrapment because the cops made him such easy pickings as to induce people to commit a crime.
That's why I said I'd have liked to see the site. How much the MPAA/MediaDefender did to lure people to the site and then entice them to download content would determine where it fell on the range from honeypot to entrapment.
-- Greg
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Insightful)
on the other hand they also installed spy ware on users computers without letting them know ahead of time - that is aginst the law in some states - it is on the same lvl as alotof the viruses out there.
and if they try to doge the the fact that "they" put it out there by saying it was this "company that does the dirty work" then you point the finger and say - hey did this company have distrubution rights? if not then they are in alot of trouble - if so then they gave the stuff away - and if they say that the company doesn't have distrbution rights but what they where doing wasn't violating the their copyright then well damn many people will be happy to see them say that cause that can be applied so many ways..
all and all this was EXTREAMLY STUPID of them - and i can only pray that they get their asses burned when they try to take someone to court from this thing
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I knew they were fake... (Score:3, Insightful)
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The MPAA is not a law enforcement official - as much as they want to be.
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Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that a person may download and install the program with no intention of copyright violations. However, their computer is scanned likely without their knowledge for other, very possibly legal, files. You'd have to read the agreement, rather than click-through it like usual to know this. If they did not warn of complete scans and information being sent back to their servers, then they probably have committed some sort of computer crime.
I've ripped my CDs into .mp3 files, as have millions of others with movies and other media. What is their reaction to seeing these files? Are you going to receive their threatening letters in the near future? God only knows, but frankly, it shouldn't be tolerated in the least.
Hell, if they want to charge you with "theft," charge them back with breaking and entering.
Re:Entrapment or Honeypot? (Score:4, Informative)
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Can you say "entrapment" boys and girls? I knew you could.
I doubt it would be entrapment in,
First off the *IAA is not a government agent or acting as one.
Second, they are not leading these people to commit the crime. They are just holding the door open. Its like a cop(male or female) can dress as a girl and walk down dark steets at night. If (s)he called out "Come on just try and snatch my purse," to everyone who passed by that might be entrapment, now if you just jump her because she looks like an easy target (s)he can bust your ass and you ARE going to jail.
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I know most slashdot'ers look at it the other way but I have always thought that hosting the files is not the issue, that person has done nothing. The downloader is the one actually making the copy, writing out a new file.
How is the downloader suppose to determine if the file being offered is infringing? If people are just expected to assume that everything is illegal then browsing the web pretty much becomes impossible.
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Maybe not entrapment because... (Score:2)
It seems their philosophy is that it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. It's like a DoS against the government and the people such that the system can't keep up with the flood of their dubious or illegal actions, and they can otherwise afford to pay fines in exchange for scaring people until there's a
EULA (Score:2, Insightful)
So where is homeland security? (Score:2)
Not to state the obvious, but . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't this violate various anti-spyware laws? [ncsl.org] For example, here's Illinois' law:
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But the defense not in the EULA is that if you sued them, the software in question was downloaded expressly for the purpose of committing piracy, so you might have trouble getting sympathy from a jury.
- Greg
Re:Not to state the obvious, but . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not to state the obvious, but . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't say 'I murdered him because he was a pedophile'. You get tried for murder, he (if he lives) gets tried for pedophilia. They're separate crimes.
So they can't say 'we spied on him because he is a pirate' and get away with it. You get tried for copyright infringement, they get tried for breach of privacy laws.
Re:Not to state the obvious, but . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to state the obvious, but . . . (Score:4, Informative)
What anti-spyware laws? (Score:3, Informative)
This bill has been bounced back and forth between the Illinois House and Senate for two years, without any final action being taken. Bill Status of HB0380 Spyware Prevent Initiative Act [ilga.gov]
Only Arkansas and Virginia have anything on the statute books, and the Virgina law has openings for the rights agencies you could drive a tank through. To begin, you have to prove "malacious intent."
2007 State Legislation Relating to Inter [ncsl.org]
Hmmm ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a reason why they contract others to do their dirty work.
EULA? (Score:2, Interesting)
A Modest Suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
Security breach, etc... (Score:2)
Love to see one of these cases come to light. (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Without huge data transfers, they can't fully check a file, so the best they can do is spy on your file names, and steal your documents, not any media files though, I hope people get sued for this I really do, so the MPAA gets screwed with the huge countersuit.
does that mean I can keep the movies? (Score:3, Interesting)
The saddest part about this... (Score:4, Informative)
Got Ethics? Perception of RIAA/CRIA vs. MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in Canada, we have CRIA, which actually managed to get a tax slapped on all recordable media, mp3 players, etc.. Ostensibly, the money collected form this tax is supposed to go to the artists whose incomes are reduced by the evils of all Canadians. It's anyone's guess what CRIA actually does with the loot. Their books are not public. The last time I checked, they weren't paying out bupkiss to indie artists, but aren't they our victims too? As a Canadian, all I see is my money being taken away because I'm a criminal by default and given to the buisness equivalent of the mafia. Bravo!
I've been boycotting all RIAA/CRIA affiliated labels for years. The way I see it, every penny spent on one of their artist delays the inevitable and gives them another opportunity to do irreparable harm to our laws. However, I still go to the cinema and buy DVD's. Why am I not as concerned about the MPAA? Perhaps it's because they have, to date, not stooped to quite the same levels as RIAA in going after their own customers, even though they're already the scum of the Earth behind the scenes.
Here's a word to the MPAA. Take a look at the mess RIAA has made of its affairs. You don't want to go down that road.
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Anyone who fell for this deserves to get caught (Score:2)
FRAUD AND LIES! (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they spy on your computer otherwise with software that doesn't clearly indicate this in the license agreement, doesn't The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act come into play? Could MediaSentry go down Big Time over this little misstep?
Playing with fire, they are (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically 100% of the files on your computer are copyrighted. Even if those files are music or movies, their mere presence doesn't indicate a breach of copyright. And unless they're transmitting a significant portion of those files back when "phoning home" - and thus running afoul of copyright law themselves in the process, to say nothing of computer trespass laws - merely mentioning the title of a work in a filename or in metadata doesn't authenticate that file as containing what the filename or metadata suggests that it does.
Not the real point (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no rational discussion that can occur about "fair", "legal", "right or wrong", until this time scale for copyright is corrected. It is my opinion that the term should be about 20 years max regardless of circumstances.
What is stupid about this (Score:3, Informative)
1. The Movie COULD BE converted using commercial off the self software. Divx Pro can do it along with many others. Just walk into your nearest computer store.
2. TV Episodes can be recorded via any TV tuner card. Such as WinTV cards.
The presence of movies and tv episodes on the hard drive doesn't make it illegal.
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Unfortunately, I'm so jaded that I truly believe no one will get so much as a slap on the wrist over this.
I'm guessing, in the US at least, if they setup the site properly there would be nothing illegal about it. They could host "pirated" movies that the copyright owners gave them permission to use in this fashion; the EULA could specify that they are are allowed to search your machi
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Don't you mean a LEGAL video piracy site? Because you see... in Sweden, piracy (or at least linking to) IS legal
Re:Steal one. Go to jail. (Score:5, Interesting)
The really funny thing is (Score:3, Insightful)
Transporter_ii