Rich Fiscus
22 Oct 2007 9:34
In an interview with Wired magazine, hacker Robert Anderson give details about his association with the MPAA, whom he says promised him money and power in exchange for providing confidential information about BitTorrent site TorrentSpy.
According to Anderson, he began working with the MPAA in 2005 after a failed business venture with TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell. He says he emailed the MPAA offering to work with them to help fight piracy, and that's where things start getting interesting.
When he started working with MPAA legal director Dean Garfield he mentioned that he had "an informant" who could intercept any email communication on TorrentSpy servers. As it turned out that informant was him, and he did provide the information after hacking into the company's mail server and arranging to have a copy of every email passing through the machine forwarded to him.
The information provided by Anderson was eventually instrumental in bringing a copyright infringement suit against TorrentSpy, while the methods used to collect it sparked a countersuit from Justin Bunnell, claiming the MPAA illegally obtained the information. According to the suit, "Dean Garfield expressly told the informant (Anderson), on behalf of the MPAA, regarding the information that he requested, 'We don't care how you get it.'" Bunnell's suit alleges that Garfield knew, or should have known, that the information was collected illegally.
The MPAA, of course, denies the allegations. They point to the line in a contract between the MPAA and Anderson which specifically states a requirement that the information be obtained legally, but it's difficult to imagine a corporate lawyer thinking the distribution of clearly confidential, intra-corporation email - including invoices and the source code for the TorrentSpy site - would possibly be legal.
Paul Ohm, a University of Colorado Law School scholar specializing in computer crime, certainly doesn't think so. "It's hard to say with a straight face that you can obtain that legally," said Ohm. "Ethical red bells should have been going off."
Still, Bunnell's suit has been dismissed by a federal judge, which his lawyer is now preparing to appeal. And the final verdict may have a significant effect in how anti-piracy efforts are conducted in the future.
Source: Wired