MPAA Dummy Site Snares Pirates

By Nick Mokey July 4, 2007

Online pirates had better watch where they click, because bait has been set for them. The site MiiVi.com, which offered offering links to pirated movies, was recently unmasked by Pirate Bay as a front for the Motion Picture Association of America to gather information on would-be pirates, possibly for future legal action.

MiiVi was run by MediaDefender, the company charged with the legwork of tracking down illegal file sharers for groups like the MPAA and RIAA. Like many BitTorrent hubs, MiiVi offered links to download pirated movies, but with the obvious catch that information about downloaders could be logged. The site also offered a program that supposedly sped up downloads, but would instead search a user’s computer for pirated content and report back to MediaDefender.

The site’s ulterior purpose was discovered using a WHOIS domain lookup, which showed that MiiVi.com was registered with MediaDefender’s California address. Soon after news of the site spread in the file-sharing community, it apparently went dead. It isn’t yet clear how much information MediaDefender managed to drag in with MiiVi before the group’s cover was blown, but the domain has been registered for nearly five months, since February 8.

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