Most people probably already read the news on TorrentFreak or another website: yesterday, someone published a torrent consisting of roughly 6.6 thousand leaked internal emails from MediaDefender.
For those who don’t know MediaDefender, it’s part of the company ARTISTdirect (OTC: ARTD) and their sole purpose is to disrupt P2P traffic. They try to achieve this ‘noble’ goal by creating fake (decoy) torrent files and spreading these on BitTorrent websites. Their server farm consists of thousands of servers they use to seed and track these fake files. These guys like to refer to their work as “content protection”.
Now that these internal MediaDefender mails are leaked, I want to share my thoughts on the whole thing. What’s interesting to see is that Mininova is more than once referred to as a difficult site to post fake files. Let’s see some quotes:
NEGATIVES: Attempted to upload to Mininova using 15 different IPs across various ranges. Was banned on every single attempt.
– Benny Mao, on uploading fakes to Mininova
These are very disappointing results given that people were here over the weekend. I understand that Mininova is moderating heavily, …
– Ben Ebert, on attempts to upload fake “Fantastic 4″ torrents
And I know Mininova is our toughest site to get onto.but we gotta think of something.
– Ben Ebert, on failing attempts to upload fakes
Somewhere in between collecting real torrents and posting decoys, post comments for these files on Piratebay, Mininova and Torrentspy.
– Pedro Cortez, in meeting notes
REMINDER: Next Fox High Priority project - Release July 27th: “The Simpson’s Movie”
Try to post to Mininova and Torrentspy by any means possible.
– Pedro Cortez, in other meeting notes
We can only be grateful for the many nice words from our friends at MediaDefender 
All thanks go to our great moderating team, who did (and do) great work.
Oh, and one last quote:
It’s slow. I would say on average 15-20 seconds to load a page.
– Benny Mao, on Mininova load time. We took this remark very serious and decided to take immediate action and added a new slave database server. Graphs of the new setup can be seen at our statistics page.
Stay tuned for updates!
You think It’s bad now, wait a few more weeks.
I am a big supporter of uTorrent and Mininova. But alot of corporations are trying to slow down the way people share files now here. They know they can never stop file-sharing, but they can try to slow you people down.
All I gotta say to those chicken-fuckers is lick my sack.
That’s why we love Mininova! Keep it up guys!
Posted a thread about it, I particularly liked the statistics on how they were going with decoys per site.
Mini had a nice little 0%
Gw guys, This is why I use mini.
Go Mininova! and a Big fuck-you to MediaDefender!
Actually, the complaint about slow load times was them talking about using TOR to post their decoy torrents.
Truly a shame that mini just lost the one mod surely responsible for finding and deleting 90% of those fakes.
Mini, you best do what you can to bring ubisuck back to the site, he’s responsible for more pro-active work on the main site then you guys probably will ever realize.
You really messed up letting him leave. Really messed up,…
ive been using mininova for awhile now
had a few fakes and movies that were not what they said to be
in regards to the disruption of p2p. they can neva stop a changing technology which always is keeping up with the times.
Long live mininova and fuck those who try are screw with it -in any way- it’s in my bookmarks toolbar as a favourite and i visit there and download regularly.
someone should think drastically about the leaked emails. there may be some very angry users of mininova and similar sites which could cause an adverse retaliation.
just my two cents,
rarez
btw: i neva post on torrent comments only read them
Hello, my name is and I collect interdicting spoofing noise files created by entities like Overpeer and MediaDefender. They are important ‘art’ objects which are in dire need of preservation. I had thought the methods and products died out when Overpeer went kaputz, but there are several e-mails in this collection which revive my search and preservation of these outstanding works of questionable merit. So if you happen to get a file from these folks which seems a little off, read this blog: http://noneinc.com/RIAAEM/RIAABlog.html [noneinc.com] and we’ll host them for everyone to enjoy.
TIA!
I used to use Morpheus before but when I started downloading fake files I stopped. Good thing a friend of mine recommended Mininova. Thanks alot guys. Long live the freedom of everything!
Well since mediadefender were nice enough to go to the trouble of posting fake torrents, I think the least we can all do is give them a truck load of fake emails back at them (the addresses can be found on their crappy site). It’s only an annoyance I know but that’s all a fake torrent is, if it’s a fake you just download another one. I wonder if these people think they have actually ever stopped anyone getting what they want?
Power to the People!
I have converted all the emails into a nice HTML format
http://jrwr.hopto.org
just for every one who tries to look at Forrest’s link, don’t it is a fake from media defender, unless he is fucking with us
We will not be defeated, power to the p2p!
