The Biggest Ever Bittorrent Leak Opens The Door To Entrapment Defense

Media Defender, a notorious anti-piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, launched in february 2007 their very own video upload service called miivi.com. The sole purpose of the site was to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.
MediaDefender has continually been criticized for its 'bait and switch' tactics that border on the edge of entrapment.
Thousands of internal emails were recently leaked from the company, some of which linked them to projects they previously denied involvement in, while others reinforce the speculation that MiiVi.com was indeed an anti-piracy site. So far there has been no official response from the company. The internal email leak goes on to discuss everything from 'damage control' tactics (for when certain projects were to be eventually linked to MediaDefender) along with upcoming projects, problems in and around the office, and even what employees were going to have for lunch.

Someone went through the effort of converting those e-mails to HTML and putting the whole thing online:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Also see:
https://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/

The origins of Miivi.com were discovered by a blogger who looked up the site's domain registration information. After news traveled throughout the blogosphere, the site was immediately shut down. MediaDefender, however, denied allegations that it was trying to convict anyone.

EDIT:
They were also providing information to the government as part of a secret project.
Article: "Leaked Media Defender e-mails reveal secret government project":
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

The hackers who did this were sitting on all these e-mails for a while. In fact, the conference call that was also leaked recently was the result of an e-mail dated about a month ago revealing the phone number and pass code for their teleconferencing network.
Hot-link to the leaked recording of the conference call:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
New York attorney's office and MediaDefender discuss the security of their email-server. Whilst there is some initial confusion as to where the leak may have originated, they eventually write it off as some technical problem.

Edited September 17, 2007 by dserban (see edit history)

This doesn't surprise me, it actually seems like something I would have expected earlier to have happened. Even if they can't convict based on the data collected from such an experiment I'm sure they could use it in a round about way to eventually lead to a conviction. "randomly" monitoring the ips they collected or something. I'm not a law expert by any means so I don't know how entrapment laws work but I'm glad they exist. This is ridiculous. If they want to solve the piracy problem they need to think smart not just declare covert marshal law on the internet.

I'm glad they got busted. Using social engineering to trap unsuspecting users is something we blame scammers and hackers for, and shouldn't be done by those theoretically on the "right" side. I feel that memo about getting their 1000+ employees to link to Miivi on their Myspace accounts is particularly nasty. It's one thing to post fake torrents, because those people already are downloading pirated materials, and the line is a bit more hazy on who's legit. But by linking it to the myspace they're attempting to pull in tons of people who might never have downloaded pirated stuff in the first place, and so really, they're both aggravating piracy and sneakily drawing more innocent victims into their trap. I do hope they go bankrupt.

I do hope they go bankrupt.

Well, Media Defender going bankrupt won't make the problem they represent go away. The same people will just quickly regroup under a different corporate name. Money talks.

Depending on whose side you are on, some people would view this MediaDefender company as a hero and others would view them as the villain. But I do have to admit that entrapment is wrong (obviously). I guess what MediaDefender's website could trap people for doing is violating the terms of use of their video uploading website, by saying that unless you own the rights to distribute the material that you are uploading, you are illegally sharing this material... something like that... Which I guess wouldn't be entrapment, because people sign or agree to the terms of use before using the website, and they are responsible for their own trouble that they get into.I know that this whole piracy thing is a big issue though, and while I like getting stuff free, imagine how inventors feel when they aren't given their dues when they make something. =) Just thought I'd give you all something to think about... - Trinifawk