According to a report by ZDNet Australia, MediaForce, a US
company claiming to act on behalf of Warner Bros, has sent a letter
to an unnamed Australian ISP with a list of IP addresses that it
says have been used to access and share movies on the internet.
In the letter, MediaForce is asking the ISP to immediately
disable access to the subscribers engaged in the allegedly illegal
activities, and to terminate their accounts.
Meanwhile, news site TheRegister.co.uk reports that the
non-profit internet security group Gobbles is claiming that it has
been recruited by the RIAA to create and deploy technological tools
to control digital piracy.
In a statement posted on a security mailing list, the group says
it has already developed code to "infect" MP3 files, monitor
copyright infringement and block on-line file-swapping.
According to its statement, Gobbles was appointed by the RIAA
after it presented research on audio and video players'
vulnerabilities, and created a "hydra", a virus/worm hybrid that
exploits those vulnerabilities to infect MP3 files and spread
through P2P networks.
The hydra, the group claims, not only infects all P2P-serving
software on the user's machine, allowing it to infect other hosts
on the P2P network, but it also catalogues all media on the
computer and sends the full list to the RIAA "where it is added to
their records." This information may, according to Gobbles, be used
by RIAA later as evidence in criminal proceedings.
The Gobbles statement and more information on its anti-piracy
code can be found at:
online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/306476
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