Revision3 Shutdown – WSJ Gets it Wrong!
Update: View Story Leo Laporte’s interview of Jim Lauderback here. It offers a great deal more insight than the WSJ article discussed below and is a great supplement to Lauderback’s blog post on Revision3.
The Wall Street Journal in an article for subscribers here has done a masterful job of obfuscating the true ineptness and (possibly if the allegations are true) impropriety of Media Defender’s use of Revision3 servers. The unauthorized use of the servers was allegedly quickly followed by a deliberate denial of service attack when Revision3 took steps to stop the activity.
Blame the Victim
But what did the WSJ say?
“Revision3 says it normally allows only its own files to travel on its system, but a recent software change made its technology vulnerable to people who wanted to use Revision3 to locate illegal files like movies and music. MediaDefender’s computers assumed the system was primarily set up for piracy and flooded Revision3 with spoofs.
While Revison3′s engineers have now fixed the problem, the company says it believes MediaDefender should have investigated further before interfering with its operations. MediaDefender says that legitimate businesses usually close their servers and that Revision3 should have been more careful.” (emphasis added).
For whatever reason, the WSJ could not help but associate Revision3 with illegal files.
Where did that come from?
If you haven’t read the blog post that revealed the alleged skulduggery, you should – here. What did Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 really say? He wrote, “First, [Media Defender] willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability. That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit.”
So, the WSJ takes the fact that Media Defender allegedly hacked Revision3′s servers and then attempts to connect Revision3 to pirates. Merely by having a network vulnerability, according to the tone of the Journal article, it is somehow justifiable to improperly load torrents onto that network’s servers. If you are a company that attacks those who are NOT big media it is OK to use someone else’s servers??
The Real Facts
So far, this is what has actually been alleged:
- Revision3 set its servers to track hashes only – to improve their customers’ experience.
- Media Defender discovered this and exploited a vulnerability to load torrents onto Revision3′s servers.
- Revision3 did not give Media Defender permission to use the servers in this fashion.
- When Revision3 closed Media Defender’s back door, Media Defender’s servers acted in a manner similar to a denial of service attack.
- At this time, no infringing files or torrents pointing to infringing files have been alleged to be on Revision3′s servers.
- The only improper files on the server were those placed there by Big Media’s favorite contractor for anti-piracy activity.
- News Corporation owns media outlets and the Wall Street Journal.
Bottom Line
The allegations regard only the activity of a company that normally works for large media companies. The Wall Street Journal is owned by a large media company and Media Defender’s alleged actions reflect poorly on the music, movie, and television industries that pay for these exact services (placing fake torrents in circulation). Media Defender believes, according to the article, that taking over servers is fair game if they are able to exploit an vulnerability because legitimate businesses do not have vulnerabilities. If true , the WSJ should have been warning its readership, which is mostly business people, that a company was cruising the internet looking for open servers to plant false torrents and would possibly bring down a website if discovered.
But what did we actually get from the Journal article?
Extremism in the defense of copyright is a virtue.
Update: According to an interview on Wired:
“Our systems were targeting a tracker not even knowing it was Revision3′s tracker,” Randy Saaf, Media Defender’s CEO, said in an interview. “They were using the tracker as the tracker for their legitimate content. It had been open for years.”
At Fenopy.com, Revision3′s tracker was used for 296,000 downloads, mostly of unauthorized copyrighted movies, Saaf said.
If true, that could change the character of the dispute. It also lends validity to the WSJ article – but the article does not seem to have been informed by the additional information provided by Media Defender. Of course, why would closing a system and preventing unauthorized access justify a DDoS?
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