ISP told to banish users and MP3s infected as media turns vigilante

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