Warner Bros. looking for a student intern to spy on torrent users

By on Mar 29, 2010 at 9:24 AM
Software March 29, 2010

big-brother

Just because we might associate the company with loveable characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck doesn’t mean the characters who are running the show at Warner Bros. Entertain UK have similar personalities. After all, they’re the ones that came up with the brilliant idea of hiring a student intern, paying him or her £17,500 ($26,212 USD) over the course of a year and having them engage in a bit of digital espionage. The intern, who is to be “IT literate” and currently enrolled as a student pursuing a degree in computer science, will be charged with infiltrating torrent sites and creating bots which sniff out media which Warner Bros. and NBC Universal hold the copyrights to. Here’s a snippet from the job description:

During the 12 month internship, duties will include: monitoring local Internet forums and IRC for pirated WB and NBCU content and in order to gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities; finding new and maintaining existing accounts on private sites; scanning for links to hosted pirated WB and NBCU content and using tools to issue takedown requests; maintaining and developing bots for Internet link scanning system (training provided); preparing sending of infringement notices and logging feedback; performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results; inputting pirate hard goods data and other intelligence into the forensics database; selecting local keywords and submitting local filenames for monitoring and countermeasure campaigns and periodically producing research documents on piracy related technological developments. Various training will be provided.

Yikes.

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  • STFU

    Fuck Movie Studios!

    …and Apple.

    • Don

      Umm, What does this have to do with Apple?

      • ucfgrad93

        Nothing. STFU is just getting his hate on this morning.

      • jude

        ..nothing wrong with that :) hahah

      • Frank

        In that case… GOOGLE SUCKS (Lets look at the reaction).

        Hey!~ i can vent my anger too, right? ;)

    • Mrwirez

      Don’t forget RIAA. EFF-em

  • Gauntlet Down

    Pardon for interjecting an unpopular thought here, but it looks like an entity is taking proactive steps to stop property theft. Why is this bad?

    I would think, BTW, that the publicizing of this job “opening” was itself a step to stop the theft.

    • ucfgrad93

      I agree. Warner Bros. have every right to try and stop the theft of their property.

      • ChocoTaco

        Really? They have the right to collect your information over the internet without a warrant? How is that unlike illegal phone tapping? If I tap your phone without a warrant and overhear you discussing a plan to set a car dealership on fire, are you okay with that? Do the ends justify the means? In that case, why not spy on everyone at all times? Record every phone conversation in America while we’re at it. Where does the slippery slope end?

      • Sfurules

        This is in the UK though ChocoTaco…they are…”special” there…

      • scadole

        I agree with chocoTaco… invasion of privacy. Piracy is bad, but their means are walking down a slippery slope. And, I love chocotacos. I’m leaving my house to get one right now.

      • MonkeyCheese

        How is it illegal? They can go to the same sites which are free to sign up or don’t require registration. Most of the time people don’t realize what info is being displayed on those site but its considered public. Its like if you leave your Facebook page public and don’t make it private then anybody can use what you post on there against you like employers, future employers or the police.
        Like on youtube when those 3 or 4 teenage girls invited a girl over, wouldn’t let her leave and beat the hell outta here. Well the police used that video against those girls in the court. Was that illegal?
        Public information on the internet is fair game for anyone.

      • jawman

        that’s different, it’s posted on a public site. WB is infiltrating your PC unauthorized to see what you are doing. THAT’S ILLEGAL. They are not the authorities, and even they need a warrant.

      • Andy

        @jawman

        What makes you say they’re breaking into people’s computers? The job description said nothing of the sort. Basically it said the intern would go around looking to see what pirated content is available on the Internet, and then issue takedown requests. None of the other activities were remotely like breaking into computers.

        They’re not even talking about doing things like downloading a torrent and noting what IP addresses are seeding it. And even if they were, that’s not even “infiltrating” the computer, since the computer is set up to upload content to other machines.

      • Anonymous

        One of the things on the basic internet common-knowledge list, is that nothing is private online. Once you sign into the internet, any activity you do is public records. It is a network, connecting to multiple things at once. If the connection is made public, it is like making a phone call public. Once it is made public, you lose all privacy. Basically, if you feel like your privacy is being intruded on, I suggest you and your deadbeat friends build your own internet over a LAN connection. That is the only way you’ll ever have privacy.
        Ignorant kid, there is no slippery slope.

  • justjohnmichael

    I’ll apply if I can come to work dressed like Goofy.

  • CB

    See, who needs the government to create jobs?

  • freebirds87

    This person will also be in charge of providing his or her own Red Bull….

    Cmon Warner Bros… if you want geeks to do your evil bidding you MUST PROVIDE RED BULL

  • Percy

    Are they gonna take my bootleg bugs bunny t-shirt from me too? LMAO!!!

  • Mintpass

    Wow… This is actually really smart idea. Since these interns are much smarter and actually know how things work and smarter than torrent users, they are more likely to catch these thieves. I really really hope this works out well. Go to hell pirates !!

