p2pnet - rss feed: MPAA hacked Torrentspy
p2p news / p2pnet: Hollywood’s MPAA denies it paid $15,000 to a hacker to steal email correspondence and trade secrets.
In a lawsuit, Torrentspy.com lawyer Ira Rothken says the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) hired the man to get private information on Torrentspy.com, says CNET News.
In March, the torrent site, one of many under attack by the Big Six Hollywood movie studios, filed to dismiss a federal lawsuit brought by the MPAA. Now, “It is a Hollywood drama, what happened here,” the story has Rothken saying.
The MPAA, through Dean Garfield, offered to pay the informant $15,000 for information hacked from Torrentspy.com, “after he and the MPAA reviewed it, if they found it useful,” says the court document, going on:
“Dean Garfield expressly told the informant, on behalf of the MPAA, regarding the information that he requested, ‘We don’t care how you get it.’ He assured the informant, when the informant expressed concerns about potential liability for obtaining or providing such information to the MPAA, that the MPAA would protect the informant from any liability for obtaining or providing such information.
It continues, “The informant intentionally gained unauthorized access to Plaintiffs’ private email accounts, and caused emails from and to Plaintiffs to be forwarded to an email account he set up for this purpose. Through obtaining Plaintiffs’ private emails, he gained access to login identifications and passwords for Plaintiffs’ Torrentspy.com computer servers, which he used to gain unauthorized access to the servers.
“The informant intentionally gained unauthorized access to Torrentspy.com computer servers and obtained private and confidential information and trade secrets from them, including (without limitation) “screen shots” of the servers showing their files, file architecture and torrent file indexing.
“The informant did not have authorization to obtain or disclose such information to anyone. The informant was never authorized to log on to or access any computer server for Torrentspy.com, or to access the emails of Valence Media or Torrentspy.com principals or employees.”
But, “These claims (by Torrentspy) are false,” says MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards, according to CNET. “Torrentspy is trying to obscure the facts to hide the fact that they are facilitating thievery. We are confident that our lawsuit against them will be successful because the law is on our side.”
The MPAA is American, but as its director of legal affairs, Garfield also takes a keen and active interest in events in other countries.
(Thanks, Daniel)
Also See:
CNET News - TMPAA accused of hiring a hacker, May 24, 2006
filed to dismiss - TorrentSpy takes on the MPAA, March 27, 2006
active interest - Swedish anti-p2p site hacked: more, March 15, 2005
NOTE: p2pnet is being sued by Sharman Networks and Nikki Hemming, ceo of p2p application Kazaa. “The suit is a little odd, since P2PNet.net is a champion of peer-to-peer file-sharing, which is the same business that Kazaa is in,” says The Globe & Mail. If you’d like to help p2pnet, please go here.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
considering your current legal problems, i would have thought that your headline might need an ‘allegedly’ adding in there somewhere…….
May 25th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Mr. Newton about to get sued again for Libel…. Seems like he just doesn\’t get it. You can\’t take accusations and turn them into fact and call yourself a journalist! At least it shoudl say \”accused\”
May 25th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Look at the main page. It says:
MPAA hacked Torrentspy
- Accusation
May 25th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
-= Disclaimer:This is just my opinion. =-
- As such I’m NOT suggesting any comment following -
- this preface is true. In fact I live in a fairy-tale -
- and nothing I say should be taken seriously. -
“Mr. Newton about to get sued again for Libel…. Seems like he just doesn’t get it. ”
Why are you STILL lying ?
He is being sued as a publisher for an anonymous comment.
This is from and article that originated at CNet News.
And Yes, it says “An Accusation”.
Do you read ?
May 25th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
I am not suprise by this. MPAA is run by a bunch of scumb bags and other disgusting parasites and they were caught doing just that on a server in Sweden. They even sent a guy to plant evidences into a torent server!
May 25th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
The MPAA and RIAA both use a moral justification for acivity that requires a legal justification. Firstly they are peak industry bodies not law enforcement agencies, so when they go into or onto someone else’s on-line service without warrant or court order with no op out option and no permision tey raise the likelihood that they are in breach of the U.S computer abuse legislation. Why Torrentspy has not lodged a complaint with the DOJ is beyond all of us
May 25th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Why HASN’T Torrentspy filed a suit against the MPAA with the DoJ???
yep, verrrrrrrrrry gooooooooood question, indeed!!!
May 25th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Hey IDIOT!!!, you didn’t see WHERE Jon GOT the information FROM in the FIRST place????? Don’t you know that the blue print is a LINK???? CNET is but ONE contained in Jon’s post. If Jon is sued for this post then CNET should be sued ALSO!!!!
YOU make NO SENSE IDIOT TROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 25th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
No the sorry assed troll doesn’t know how to read.
It should LEARN and then READ this: http://p2pnet.net/story/8867
May 25th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
http://p2pnet.net/story/8867
May 25th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
How do we know they haven’t?? They must have some pretty good proof to be so specific in their accusations.
Rick
May 25th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
That’s what the papers say. You don’t say “the papers alledgedly say” because they DO say that.
You’re fishing for holes.
May 26th, 2006 at 12:00 am
They have. More here:
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1200
May 26th, 2006 at 9:11 am
please don’t feed the trolls and shills.
May 26th, 2006 at 10:54 am
“(Thanks, Daniel)”
No problem Jon.
When I read this story on C|Net, I wasn’t really suprized by their tactics. And since a somewhat mainstream media outlet carried it, I thought that you would enjoy this one. With the cryptographic break of the SHA1-160 hash algorithm (which is what bittorrent uses to validate the individual peices of a download to make sure that they are not corrupted), BitTorrent and it’s clones are no longer secure from deliberatly corrupted files. I beleive (that is, in my opinion) that the MPAA is paying various firms to do just that.
With this in mind, maybe a migration to SHA2-512 is in order. I also beleive that the same thing is happening with the RIAA flooding the p2p networks with false music files…which probably contain viruses/worms/trojans that will attempt to take over someone’s computer which is a clear violation of computer security laws. Look what happened with the Sony/BMG CD-DRM scandel.
I read somewhere (I think it was the current issue of MIT’s Technology Review that did a full spread on the Sony/BMG rootkit issue) that there is a fine line with DRM as to what customers (not consumers) will and will not accept. Sony crossed that line. They may not have had a clue before the scandel broke with statements like “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”, but they certianly do now, right along with the rest of the recording industry.
I found the MIT Technology Review article on their website. This is the exact same one that I read in their printed issue:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16812&ch=biztech
You may have to copy/paste the link in your bowser to read it.