One request i have is that mininova considers allowing comments for torrents, its not a 100% system but it helps avoid the downloading of bogus files to a great extent!
Keep up the good work!
sos, just noticed the tab for comments, never noticed it b4, my bad!
-={ MediaDefender-Defenders }=-
Date: 2007-09-16
MediaDefender-Defenders proudly presents some more internal
MediaDefender stuff… more will follow when time is ready.
MediaDefender thinks they’ve shut out their internals from
us. Thats what they think.
The past 9 months we also monitored MDs phone systems. This
is just one phone call, 25 minutes long, with the New York
State General Attorney.
Spread it like the wind! Someone willing to transcribe this
so the search engines will find it as well?
-={ MediaDefender-Defenders }=-
‘
So they even use TOR? Very funny. Want to block all TOR servers and exit nodes? Just use the lists that you can download from this site: http://torstatus.kgprog.com/
and keep updating.
Power to the People!
http://eBooksBay.org
http://www.download-dir.com
DUDE, ADD CAPTCHA TO YOUR UPLOAD TORRENT PAGE MEGANOVA ALREADY SOVED THIS PROBLEM BY ADDING CAPTCHA SO ADD IT SO WE CAN SEE LESS FAKES ON YOUR SITE>
This is why Mininova is the most professional torrent site. You are consistent in everything that you do and your moderators are smarter, well a lot smarter, than these companies. I big thanks to the mods, admins and owners. Great post Neik!
When theres a fake/bad file, people need to call it out more often! I see tons of seeds for files that don’t work or are virus ridden…however, not ONE comment.
Mini is fantastic!
If you want virus ridden files removed then report them!
A while back i downloaded a file containing a trojan.
This quite old malware was not detected by any of the big
Anti-virus softwares that i tried. It was an easy one to
spot too. Reported, describing actions. Result, removed
when i checked again.
El programa que tienen un una página, para descargar y ver la TV gratis, tiene un VIRUS. Pacere mentira que lo consientan.
Mininova is one of the best, if not the best torrent site i’ve ever used, its always loaded up quick for me and all the torrents i’ve got are clean and always what i’ve been after, i will always come to here first for torrents. Without P2P this world may as well just die.
Keep up the great work Neik and the rest of the team!
I have been using this site as my main source of downloads for a long time. Staff runs a great site, contributers are awesome too. I love the fact that most of the torrents have comments and information on installation etc. No wonder Media Defender wants to take you down!
I am only one small voice!
jan
Mininova is everything and more, always one step ahead of everyone else.
Pete.
tres bon site
not necessary to add captcha, its not like they are mass uploading fake torrents. banning the ip of the faker is enough to stop em.
Mini is definately the best site out in the interworld of p2p torrent sites. Pageloads are always quick to me and the massive user base add comments which prevent the spread of these bad/fake torrents. These emails prove how strong mininova is and anyway, you should have peerguardian if you are torrenting, to protect you from bastards like Media Defender: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
I would be so proud of 2,656,546,951 downloads, of which only a few are from fake torrents, so well done for you. The only thing I could think of changing is the contrast ratio of the text in this comment box, if you add to long comments they are deleted, and cross reference trackers to increase download speed like http://www.torrenz.com does.
love mininova
Perhaps you can add some legal disclaimer to make the uploaders declare the torrent is infact not ‘FAKE’ and have them liable for ‘Disrupting Normal Services’ by uploading fake torrents.
It seems to me that intentionally uploading a fake torrent to pollute to trackers and clients is a form of Denial of Service.
I’m sure if someone upload huge amounts of bogus data to their sites,
they would not be very happy.
Just a thought.
–ircerr@EFNet
LOL
Keep up the good work, heres to my #1 public BT site!
great were do i donate
Hmmm… I wonder if MediaDefender is also running DOMPLAYER!!!
I think the looming threat is this…
“…companies are trying to get rid of Network Neutrality, the principle that protects our ability go where we want and do what we choose online.”
it’s only a matter of time if we don’t support the net neutrality cause! http://savetheinternet.com/
jjjjjjjjjjjj
Yip can I say a massive congrats to Mininova and keep up the great work guys for keeping P2P free!!
However I’ve allready heard threw the grapevine that MediaDefender are tinkering with an idea of shelling out some pretty big bucks to hackers than can majorly disrupt or kill P2P networks! Could be bullshit though but you never know.