Bloggers say company tried to entrap movie downloaders on behalf of MPAA

Computerworld - A company that sells antipiracy services to major studios and recording firms is being accused by some bloggers of trying to entrap individuals by getting them to download illegal copies of major Hollywood movies.

But the company's CEO yesterday rebutted the claims, saying the bloggers' accusations were untrue and based on a complete misinterpretation of the facts.

At the center of the brouhaha is a Web site called Miivii that was launched in March this year and has been taken down over the past few days because of the controversy. According to ZeroPaid, a file-sharing Web site, Miivii.com ostensibly offered users complete downloads of movies such as Batman Returns, along with free client software for speeding up the downloading process.

The only problem, according to ZeroPaid was that Miivii.com is owned by Media Defender Inc. -- a Santa Monica-based company that provides Internet piracy prevention technologies to "every major record label and every major movie studio" according to an official company description. According to ZeroPaid, the custom client software being offered on the Miivii site downloaded video, but also scanned the contents of the user's hard drive for other copyrighted material.

"The site is apparently the latest ploy in the ongoing battle against illegal file-sharing and literally takes the game to new heights," a story posted on ZeroPaid's Web site said. ZeroPad, acting on a tip, did a whois search of the Miivii site and found that it was registered to Media Defender recently.

Tech.Blorge.com called the Miivii Web site "the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) latest sting."

"Media Defender, a company which does the dirty work for the MPAA, has been caught setting up 'dummy' websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos -- entrapment comes to mind," Tech.Blorge writer George Garden said in a story posted Wednesday on the site. According to the story the Miivii site went dead less than 12 hours after the site's registered owners were uncovered. "Perhaps Media Defender won't use its own name on the registrar the next time around, but it just goes to show the lengths at which the MPAA is willing to go, to fight piracy," the story noted.

But Randy Saaf, CEO of Media Defender dismissed such claims and said his company was the unfair target of "salacious, libelous, bit-torrent blogs," out to create a controversy where none existed.

According to Saaf, Miivii was really an "internal R&D site" that Media Defender made no attempt to promote or publicize. At the same time, the site wasn't something that the company took any pains to hide either and in fact was publicly available on the Internet, he said.

"It was a somewhat nebulous site with no descriptive URL. It had nothing to do with antipiracy," Saaf insisted. He did not say what internal project Miivii was associated with and denied that the MPAA had anything to do with the site. "They didn't even know it existed," Saaf claimed. He said the decision to take down Miivii was made because of the reactions generated by the blog postings, particularly after it appeared on sites such as Digg. "People started to hack us. It started to become a big mess. It became like a 'let's torch them down' mentality out there" he said.

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