There were a bunch of stories a while ago about
TorrentSpy
and the bunch of seemingly mixed signals that were routinely being sent
from the site to its
users.
At the time, no-one knew whether or not it was safe to
venture there any more.
This was after
rumors about alleged records of visitors IPs being kept and
forcefully transferred to the lovely folk over at the MPAA.
You may also be aware of the many still unanswered questions
floating about the
blogosphere about the torrent-site-vs-Big-Media battle waged
oh-so-unscrupulously in weeks and months past.
Well, yesterday Wired.com was so kind as to publish a story by
David Kravets about
a major component of the TorrentSpy debacle.
The Hacker’s Story
A component by the name of Robert Anderson, a
“gun-for-hire
hacker”
responsible for breaking into the torrent linkfarm and divulging
sensitive information to the content owners fighting the operation.
Robert Anderson speaks of being paid a sum of $15,000 upfront
(He
also claims to have been promised “a nice paying job, a
house, a car,
anything (he) needed.”
In short, the option to
“become rich and
powerful.”) to steal data from TorrentSpy, only to be
entirely
disconnected from the regulator’s employ soon after the
transfer of
valuable internal information gathered from TorrentSpy’s
workers was
completed.
Furthermore, Mr. Anderson talks of being asked to view
TorrentSpy’s
code structure and erect a faux torrent venue (MiiVi ring any bells,
dear reader?) in order to gather info necessary to pinpoint big seeders
and leeches responsible for the widespread proliferation of copyrighted
content.
Alternative To Stealing?
Of course, while the MPAA does vouch for the money transfer
made to
Anderson, it “insists that it had no idea that Anderson stole
the
data.”
Which is strange, because, correct me if I’m
wrong, but how else
could the man glean said info without stealing it? Play for it over
nice ol’ game of Blackjack? Ask for it kindly, perhaps?
Keep in mind, all of these actions made by Anderson at the
behest of
the MPAA have so far either been deemed acceptable or ignored by
judicial authorities, despite the clear misuse and abuse/overreach of
the association’s powers.
And perhaps in this particular
instance
justice will never be served, as the fact that an
“outsider” like
Anderson was utilized allows the MPAA to more or less keep their hands
clean of this very grimy issue.
Yes, how unfair. Regardless of where the fault for the
transgressions against TorrentSpy may logically lie, there’s
likely no
technical reason that the MPAA can be penalized in a court of law for
what Anderson was “hired to do.”
Which is very unfortunate, considering that, if the hired
hacker’s
interview with Wired is anything of a smoking gun, the MPAA is clearly
eyeballs-deep in sin.
Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
