MediaDefender ‘miivi.com’ scam
p2pnet news | movies:- Media Defender, a notorious anti-piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, just launched its very own video upload service called ‘miivi.com’.
The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.
Media Defender is known for its shady tactics. Besides launching video upload services, it also traps people into downloading fake torrents so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs.
Fortunately, most of the IPs of these fake BitTorrent trackers are already blocked by blocklist software such as PeerGuardian. However, the company still manages to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who do fall for the trap.
And now they’re trying to do the same with a ‘fake’ video download service.
They’ve registered a new domain and launched a video upload / download site with a web 2.0-ish name: miivi.com.
Miivi claims to offer hight speed downloads of blockbuster movies such as ‘300′ (don’t download), hereby luring people into downloading copyrighted content.
Apparently, the cease and desist letters they send to P2P users and video sharing sites such as YouTube and others aren’t enough. At the bottom of this article is a screenshot of the WHOIS info, it speaks for itself. No matter how wrong ‘piracy’ might seem to some people, this is NOT the way to fight it.
My suggestion is: upload and download as much legal content as you can, titled ‘THIS SITE IS A SCAM’, let’s see if their servers can handle the stress.
Update: Miivi is down now, seems like the plan worked.
Update: they changed their WHOIS info.
Torrentfreak - The Netherlands
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
July 4th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I don’t get it though. Surely you can’t be sued for downloading content from an authorized provider. That’s what Media Sentry would be.
What makes more sense is they’re trojanizing your system to go through the content you have there, and what you do with it. That would be illegal, would it not?
July 4th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
And their site is already down…..
July 5th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Actually,it is nothing more than entrapment….plain and simple.I do not think this would stand up in a court of law if it ever went that far…..
July 5th, 2007 at 9:55 am
I think entrapment only applies to law enforcement agencies. Private corporations can probably get away with it
July 6th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Intercosmos Media Group aka DirectNIC aka Sigmund Solares are scammers too!! Domain squatters.
http://www.rootfest.net/squatters.html
July 8th, 2007 at 8:39 am
na pate na gamithite
July 9th, 2007 at 2:40 am
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/zeroday/files/2007/07/miivi1d.png