MPAA ‘honey trap’ scandal
p2pnet.net News Special:- It’s no secret that the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations track down alleged pirates by uploading fake torrents. Up until now it was always unclear where those files came from, and how to identify them.
The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs try to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They hire a company to put up fake copies of popular movies, music albums, and TV series. They even use pirate like filenames such as Battlestar Galactica S03E07 REPACK DSR XviD-ORENJi and Miami Vice[2006]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo.
One of the btjunkie admins has found a unique way to identify trackers that host these fake files, which makes it easy to efficiently remove them.
Virtually all the servers that spread these fake files are located in Southern California and Las Vegas. The administrators of these servers follow patterns that make it easy to identify them. The content of the trackers and seed amounts make them stand out. There are more unique characteristics, but we wont reveal all the tricks because they could take counter measures. Here are some examples of servers that host and track fake torrents:
Tracker 1, Tracker 2, Tracker 3 & Tracker 4.
All the information was provided to me by one of the admins of btjunkie, who works together on this with other torrent site admins.
He says the MPAA and friends use a variety of tactics. The tracker will either stall everyone at around 90% or the content will just be a blank monochrome screen.
“I really think this is being done by professionals with a budget, that’s a lot of servers to setup and it takes some expertise to setup in the manner that they did it,” says the btjunkie admin. “I don’t think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this.”
Here are some good examples of how these fake torrents clutter up the search results. Virtually all of those X marked torrents are coming from the ip-ranges we mentioned, and are fake files. The good thing is that Torrentportal’s report system is well used by their users.
The server boxes that host these torrents fall in serveral ip-ranges, and are not yet blocked by blocklist software like peerguardian. Here are a few of the ranges that were discovered recently. You can easily add these to the blocklist of your torrent client (if it supports one), filewall, or blocklist manager.
The anti-piracy servers use hostnames like 101tracker.dhcp.biz, aplustorrents.qhigh.com, bitnova.squirly.info, bittorment.ocry.com, and pirate-trakkrz.leet.la. All these hostnames can be traced back to the same IP Ranges, these ranges contain possibly hundreds of fake trackers, so feel free to block them:
A list of infohashes of fake torrents can be found over here.
Note that it’s not only MPAA material that’s hosted on these fake trackers. It’s more likely that the servers are owned and operated by an organization that logs IP addresses for several copyright owners and or anti-piracy organizations.
According to a Torrentfreak reader, these ip-ranges belong to Media Defender, a company that is hired by copyright owners, to log IP-addresses. This reader, who worked for Media Defender until recently, confirmed that some of the torrents that were mentioned, are indeed on the MPAAs list.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
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January 12th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
huh?
January 12th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
While collecting IP addresses may be an interesting hobby, I imagine it does not contravene anyone’s intellectual property rights to download an empty file. I downloaded an hour of test pattern recently on eMule described as a major motion picture still in theatres, but that’s hardly copyright violation, is it? Shouldn’t I actually get credit from the MPAA for helping to host their fake file?
January 12th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I would invoice them! for services rendered!
Gosh this is so Yahoo! LOL!
January 13th, 2007 at 8:15 am
sounds like UCSD’s supercomputer center possibly. I know they have a lot of honey pots for internet monitoring, hopefully they don’t let the MPAA use them…..
January 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
So by that logic if you went to buy cocaine from an undercover law enforcement officer and he gave you baking soda instead then you should be free to go about your businness right?
January 14th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Sounds like YOU are moron. How do you equate this to filesharing? Are they going to bust you because you downloaded an empty file?
January 14th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Actually, that’s exactly right. In fact, cocaine shouldn’t be illegal either as it is a victimless “crime” like fileshareing (which isn’t even a crime). Drug prohibition only benefits Big Pharma and Big Police. Does anyone who doesn’t work in the law enforcement industry or the rehab business actually support prohibition anymore?
January 14th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I equate this to file sharing in that a person has the “intent” to break laws. While I agree that the likelihood is low that this would be prosecuted the fact is lawyers can shape this action into “intent to distribute” and “infringement” under current DMCA laws.
I wonder why everyone seems to want to setup blacklists with these IP’s if we all thought our actions were legal.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:50 am
im a newbie to p2pnet, but fuck yeah, no crime without victim. and the numbers dont lie, file sharing has not significantly impacted record, software or box office sales.. ie no victim
January 16th, 2007 at 3:39 am
“You can easily add these to the blocklist of your torrent client (if it supports one), filewall, or blocklist manager.
# 66.172.60.XXX, 66.177.58.XXX, 66.180.205.XXX, 209.204.61.XXX, 216.151.155.XXX”
So 66.172.60.XXX means you would add this as IP range 66.172.60.000 to 66.172.60.999 ?