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It looks like MediaDefender known for its strong anti-piracy stance and somewhat less than scrupulous tactics ( like loading fake torrents with IP sniffers ) may be in trouble again for allegedly creating a site to coerce users into downloading “free” movies. Along with the film you also received a software program that scanned your computer for illegal content and sent the information back to MediaDefender HQ.

Here is how the story unraveled, told through the magic of quotation.

Quotes

From Zeropaid, who with the help of The Pirate Bay broke this story,

The site is apparently the latest ploy in the ongoing battle against illegal file-sharing and literally takes the game to new heights. It offers WHOLE DOWNLOADS of movies as well as the ability to download and install a “miraculous” new program that promises “fast and easy downloading all in one great site.” There’s just one problem: the site’s registered to MediaDefender Inc. and it’s army of prying eyes are just nipping at the bud to take down those who are unaware.

The blogosphere goes hot, and the post is immediately followed up with some not too happy invectives from Digg

That is the WEAKEST [ahem] I’ve ever hear! And this is their brilliant plan to recoup monetary losses? Instead of re-thinking the “business plan” — they figure that continuing to sue people is going to solve the problem? Isn’t this legally considered “Entrapment”, and won’t hold up in a court of law? LEGALLY you can’t ask someone to sell you drugs, then turn around and bust them for selling you drugs? You can hall people in court over this, but technically (unless the law has been changed) — they’re not going to win.

MediaDefender finally decides it is time to make a statement today, denying the entire fiasco.

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.

The MPAA, true to form, agrees wholeheartedly.

“The Media Defender story is false. We have no relationship with that company at all”

Ars Technica points out the obvious, bringing this story to the conclusion that I tend to agree with.

We may never know MediaDefender’s true motive behind MiiVi, but Saaf insists that it was nothing more than an internal site for research and development purposes only. If true, however, does this mean that MediaDefender could be looking into such a scheme in the future?

Web 2.0 Roundup

The problem is, that regardless of MediaDefender’s motivations we can be sure of a few things. First, they created a live site that offered full downloads of movies. Along with these downloads, spyware was attached that tracked the contents of your computers and reported the results back to MediaDefender. They made no attempt to inform the public that this site was merely for “experimentation” as they now claim.

The biggest question I ask is the one that Ars Technica raises. If this was just an experiment, what exactly will be the end result?

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