Anti-Piracy Gang Launches their own Video Download Site to Trap People
Written by Ernesto on July 04, 2007Media Defender, a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, just launched their very own video upload service called “miivi.com”. The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.
Media Defender is known for their shady tactics. Besides launching video upload services, they also trap people into downloading fake torrents so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs.
Fortunately, most of the IPs of these fake BitTorrent trackers are already blocked by blocklist software like PeerGuardian. However, they still manage to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who do fall for this trap.
And Now they try to do the same with their “fake” video download service. They have registered a new domain and launched a video upload / download site with a web 2.0-ish name: miivi.com. Miivi claims to offer hight speed downloads of blockbuster movies like “300” (don’t download), hereby luring people into downloading copyrighted content.
Apparently the cease and desist letters they send to P2P users and video sharing sites like YouTube and other are not enough. At the bottom of this article is a screenshot of the WHOIS info, it speaks for itself. No matter how wrong ‘piracy’ might seem to some people, this is NOT the way to fight it.
My suggestion is: upload and download as much legal content as you can, titled “THIS SITE IS A SCAM“, let’s see if their servers can handle the stress.
Update: Miivi is down now, seems like the plan worked….
Update: they changed their WHOIS info.
Previously: OiNK.me.uk is Dead, Long Live OiNK.cd
Next: The Pirate Bay Wants MediaDefender to Walk the Plank to Bankruptcy
112 Responses
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Wow, what a bunch of asshats. That is really playing dirty.
Do you know if there are any BitTorrent trackers that are designed to trap people like this?
Did you really read the news ?
http://fenopy.com/fakefinder/fake.php?cmd=tracker
I just downloaded the software they have, after-all thats not illegal. However I love how they redirect to me to type in keywords, now I might of wanted to use this service for legal use, but with this it would download the illegal videos
“The MiiVi Downloading Queue Feature Auto Populates Your Queue
to gather your favorite vidoes automatically!”
Well, the site is already down. Not A long life for miivi.com
hmmm shouldn’t they be getting in trouble for hosting the content
But if they’re offering you downloadable content which they’re providing, doesn’t it make it legal?
Careful Randy Saaf of Mediadefender, you might have just created a legal bootleg of 300!
If it’s not the real 300, nothing is wrong.
Sneaky and underhanded. They work for the same people who have been stealing from film producers and artists for years. Why am I not surprised?
The website appears to already be down - it responds with a Bad Request error.
Heh, it looks like they already pulled it. Either that or the site got dugg into oblivion. :P
They were also using a .net of the same name previously.
An interesting note. a WHOIS query on the domain miivi.com no longer returns Media Defender. Now it returns “Miivi Inc.,” with “Chang, Jonathan” as the contact. The email addresses are @miivi.com.
Interestingly, the mailing address provided is 2461 santa monica blvd santa monica, California 90404. A quick check on this address traces it to a Popeye’s restaurant.
http://www.ilovesantamonica.com/Restaurants.htm
(use your browser’s Find Text function to locate the address)
pwned by digg.
“An interesting note. a WHOIS query on the domain miivi.com no longer returns Media Defender. Now it returns “Miivi Inc.,” with “Chang, Jonathan” as the contact. The email addresses are @miivi.com.”
Oh no! Using a false address is a violation of ICANN’s terms for registering a domain name. Well these are the same people who regularly break into consumers computers. They ignore that law. Why shouldn’t they ignore anything else.
For registering a false address report them to their ISP for this violation. The penalty is they forfeit the domain names immediately. They will be reauctioned. If any postal mail was sent in relaton to the false address, report them to U.S. Postal Inspectors who will prosecute them for mail fraud. Yes, they really do this!
Better check their other web site regsitration. Would be a shame if MediaDefender woke up with nothing more than a Myspace page.
Well Randy Saaf of Mediadefender. Soon you yourself may end up behind bars, but unlike Paris Hilton no one will care. Some of us may even laugh. You better bring your own soap, Randy, or start doing of those buttock exercises now.
Maybe we have to upload STEAL THIS FILM in as many variations as possible.
Which is worse. Pirates not paying for movies, or companies ripping off studios and giving them bad publisity?
haha, lol’ed! Site is down, dns records purged. seems as they stopped the project miivi immediatly
Why is no one saying the obvious???
There is a thing called ENTRAPMENT… And I’m pretty sure this is it…
“entrapment”
“the practice of causing someone to do something they would not usually do by tricking them”
So how could any of their claims be valid in a court of law?
I was curious about their new information. There are quite a few matches for 2461 Santa Monica Blvd. The first I stumbled across was Popeye’s Chicken, but I thought was worth noting, but I suspect it is this one:
Beverly Hills Mail Box
2461 Santa Monica Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310-286-0500
Their phone number, 310-954-3300, according to intelius is unassigned (which means it was activated recently or intelius is very slow updating). The most I could find out is the number is owned by MCI and is a land line.
@Jackson. They are only in violation if there isn’t a company called Miivi, Inc. Given how cheap company’s are to register, I wouldn’t put it past them to have created it. However, at this point, it is kind of like closing the door to the barn after all the horse got out and the rest of the barn burned down.
Still, does anyone know how to verify a company exists? I assume it would be like the California Business Registry (or some such).
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