Piracy Police Accidentally Hit Non-Pirates

Internet TV network furious after misplaced denial of service attack
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted May 30, 2008 10:34 AM CDT
Piracy Police Accidentally Hit Non-Pirates
There are plenty of legal applications to file-sharing technology - so should MediaDefender have attacked without checking?   (Shutterstock)

MediaDefender’s job is to hunt down pirates. The company specializes in seeding piracy sites with fake files, or “spoofs,” frustrating would-be media thieves. There’s just one problem: Its latest victim, Revision3 Corp, isn’t actually pirating anything. An Internet TV network, Revision3 was using file sharing technology—legally—to spread its content, when MediaDefender flooded it with spoofs, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Revision3 is furious, saying MediaDefender should have investigated before launching its attack. But MediaDefender counters that Revision3 should have secured itself. A recent software change made Revision3 vulnerable to pirates. “All we saw was an open, public [system],” says MediaDefender’s CEO. (More piracy stories.)

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