  • 3 Phones Jugglin

    Long story short…They need to Hire a Snitch.

    Our Government sends computer hackers to Jail instead of giving them jobs….Least a movie studio can heed to that kind of concept.

    But 26K??? Cover my student loans and you have a Deal..But Yall better pay at least 55K When im out of school

  • Brian

    The gauntlet brings up a good point;
    The issue has less to do with spying – though the pervasive attitudes that bring ubiquitous Brave New World monitoring to western civilization in general and Britain in particular is repugnant – and more to do with correcting intellectual property ownership/rights issues.

    The real fight should be to develop and maintain open alternatives to controlling interest management of distribution channels.

  • jude

    Warner Bros – still trying to get the fucking toothpaste back into the tube with a toothpick…

  • Steve A.Z.

    Isn’t this an episode of 21 Jump Street? I know how this ends… Johnny Depp saves the day.

  • Sfurules

    They certainly aren’t paying very much for all the work they expect a full time college student to do.

    • Maybe…not

      For that amount of money, I’d give up ONE name a month, encourage the rest to trade more, and still collect that worthless WB paycheck.

      So if defeating pirates/torrents is only worth $25K a year per employee to WB, one has to wonder what all the hoopla is about. If the stuidos were bleeding out the ass like they want you to believe, they’d be dropping more than a paltry $25K and hiring real IT guys instead of interns.

      Side note: G4tv says many theaters are going to raise ticket prices of 3D films to nearly $25. Is there anyone else who sees a huge disconnect here? I don’t anyone who really LIKES 3D. I don’t know anyone who wants to see everything in 3D. I dont know anyone who claims to be a 3D fanboy. yet the studios are going to shove this lame crap in your face and make you pay for it. So bitorrent users… more power to you. Stick it between the 3rd and 4th rib if you can.

    • bizguy

      I thought the same thing — $26,000 for software that could save them millions (well, at least, until a legion of other hackers thwart his/her little program).

    • AT&T_CSR

      I am a CSR for AT&T and after taxes make about $24k a year. I’d say this is pretty damned good for an internship. Most internships (when I was in college) don’t pay but minimum wage.

  • the user

    how can we get around their tactics?

    • bizguy

      i supposed one thing you could do is store your torrents on a device that is not attached to your downloading machine; therefore, the files won’t be scannable.

      not that i would know anything about torrents.

      (cough) PLEASE SEED!

      • Maybe…not

        @ the user: Hey… you didn’t just happen to get an intern job at WB recently, now did you?

        @bizguy: thanks, now we know who’s the first to spill it to every rat on the net!

      • bizguy

        I don’t even download; so, I’m not worried about it.

        And, believe me…if my low-tech answer is giving up anything more than the obvious to him, he shouldn’t be working in tech spy crap anyway. lol.

    • David

      By getting caught, going to jail/paying huge fines, learning your lesson, working to make your own money, and purchasing the stuff legally. This is a complete work-around and guarantees that you won’t get involved with these people. There, problem solved.

  • penetrode

    nothing new here.

    A friend of mine was hired by FOX to specifically search and destroy people downloading/uploading AVATAR….

    • bizguy

      I don’t like your friend. May he be raped by 1,000 camels.

    • Maybe…not

      No, that’s awesome! Cause I’ll NEVER get busted if all they want is Avatar. Whew, thank god they only want to bust people trading shitty movies! What’s their other targets? Transformers 2? GI Joe? yeah! I’m SOOO safe!! Woot!

  • Mark

    I would hope the school shits a brick over this. Basically WB is expecting the student to use his university IP address to infiltrate. I’m no lawyer, but I somehow doubt that’s legit.

  • Sylar

    That’s to funny. Nice try

  • Norm

    What’s to stop one of these people from making someone’s machine a botnet and forcing download requests. That’s job security.

  • http://www.8baller.co.uk Adam

    Lol @ ppl claiming WB is doing illegal stuff.

    Don’t illegally download movies in the first place. Then there’s no issues.

  • loki

    Seriously, yall can bitch and moan all you want. Privacy my ass. If you want privacy, then unplug yourself from the internet.

    Seriously, there are so many other companies that do this already. nothing new here. whats that saying, ignorance is bliss.

    Then again, “why so serious?” lol if you got nothing to hide then why worry?

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Mrwirez

    Run torrents through proxy servers.. Problem solved..

  • David

    God I want this job. There is nothing illegal about what they are doing. Most of the people that are concerned about this are probably stealing anyway. I’m not a fan of the record industry but people who steal through bit torrent are no worse.

  • tuffgong

    Seriously people…Netflix is NOT that expensive.

  • Johnny

    This isn’t a pioneering job duty in the music industry… there are already many departments dedicated to doing this, they’re just hiring interns.

  • Chris

    …. they forgot to mention in the requirements that you have to maintain a 3.5 GPA or higher. That should be easy, it’s not like a computer science major will get in the way of writing research papers for them

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