Andre Yoskowitz
27 Jul 2008 2:34
According to new court documents, it appears that the MPAA hired a hacker to reveal the identities of the administrators of the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, the same hacker who was found to be 'spying' on the torrent site TorrentSpy last year.
Robert Anderson, the "hacker" and the center of the new scandal was paid by the MPAA in 2006 to steal e-mails and trade secrets from TorrentSpy. Anderson later admitted to this but it was unknown that he was also asked to spy on The Pirate Bay.
The now public court documents reveal a conversation between Anderson and the MPAA. “We can provide the names, address, and phone (numbers) of the owners of Torrentspy.com and Thepiratebay.org — along with evidence, including correspondence between the two companies.”
The MPAA’s Dean Garfield responded later, “We were going to get information about the location and identity of the people who were running Torrentspy, as well as information related to a general conspiracy and relationship between Torrentspy and a number of other prominent services including ThePirateBay.”
Upon hearing the news, Pirate Bay admin Peter Sunde was quick to respond. “We’re very open with what we do. I think the e-mails between us and Justin would be something along the lines with “what’s up with the scraper that is going berserk” or “what the fuck is up with that filerights-shit?”.. I think it’s amazingly funny if the MPAA bought information like that, expensively, and against the US law. Only proves their stupidity and that they have no case.”
What is most odd about the case however, is that the MPAA spent $15,000 USD to hire a hacker to find the identities of the admins over at The Pirate Bay. A quick Google or Wikipedia search reveals the names of the admins, all of whom are not afraid to have that information known. Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) even mentions that his name and working phone number are on the Pirate Bay domain name. But if the MPAA wants to pay $15,000 for public information, who are we to stop them?