MediaSentry, Sony: nailed in Australia
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- If you’re in Australia, use Peer Guardian to block IP addresses 174.136.* – Suavemente and 189.47.* – TELECOMUNICACOES DE SAO PAULO.
Because from the look of it, MediaSentry in Oz to has several class C IPs with the entire range seeding files as part of the operation which saw a Brisbane student thrown out of his dormitory, with Sony as the bad hat behind the eviction.
p2pnet technical editor surfer has more detail here.
But for now, he says »»»
1. Download KDX, ( http://www.haxial.com/products/kdx/ ), a file sharing protocol that’s direct P2P, and/or server based. It allows chat, news, and encrypted file transfers. (Yes, you have to pay for it)
2. Move your entire sneaker net (physical sharing) to KDX.
3. Use BBS (membership only types) to share a LIMITED access to you or your server for initial contact, to review the individual.
4. Make that new individual upload at least 1Gb of information PRIOR to giving him/her download ability. This is a legal ramification you can use later in court if s/he turns out to be a MAFIAA asshat: be sure and drop his ass if he refuses to upload first.
5. Enjoy unmonitored access to file sharing that allows you to share encrypted files. (Did I mention the file transfers are encrypted, and DPI cannot review?)
Meanwhile, I’m expecting something to happen in Australia that hasn’t happened in America.
I’m expecting the Australian mainstream media to pick up the MediaSentry / Sony drama as mainstream news.
“MediaSentry and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG`s RIAA may soon be going their separate ways,” p2pnet was the first to report in January.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the rumour and in a follow-up, “MediaSentry may be gone, but RIAA tactics will live on,” said Ars Technica.
But as p2pnet has again revealed for the first time, MediaSentry hadn’t gone: it was in Australia, where it may have already been established, but largely unacknowledged.
Gone, but not forgotten
MediaSentry has been getting away with murder in the US, providing crap data to Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA, which has been using this ‘evidence’ to pillory innocent people, including very young children, up and down the country.
RIAA lawyers completely snowed technically ignorant judges who, even today — long after the RIAA had itself fired MediaSentry — continue to treat MediaSentry material as reliable evidence in file sharing cases just as though it’s trustworthy and comes from a credible source.
“Before it was fired by the RIAA, MediaSentry was indeed apparently functioning without official approval in a number of states across America, one such being Michigan where Randy Kruger, the father of RIAA victim Brittany Kruger, is still trying to have the company investigated by state authorities,” I said yesterday, also pointing out MediaSentry provided ‘evidence’ for the Jammie Thomas case, set for re-trial in June.
p2pnet was also the first to stress MediaSentry has been apparently operating in the US without official accreditation or authorisation.
And it seems the same thing may now be happening in Oz where it’s working for Hollywood elements (at the least), and may once again be doing so illegally.
This came to light when Breno Cavalheiro, a Brisbane student, was thrown out of his dormitory on the say-so of Sony, with MediaSentry up front.
Now, “I can categorically state that Media Sentry are NOT authorised to operate within Australia nor to Intercept communications within Australia no matter what they state in the email,” says Australian digital forensics consultant G, Thompson in a Reader’s Write, going on »»»
In fact stating they can and making published allegations against a specific user with identifiers attached so that the user is made known to other organisations ie: an Australian ISP, Educational Institution, and Rental Accommodation Manager(s) could result in action on defamatory grounds being taken against them if the publication of the information causes damage (which in this case seems likely that it has).
And thinking they are immune since they are outside Australian jurisdiction would be a folly on their behalf and I … draw their attention to Dow Jones and Company Inc v Gutnick [2002] HCA 56â³ (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2002/56.html)
Being myself a Digital Forensic Examiner within Australia I find it highly concerning that an Overseas Investigative organisation is sending alleged infringement notices to Australian ISP`s who are then sending them onto account holders with no due process, procedural fairness or even evidentiary matter to back up these statements other than at first glance hearsay from an unproven hearsay allegation.
