Wired has an interview with Robert Anderson, the guy who hacked into TorrentSpy's servers and handed over a bunch of internal TorrentSpy info to the MPAA. From the interview, it's quite clear that the MPAA knew that it was getting access to content that had not been legally obtained, but it still pushed Anderson for more such info (including asking him if he could obtain similar info about The Pirate Bay).

At the same time, however, we've noted that TorrentSpy is so aghast at the idea of spying on its own users, that it shut off US access to its site to protect its users from court-ordered spying. So, which organization comes across as more ethical here? The MPAA, who's actively trying to get confidential information from various torrent tracker sites? Or TorrentSpy, who's actively trying to protect the privacy of its users?

Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

Comcast's approach to traffic shaping is different because of the drastic effect it has on one type of traffic - in some cases blocking it rather than slowing it down - and the method used, which is difficult to circumvent and involves the company falsifying network traffic.

Topolski agrees that Comcast has a right to manage its network and slow down traffic that affects other subscribers, but disapproves of their method.

A trio of intrepid researchers from the University of California-Riverside decided to see just how often a P2P user might be tracked by content owners. Their startling conclusion: "naive" users will exchange data with such "fake users" 100 percent of the time.

For years, P2P communities have suspected that affiliates of the RIAA, the MPAA, and others have been haunting P2P networks to look for those who might be swapping copyrighted files.

The takeaway here is simple: P2P users who don't utilize the blocklists are just about guaranteed to be tracked by "fake users" operating out of those ranges, and thus seem to open the door to possible litigation should the dice be rolled against them.

So when their first victim, Thomas, turns out to be a single American Indian mother of two making a measly $36,000 a year -- latte money for the RIAA boys -- you have a hard time picturing these guys nailed to a cross.

Here's an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit like bluepoint oysters, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music -- the "talent" -- are getting royally screwed in the royalty department.

Radiohead is the latest band to offer an album's worth of music online, for free. Fans are being asked to pay what they feel is fair, and my guess is that most people will kick in something. Given the chance to be reasonable, we usually will.

For years we've been pointing out business models involving free music that don't need require the RIAA to sue everyone. For years, we've been highlighting the very basic economics for why these business models will almost certainly take over the industry. And, now that we're starting to see some serious traction among bands adopting these models (without RIAA help), we've even explained why the RIAA should still have an important place within this model.

In other words, nearly everything the industry has done has backfired and made things worse. And how does the RIAA respond? By saying it needs to keep doing the same thing over and over again. The spokesman for the RIAA calls their activities "tough love" but hasn't anyone pointed out to them that what they're doing has not worked and has only made the situation worse?

BitTorrent search engine, IsoHunt, is cutting off access in the U.S. to software that enables users to download BitTorrent files, the technology that has become a powerful tool for illegal file sharing.

IsoHunt and TorrentSpy, which elected to shut off access to its site last month to U.S. residents, are trying to avoid a court order to turn over user information to the MPAA as part of the legal discovery process.

As for data belonging to past visitors, the sites say they have never stored data for users. In an unprecedented decision, the judge wanted TorrentSpy to begin tracking information found in computer RAM.

The music industry has launched a new crackdown on the servers that run the P2P network eDonkey. Seven major eDonkey servers were taken offline this last week after German courts gave the go-ahead by issuing injunctions against the server operators.

Jeremy Banks, who heads the IFPI's global Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said in a statement, "These actions show the reach of the recording industry's internet anti-piracy operation. IFPI has an expert team which traces the origin of illegal content on the internet and works with law enforcement agencies to get copyright-infringing content off the internet."

Shutting down important servers can certainly degrade P2P networks, but only time can tell if the eDonkey shutdowns are part of the endgame or whether the IFPI and its affiliates are simply playing Whack-A-Mole.

When TorrentFreak reported that Media Defender (MD) was behind the video site MiiVi, they cast doubt on us. Now, in what is surely the biggest BitTorrent leak ever, nearly 700mb of MD's emails have gone public.

Unfortunately for Media Defender - a company dedicated to mitigating the effects of internet leaks - they can do nothing about being the subject of the biggest BitTorrent leak of all time. Over 700mb of their own internal emails, dating back over 6 months have been leaked to the internet in what will be a devastating blow to the company. Many are very recent, having September 2007 dates and the majority involve the most senior people in the company.

It states: "By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contains information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services," and "A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account".

Hundreds of IPs and logins to their servers, lists of their decoy/entrapment trackers, decoy strategies, the effectiveness of their fake torrents (in many cases with a breakdown of success, title specific), high and low priority sites, .torrent watchlists, information on their monitoring of competitors, pictures of their weekend trips and even the anti-piracy strategy for dealing with The Simpsons Movie leak.

Singapore-based Odex is one of the largest regional distributors of licensed Japanese anime VCDs, but the company believes that unauthorized Internet downloads are eating into its profitability. In November 2006, the company hired US-based BayTSP to help it track down anime downloaders in Singapore.

By April 2007, BayTSP's system had tracked 50 specific titles for six months and found that they had been downloaded a total of 400,000 times in Singapore alone. According to Odex, that is the "highest level of anime downloading in the world by population."

Judge Earnest Lau tossed the case last week after saying that Odex was only a "sub-licensee" from the Japanese firms that created the anime, not an "exclusive licensee." Only exclusive licensees or the actual copyright holder can bring civil suits for infringement.

Anime fans, as one might expect, aren't happy about the entire situation. Even those who acknowledge that Odex has a legal right to enforce its claims argue that the current strategy is counterproductive and likely to turn people against the company.

The site, MiiVi.com, complete with a user registration, forum, and "family filter", offers complete downloads of movies and "fast and easy video downloading all in one great site." But that's not all; MiiVi also offers client software to speed up the downloading process. The only catch is, after it's installed, it searches your computer for other copyrighted files and reports back.

ZeroPaid, acting on a tip from The Pirate Bay, found MiiVi to be registered to Media Defender using a whois search. Shortly after, the registrar information was changed, but the address still reflects Media Defender's address at 2461 Santa Monica Blvd., D-520 Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Not 10 hours after the site was found to be registered to Media Defender, the site went dead.