Anti-piracy technology outfit MediaDefender is accused of launching a denial of service attack against the perfectly legitimate Internet TV company Revision3 simply because the service uses BitTorrent technology to distribute its content.
In an online blog post, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback (a former editor of PC Magazine) says music pirates in the past used a security flaw in the company’s servers to distribute copyrighted material. MediaDefender addressed the situation by flooding one of the Revision3 servers with spoof video and music files, causing it to shut down, and blocking access to any content — legitimate or otherwise.
Had MediaDefender simply told them about the flaw, Louderback says he would have fixed it internally and solved the problem.
“It’s as if McGruff the Crime Dog snuck into our basement, enlisted an army of cellar rats to eat up all of our cheese, and then burned the house down when we finally locked him out – instead of just knocking on the front door to tell us the window was open,” he writes. Denial of service attacks are illegal, and Louderback says he’s informed law enforcement officials of the matter in addition to potential additional legal action. He says the attack caused the company to lose some 250,000 page views over the Memorial Day weekend, along with the ad revenue those views would have incurred.
MediaDefender claims many content owners as clients, including several major record labels. It attempts to weaken P2P file-sharing networks by flooding them with spoof files that make it difficult for the average user to find what they are looking for.
Several months worth of the company’s e-mails were posted online by a group of hackers last year, some of which included sensitive internal data about clients, payments and strategy. Besides the public embarrassment, the stunt cost the company an estimated $800,000.