Hopefully the ISP who has onforwarded this email to the Network manager was a small one who has no clue and not a major one like Telstra (Big Pond) or Optus.
“Chin up Breno and hopefully in the next week all you will have to worry about is your end of semester exams and assignements,” the post says.
I second that.
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
May, 2009
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May 24th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I also found Darkstar Management seeding trojans to the bittorrent world. In MASSIVE amounts.
‘whats good for the goose is good for the gander.’
I have about had it with these asshats, therefore I am going on the offensive. Hacking them down would only make them move locations, therefore, I am going to use another tactic, information.
Exposing their bullshit to the p2pnet readership will at least allow the users here to better defend themselves against the stupid ploys currently being engaged by these greedy conglomerates in order to force feed you garbage content, when, where, and for how much they dictate.
stay tuned…
May 24th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’m not too up to date on this peer-guardian hype (and hype is what I consider peer-guardian).
Over a year ago, maybe 2 I don’t remember, I went through their forum and basically they were adding any friggin IP/IP-ranges kids were tossing at them.
Legit companies blocked, company IP’s that had the name of any of the cartels listed, shit even Bell Canada IP’s were blocked. In Bell’s forum it was filing up with question on why peer-guardian was blocking their forum IP.
That peer-guardian is a load of bull to me. Yeah sure, it may block a legit cartel or legit mediasentry IP, but in a lot of cases its block list is a load of hyped crap.
Anyone can get a range of IP’s to snoop, peer guardian won’t even block them. I don’t see the point in this over-hyped app. But, anything is better than nothing though. So that point makes the case (nothing else does).
May 24th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
the above message is brought to you by Norton Firewall, the fastest, lightest, online protection.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Optional name said:
“Anyone can get a range of IPâs to snoop, peer guardian wonât even block them. I donât see the point in this over-hyped app. But, anything is better than nothing though. So that point makes the case (nothing else does).”
—
Surfer, who pretends to be the lord of warez says:
“the above message is brought to you by Norton Firewall, the fastest, lightest, online protection.”
—
fuck, if you don’t know this, then lord help you.
But yeah if you don’t have a firewall to put in the IP ranges, then peer guardian is for you (and it black list is hyped, look in their own forum).
May 24th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Are people actually still using Norton products?!?
[shakes head]
May 24th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
“p2pnet technical editor surfer”
What are his technical qualifications?
he uses P2P?
Any fucking drone can use P2P. That is why P2P was made.
What a load of BS.
I reads this guys articles before on this site.
surfer, as a “p2pnet technical editor” better put out a fucking amzing article or I WILL rip him a new one and cast him as the wannabe that he is.
May 24th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
‘I reads this guys articles before on this site.’
yu dun reads my articles? well gursh dungit, thanks billybobjoe. heres us hopin uz gets first place in the hog show tarmmera !
May 24th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
“1. Download KDX, ( http://www.haxial.com/products/kdx/ ), a file sharing protocol thatâs direct P2P, and/or server based. It allows chat, news, and encrypted file transfers. (Yes, you have to pay for it)”
I love it! In an article about MediaSentry trying to catch people for copyright infringement, Surfer posts instructions on how to avoid being caught. The direct implication is that you can use KDX to safely share copyrighted material. However the very first step says “Yes, you have to pay for it”.
I’m tempted to post a crack for KDX just on principle.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
there are plenty to be had (kraks for KDX), as well as other free alternatives. My reference to KDX was more on how, and not so much what. Don’t take it as a suggestion, only an observation that it exists, including the kraks.
stw
May 24th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
@Optional Name – The forum you’re thinking of wasn’t PeerGuardian’s.
PG is a small, open source firewall application that can take filter lists (or “blocklists”) from any source. We used to run our own blocklist website where users could vote on and monitor specific ranges, as well as connect them to WHOIS data and other useful stuff. Sadly after events listed here – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/6275 we haven’t been able to successfully restart this website – copyright on the code was owned by the server admin who hijacked our paypal account and domain names.
