PirateBay Fires a Broadside of Complaints to Police
A blog post on the site by administrator brokep states that they have been going through the emails from the recent MediaDefender leak, and have obtained proof, from them, that they are being targeted by several companies.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is The Pirate Bay flipping from target to complainant. In July it was already campaigning against MediaDefender, urging the anti-piracy firm toward bankruptcy (TorrentFreak's 'Walk the Plank' piece). Then came the September 14 leak of MediaDefender's internal emails, followed within a week by its source code, Gnutella strategy data and anti-piracy tools released by a group styling itself MediaDefender-Defenders.
Administrator brokep's blog post says the site has mined those emails and found proof that several companies were targeting The Pirate Bay — the basis for the complaints filed with police the same day as the criminal charges against media companies. MediaDefender's response so far — takedown notices and legal threats to sites hosting the leak, which P2P sites have publicly ridiculed — has amplified rather than contained the story.
First-order effects
- Several unnamed companies identified in the leaked emails now face police complaints naming them as having targeted The Pirate Bay, converting an anti-piracy operation into a criminal investigation aimed at the enforcers.
Second-order effects
- MediaDefender's counter-move — sending takedown notices and legal threats to sites hosting its own leaked email — hands every P2P outlet fresh material, deepening the reputational damage to a firm whose business depends on media-company trust.
Third-order effects
- If covert anti-piracy tactics can be exposed wholesale by a single leak and then pursued through police channels, enforcement firms face a new risk calculus: their own internal records become the liability, pushing the industry toward either more legal opacity or more defensible conduct.
The trend: Anti-piracy enforcement is becoming a two-way fight in which the trackers of trackers can be prosecuted, with leaked internal records turning enforcement firms into defendants.