miivi.com a mistake! – claims MediaDefender
p2pnet news | p2p:- Online scalp hunter MediaDefender apparently launched scam site ‘miivi.com’ to trap unsuspecting people into uploading copyrighted material so victims could later be nailed, presumably an entertainment cartel enforcement unit such as the RIAA or MPAA could later nail them.
We say ‘apparently’ because MediaDefender’s is claiming it’s all just a big a misunderstanding.
Its Randy Saaf told Ars Technica:
MediaDefender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn’t realize that people would be trying to go to it and so we didn’t password-protect the site. It was just an oversight from that perspective. This was not an entrapment site, and we were not working with the MPAA on it. In fact, the MPAA didn’t even know about it.
On its site, “MediaDefender uses a range of non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content,” it brags going on:
Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title.
And, wondered Ars Technica, how come MediaDefender scrubbed its miivi.com whois registry clean?
“Saaf said that after everything hit the fan, the company decided to take everything on the site down because it was afraid of a hacker attack or ‘people sending us spam’,” says the story. “Yes, spam.”
The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is desperately trying to distance itself from the company. Ars Technica has spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman saying, “The MediaDefender story is false. We have no relationship with that company at all.”
But, says the story, something isn’t right and, “If anyone has a copy of the application that was originally hosted on MiiVi, we’d love to get a look at it.”
Wouldn’t we all 
Meanwhile, “Spam comes in many shapes and forms and today we have news that anti-piracy company Media Defender has hooked up with telecoms company Sprint and Atlantic Records to give away 16 million free tracks on P2P networks,” says Holland’s Torrentfreak, which originally broke the MiiVi story.
It goes on:
However, don’t get too excited. It’s 16 million tracks from one artist.
It’s being reported that Telecoms company Sprint has signed on the dotted line to form a partnership between themselves, Atlantic Records and Media Defender’s ArtistDirect.
The partnership is all about advertising. Sprint has bought the rights to have their name and logo embedded into tracks from the Atlantic Records hip-hop artist Plies.
It appears that Atlantic will supply Media Defender with a small number of Plies tracks, which will then be embedded with the Sprint logo which will appear on PC screens and digital devices playing the tracks.
In return for a reported six-figure investment shared between the anti-piracy outfit, Atlantic Records and Plies, Media Defender will then flood P2P networks with the tracks over a 3 month period. Previously, Media Defender worked with Suretone Records to spam P2P networks with partial songs and videos in an attempt to generate traffic to their client’s website.
ArtistDirect’s CEO Jon Diamond said the project has a three-pronged approach of generating advertising revenue for record labels, linking brands to a particular artist to reach a certain demographic and in the process, limiting piracy.
However, most file-sharers want a plain MP3 track with nothing added and are unlikely to want tracks which cause advertising pop-ups or similar on their PC. As ‘vanilla’ MP3s of tracks from the same artist will be widely available on the same P2P networks, it’s likely that file-sharers will be drawn towards those downloads instead of the ‘infected’ versions offered by Media Defender.
So, this strategy will most likely NOT limit piracy.
Besides setting up fake BitTorrent trackers and fake video download sites, Media Defender is currently in talks with other artists and is likely to announce similar partnerships shortly.
MediaDefender, meanwhile, has no intention of abandoning its cynical efforts to make money out of P2P and file sharers.
Claiming it’s the, “leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry,” it states:
This last year, we have been leveraging our anti-piracy technology to market and promote on various Peer-to-Peer Networks. By harnessing the power of user-generated content, social networking, and search technology that makes P2P so unique, we have been able to successfully reach out to the 300 Million aggregate unique monthly P2P users.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
trap unsuspecting people – MediaDefender ‘miivi.com’ scam, July 4, 2007
Ars Technica – MediaDefender denies entrapment accusations with fake torrent site, July 6, 2007
Torrentfreak – Media Defender to Spam P2P Networks With 16,000,000 Tracks from One Artist, July 8, 2007
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July 9th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Not going to work.
On P2p things are exponential and the demand is driving everything. Discouraging people from sharing does not work because to reduce the supply significantly one need to reduce the sharing by at least 99%.
But there is a selective pressure that determine what files multiplies is how much people want the file. File laden with advertissement will not be popular and will not proliferate on p2p.
July 10th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I agree %100 with the above. Any files, be it music, movies, whatever that are bundled with advertising will soon be flagged and no-one will DL them simply because there is enough choice out there. The only reason this crap will get DL’d is so people can check the files out and tear them apart and to generally just laugh at these fools that think they have a hope in hell of stopping “this thing of ours”. Pirates rule these here domainz!