MPAA Resorting to International Espionage?

The latest revelation in the cat-and-mouse game between the MPAA and online file sharers sounds like something from a Hollywood spy thriller: Feeling spurned by a partner, a black marketeer tries to parlay his insider information into a career with the authorities, but once the deal was done the double agent, now expendable, found himself left out in the cold.

3366635_1.jpgThis is the story Robert Anderson told Wired about sensitive information the Canadian citizen provided in 2005 to the MPAA’s then-legal director and current Executive Vice President Dean Garfield (pictured) about TorrentSpy, the hugely popular public torrent index that the MPAA is trying to shut down through legal action. Anderson reportedly redirected emails intended for TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell to his own Gmail account, then — along with the site’s source code — turned them over to Garfield and the MPAA for $15,000.

A countersuit by Bunnell against the MPAA accusing them of knowingly circumventing federal wiretapping statutes was dismissed, allowing the MPAA to use the emails in their ongoing case against TorrentSpy (which recently drew the MPAA’s ire by blocking access to U.S. users and taking other steps to secure the privacy of users), but is now now being appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

If the case of purloined emails sounds familiar, it’s because in a strikingly similar case, rights enforcement company MediaDefender had their system hacked and emails published. Another striking similarity is that Anderson alleges the MPAA got the idea to set up their own file-sharing site using TorrentSpy’s source code as a honeypot to ensnare infringers — which is exactly what MediaDefender is accused of having done with the now-shuttered Miivi.

The MPAA is no stranger to using international diplomacy to push its agenda, — see, for instance, the Pirate Bay raid, and appeals to China to beef up intellectual property enforcement. But with this latest revelation of cloak and dagger intrigue, it brings to mind the days of the Cold War — only this time, the villains are the evil Kopimist empire.

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