Folks we are used to watching the illegal actions of MediaDefender but this time it looks like they have buried themselves in deep legal trouble.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9954863-7.html?tag=nefd.lede Revision3 has investigated the denial of service attack that kept it offline over the Memorial Day weekend and has concluded that anti-piracy group MediaDefender is to blame.In a blog post on Thursday morning, Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback writes that much of the traffic that bombarded the Web TV network was traced back to MediaDefender. The group has a history of launching DOS attacks against distributors of what they believe to be copyrighted content for clients such as the RIAA, MPAA and Sony, he alleges.
They saw us as a "distributor" - even though we were using Bittorrent for legitimate reasons. Once we shut them out, their vast network of servers were automatically programmed to implement a scorched earth policy, and shut us down in turn.
Louderback says he called MediaDefender and was told that it had indeed been injecting spoof files into the Revision3 network without permission for months as part of its anti-piracy efforts to dilute the pool of pirated content online, but MediaDefender denied responsibility for the DOS attack.
It appears that Revision3's servers were overwhelmed by backed up traffic when the company closed a back door that MediaDefender had been using into the network, Louderback speculates.
"Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3's servers for their own purposes -- quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender's servers freaked out, and went into attack mode," he writes.
He notes that DOS attacks are illegal in the US under 12 different statutes and that Revision3 suffered "measurable harm" to its business as it was unable to serve videos and ads through much of the weekend and into Tuesday, and its internal e-mail servers were even shut down.
The FBI is looking into the matter, he adds.
I suspect Media-Defender will try and maybe succeed in buying their way out of this but lets hope the federal authorities take swift and concerted action against these Cartel employed criminals
