MediaDefender emails leak onto the Internet

You may remember a couple of months ago anti-piracy group MediaDefender was caught working (possibly alongside the MPAA) on a secret website, called Miivi.com, with the sole purpose of tricking people into uploading and downloading copyrighted material, and busting them for it. While downloaded files were real, a program said to "speed" downloads would secretly track people's activity and report back to MediaDefender.

When the story originally broke, MediaDefender's position was that the site was created purely for internal company use and that any distribution of viruses to users’ computers was unintentional. However, almost 700MB of MediaDefender's internal emails from the last 9 months have been leaked onto the Internet, directly contradicting the company’s statements on the MiiVi debacle.

Despite the serious failure of MiiVi, a re-launch was underway under the domain name viide.com, which was described at that time as being completely locked down while the "look and feel" was being revamped.

But there is more, the emails reveal some controversial tactics used by the firm to fight piracy and brings to light details regarding MediaDefender's collaboration with the New York Attorney General's office on a secret law enforcement project. The leak is a big setback to MediaDefender’s image with its clients and could potentially bring about legal ramifications. The details on the contents of the emails are discussed in this article at Ars Technica, it’s certainly an interesting read.