Most people use the blocklists from http://bluetack.co.uk/, but several others are also available and are presented to the user when they first start the application.
I did a bit of list-editing back when the blocklist website was up, and ranges were either listed for fake files (like those old Madonna “f**** off” ones) or because they came up as a “mediasentry”/”baytsp” style company on WHOIS. 90% of the time, the fake file sharing servers just resolved to one of the various media orgs and it was easy to extract the entire range.
Obviously some list makers have been over-zealous, but that isn’t our fault – we make a very lightweight filter designed to block a list of IP addresses without overloading your RAM – adding lots of ranges into a standard firewall will probably max it out – it certainly did when I used to use Sygate and Outpost back in the day.
As for this specific block, I’m afraid I’m completely unaware of anything related to this. I would doubt that MediaSentry would deliberately spread trojans, and don’t forget that the best protocols are always Open Source.
Have a great day,
Joseph Farthing
Public Relations
Phoenix Labs
May 24th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
” âI reads this guys articles before on this site.â
yu dun reads my articles? well gursh dungit, thanks billybobjoe. heres us hopin uz gets first place in the hog show tarmmera ! ”
I think I just shat myself laughing.
” I would doubt that MediaSentry would deliberately spread trojans ”
What planet do you hail from ?
May 24th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Things the RIAA does that they know they can get away with becuase they will never
be called to task for it …….
1. Spread trojans and virii on P2P networks in order to scare folks away from them.
2. Distribute new release via P2P networks in order to get them to their partner radio
stations quickly. A fact that .. if it were to come to light .. would destroy their litigation
campaign since the fact that they are putting them on P2P themselves would imply
consent to distribute by the copyright holders. pretty neat, eh ?
May 31st, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Well, some crappy tools call anything a trojan they cannot cleary identify as good or bad. MediaDefender/MediaSentry would certainly distribute adware. You can use virusscan.jotti.org to scan suspicious files with multiple scanners. If you have to rely on a virus scanner to keep your system clean, that’s a lost case though and just a question of time before something slips through the cracks. Only use well-known software from official sources and whenever possible use open-source software. Just avoid any software that is heavily advertised for, especially those which make strong promises and only install software you really need.
KDX? That’s so obscure that absolutely nobody, not even the “MAFIAA” is going to care about it. That doesn’t make it useful though.
PeerGuardian is nothing but a glorified packet filter which is the simplest firewall possible and PG is most-likely the most primitive. Every half-decent OS already comes with a packet filter, so its reason d’etre kind of escapes me but that’s hype for you. Any half-decent P2P filesharing application can filter and block IP address ranges, some even maintain their own list (LimeWire for example). That’s far better and powerful because PeerGuardian doesn’t know any P2P protocols and cannot look inside packets. Also banning IP address ranges is never surgically clean. There’ll always be collateral damages becauses ranges are shared and overlap all the time. If the application filters itself, it’ll only matter for the application but not anything else like IRC, email, web, ftp etc. Many banned ranges are also used by YouTube and other big websites which have nothing to do with their P2P spamming neighbours. That’ll cause a lot of fall-out which you might not even notice because you might not immediately think of PeerGuardian when something doesn’t load or work.
The worst isn’t the software “PeerGuardian” but actually BlueTack who are just a bunch of egomaniacs with mediocre skill and knowledge. All they do is a bit of googling, whois lookups and the like. They have a really bad record of banning innocent guys just because WHOIS showed something that looked suspicious to their paranoid minds. They also block ranges just because some random guy in their forum suggests it.
You could even get the idea that BlueTack operate under a false flag and are actually anti-P2P. However, one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
November 7th, 2009 at 2:57 am
I got a letter from my ISP saying that according to MediaSentry, I had downloaded a copyrighted file on the 30th October 2009. They had the P2P program, my IP address and Port Number used. The trouble is that the file they say was downloaded on the 30th was created on my PC on the 19th and never made available for anyone to upload. Work that one out. My ISP had thankfully refused to give them any personal information.