Revision3 is a media content provider. They produce such shows as Tekzilla, Diggnation, and Systm. Because they provide video in high definition, which requires a lot of bandwidth, they use BitTorrent as one distribution mechanism for their shows. Over the Memorial Day weekend, the Revision3 site was unavailable as a result of a distributed denial of service attack. It turns out the reason was their use of BitTorrent. And it wasn't the cracking community that brought them down. It seems that a company known as MediaDefender attacked Revision3's servers and left Revision3 unable to deliver content.
Who is MediaDefender, and why would they go after Revision3? MediaDefender, according to their website, provides “services that stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the Internet and Peer-to-Peer networks.” In other words, they prevent copyrighted material from being illegally traded over BitTorrent, amongst other things. Ars Technica has a good rundown of the company.
We can be fairly sure that the attack on Revision3 wasn't intentional. It appears that MediaDefender detected a hole in the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker, and took advantage of it. When Revision3 tech staff noticed this hole, and closed it up, the MediaDefender servers tried in vain to reconnect to the Revision3 tracker. According to Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback on his company's blog, MediaDefender's servers were sometimes sending up to 8000 packets a second. It's no wonder, then, that Revision3 was effectively shut down. No one else could get to Revision3 because all of their bandwidth was eaten up by packets from MediaDefender.
Companies that produce media, such as the recording industry and the motion picture industry, have a right to defend their copyrights. Acquiring copyrighted material without paying for it is illegal, unless said material is meant to to be distributed in that manner (such as the content on Revision3). They have a right to prevent theft, which is a real crime. But they don't have a right to break the law in the process, and as Jim Louderback points out, launching denial of service attacks is a crime in the United States, no matter who you launch them against.
Article comments
1 - Neal Parks
Or the "old media" has started going after the "new media" since they don't get a "piece of the action". Honestly, if the "old media" WASN'T trying to extort "new media" how would their behavior be any different then it was in this situation? My point being you can't know their motivation, only their actions and their actions are no different than if they wanted to shut down "new media" because they don't get money from it.
2 - bliffle
Denial Of Service is really a primitive way to interfere with P2P via BitTorrent. So is ISP throttling. The brute products of trivial minds.
There are a couple of very simple techniques which are neither ilegal nor obtrusive that one would think anyone who has used BT a few times could figure out. But apparently not because I haven't seen them employed yet.
All it takes is a subtle mind and a diabolical deviousness and a nose for mischief. It helps to have a background in Electronic CounterMeasures.
I'm looking forward to encountering that ECM because I have the CounterMeasure figured out, too.
3 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
P2P maybe a good way for legal activity but it's severely out of date for the people who wanna share "illegal" copyrighted media. There are much better non-detectable ways...