Ars Technica reports on the continuing clusterfuck which is the release of the hacked emails from Media Defender the folks who work with and for the entertainment industry in their attempts to clog, break up, sue and otherwsie destroy the P2P movement.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) poisoning company MediaDefender suffered an embarrassing leak this weekend, when almost 700MB of internal company e-mail was distributed on the Internet via BitTorrent. The e-mails reveal many aspects of MediaDefender’s elaborate P2P disruption strategies, illuminate previously undisclosed details about the MiiVi scandal, and bring to light details regarding MediaDefender’s collaboration with the New York Attorney General’s office on a secret law enforcement project. We have been reviewing the data for days and will have multiple reports on the topic.

There is such obvious glee out in the world of the net and the P2P file sharing community. Yes, there is some piracy going on but the stuff that happens online is bupkis compared to organized hard-core retail piracy. It has been proven, time and again, that making shows and films and applications available for free online can actually drive sales figures up. Treating customers like criminals is a bad business model. It’s an old business model. It’s a broken business model. It’s a business model that needs to shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. Baaaaaaaad business model. Now roll over and play dead - forever.

P2P is a legitmate means of distributing large amounts of information using a connected community of users. The potential behind peer-to-peer is endless as innovators and entrepreneurs worldwide are embracing the use of P2P. One example is to provide free cell phone coverage. In the meantime we have to put up with large media and telco monopolies who like to think they own the world - and own us - and have a right to bully everything into the darkest, stinkiest corner of their fetid stye. Fucking swine.

It’s not surprising that MediaDefender was targeted in this manner. The company was accused of using shady tactics earlier this year when BitTorrent community site TorrentFreak revealed that the anti-piracy company was surreptitiously operating a video upload service called MiiVi that offered high speed downloads of copyright-protected content. Critics accused MediaDefender of using the site to perpetrate an entrapment scheme, an allegation that the company has vigorously denied. MediaDefender founder Randy Saaf personally assured Ars that MiiVi was an internal project that was never intended for public use. Back in July when we covered the MiiVi scandal, we knew Saaf’s story didn’t quite add up, and now the general public has evidence that blows holes in Saaf’s claims.

The MediaDefender e-mails leaked this weekend confirm beyond doubt that the company intentionally attempted to draw traffic to MiiVi while obscuring its own affiliation with the site. The e-mails also show that MediaDefender immediately began to recreate the site under a different name and corporate identity soon after the original plan was exposed.

More emails and phone records are coming out each day as users around the world are collborating on analysing the vast amount of material that has been posted for everyone. One nice tid bit was their contract with the Universal Music Group where MediaDefender charges $4,000 for one month of protection for an album, and $2,000 for one month of protection for a track. Clients are also given access to MediaDefender’s reports and statistical analysis. In the contract, the company claims that it “will perform Services against approximately twelve million” file-sharing users at any given time and will target the fifteen most popular P2P networks.

More troubling is Media Defender’s association with law enforcement and the kind of personal information that can provided by a private company without the user’s knowledge. As more is revealed from these emails and calls I’m sure we’ll discover even further cooperation of this sort. I applaud those who are bringing this information out into the light of day for much needed scrutiny and debate.

Remember, it’s not about piracy; it’s about living in a free and open society.

Cheers.

UPDATES: MiniNova has a good blog post on this, although they’re suing it mainly to proclaim how good they are at thwarting MediaDefender. Doesn’t matter, theyre doing the right thing.

And the folks at Threat Level have a good and detailed post on this story as it continues to unfold. Stay tuned.