2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart

Over the past several years we’ve covered dozens of ‘troll’ lawsuits against hundreds of thousands of alleged copyright infringers.

While many cases have been dismissed in the past, the one we’re reporting on today is quite special.

It started back in March when a lawsuit filed by the Swiss company Contra Piracy targeted individuals said to have downloaded and shared the 50 Cent movie All Things Fall Apart.

Contra Piracy, a claimed non-profit group, said they had monitored 2,919 individuals infringing the movie on more than 280,000 occasions. In order to stop these infringements they said they would need the identities of file-sharers from ISPs.

The Swiss firm didn’t hide the fact that they were nothing to do with the making of the film and they also admitted not being involved with traditional movie distribution channels. Instead, they licensed “BitTorrent distribution” and “enforcement” rights from Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures.

Confronted with the case, Chief Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte wondered whether Contra Piracy actually had the rights to pursue this case in court. In one of her orders she noted that a “bare right to sue” for copyright infringement isn’t enough to allow the case to proceed.

Responding to this comment Contract Piracy handed over the rights agreements it had with Hannibal Pictures. The company argued that since they licensed the “BitTorrent distribution” rights, they should be allowed to sue.

However, Judge Laporte disagreed and in an order last week she dismissed the case with prejudice, concluding that Contra Piracy lacks jurisdiction. According to the Judge, Contra Piracy’s only intention is to obtain quick settlements, which means they lack the legal rights to pursue a copyright-related action.

In her order Laporte mentions that when Contra Piracy was asked what options they had to commercially exploit the BitTorrent distribution rights, the company admitted that they had very few, and that they were not actively involved in any.

“Plaintiff’s employee acknowledged that there are little [to no options] and did not claim that Plaintiff engaged in any such commercial use,” she notes.

In addition, the Judge said that the agreement between Contra Piracy and Hannibal Pictures only talks about divvying up the revenue from out-of-court settlements. No legal venues were discussed, and Contra Piracy further admitted that copyright enforcement was central to its business model.

“Plaintiff acknowledges that it is in the business of providing counter-piracy services to copyright owners by accepting assignments of copyrights and suing to enforce these copyrights,” Judge Laporte writes in her order.

Finally, the agreement also makes it clear that Contra Piracy does not intend to take any cases to trial, but that they just want to obtain the personal details of the alleged BitTorrent pirates so they can demand quick cash settlements.

“The agreements are noticeably devoid of any provision for the disposition of any revenues that could be obtained from verdicts or court orders of fees or costs upon success in court, suggesting a business model of using the information obtained from early discovery into the identities of individual defendants to negotiate quick settlements under the threat of embarrassing and expensive litigation without actually litigating claims on their merits,” the Judge explains.

The above leads to the conclusion that Contra Piracy only has a “bare right to sue,” which is not enough to pursue people for alleged copyright infringement. “The case is dismissed with prejudice,” Laporte concludes.

And so All Things Fall Apart for Contra Piracy.

To our knowledge this is the first file-sharing related case that has come to a Righthaven-type conclusion, showing that it’s worthwhile delving deeper into the licence agreements that are at the basis of these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.

Source: 2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart

TorrentFreak

BitTorrent Inc. Escapes Disaster as Source Code and Financials Leak

With its uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline clients, BitTorrent Inc caters to more than 150 million monthly users.

Considering the size of this massive userbase, one doesn’t need a lot of imagination to come up with several disaster scenarios that might unfold should a malicious third-party gain access to all these clients. But that is exactly what could’ve happened earlier this year if it wasn’t for “MentaL”, an admin at RaGEZONE.

This Spring, MentaL was looking for a hosting provider for a friend when he stumbled upon the Jenkins panel of BitTorrent Inc. This turned out to be the gateway to a treasure trove of highly confidential information that could have destroyed the company if it had landed in the wrong hands.

“They forgot to set a user/pass to the admin panel, that had access to github from a master account. Github accounts had usernames and passwords that were linked to everything,” MentaL told TorrentFreak.

BitTorrent’s Jenkins panel

Luckily for BitTorrent Inc, MentaL wasn’t out to do harm. He contacted the company in May to report his findings and was duly thanked and promised a reward in return. BitTorrent Inc. quickly secured the Jenkins panel but to MentaL’s surprise no reward was forthcoming.

MentaL says that when he contacted BitTorrent Inc he was treated rudely and was eventually offered a $ 500 reward for which he should send an invoice. MentaL was insulted by this “low” offer and instead of taking it he decided to share his findings with the rest of the world. While he never copied any of the files available through the panel, he did take screenshots which show how severe the “leak” was.

Through the open Jenkins panel anyone had access to the heart of the company, including financial details, user accounts and the source code to pretty much all released and unreleased software including uTorrent.

“Anyone who had the access I had would be able to steal the source code of all BitTorrent products and more,” MentaL told TorrentFreak.

“Truth be told, I had access to so much content that I was really unaware of what most of it would and could do! But one extreme scenario that I could have done hypothetically if I was some idiot would be to tweak the actual live build and push an update that could include a virus that would destroy all user content who installed the update,” he adds.

uTorrent source code (more)

So, in theory, a malicious person could have updated millions of live torrent clients with viruses, or worse. In addition, it would be possible to reveal stacks of confidential documents including financial information and detailed job offerings.

“In regards to the financial documents, I only checked several and it included payments and balances to and from the company. Other documents I saw were job offers with introductory salaries that reached over $ 150,000 starting wage,” MentaL told us.

“It was quite extreme and shocking.”

Below is a screenshot of a letter that was sent to the Brazil consulate in Los Angeles. As MentaL has no intention of doing the company any permanent harm, the details of the letter have been redacted.

Letter to the consulate

In another screenshot several source files of BitTorrent’s software and databases are visible. In addition, MentaL tells us that he had access to username and passwords for SQL databases. Needless to say, there are plenty of possibilities to exploit this kind of data for nefarious purposes.

BitTorrent data

The above clearly shows that BitTorrent Inc has narrowly escaped a massive disaster. Perhaps they could have been a bit more appreciative of the way MentaL reported the problems, as that would have saved the company from having the rather embarrassing mistake out in the open.

“I felt I wanted to share and express my annoyance regarding the matter. They make millions a year in ad revenue alone and I never released, tweaked, sent fake builds or nothing out to any user and I feel insulted,” MentaL concludes.

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc for a comment on the potential disaster and we will add their response when it comes in. It could be that they are still busy counting their blessings.

Source: BitTorrent Inc. Escapes Disaster as Source Code and Financials Leak

TorrentFreak