There were a bunch of stories a while ago about TorrentSpy and the bunch of seemingly mixed signals that were routinely being sent from the site to its users.

At the time, no-one knew whether or not it was safe to venture there any more.

This was after rumors about alleged records of visitors IPs being kept and forcefully transferred to the lovely folk over at the MPAA.

You may also be aware of the many still unanswered questions floating about the blogosphere about the torrent-site-vs-Big-Media battle waged oh-so-unscrupulously in weeks and months past.

Well, yesterday Wired.com was so kind as to publish a story by David Kravets about a major component of the TorrentSpy debacle. 

The Hacker’s Story

A component by the name of Robert Anderson, a “gun-for-hire hacker” responsible for breaking into the torrent linkfarm and divulging sensitive information to the content owners fighting the operation.

Robert Anderson speaks of being paid a sum of $15,000 upfront (He also claims to have been promised “a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything (he) needed.” 

In short, the option to “become rich and powerful.”) to steal data from TorrentSpy, only to be entirely disconnected from the regulator’s employ soon after the transfer of valuable internal information gathered from TorrentSpy’s workers was completed.

Furthermore, Mr. Anderson talks of being asked to view TorrentSpy’s code structure and erect a faux torrent venue (MiiVi ring any bells, dear reader?) in order to gather info necessary to pinpoint big seeders and leeches responsible for the widespread proliferation of copyrighted content.

Alternative To Stealing?

Of course, while the MPAA does vouch for the money transfer made to Anderson, it “insists that it had no idea that Anderson stole the data.”

Which is strange, because, correct me if I’m wrong, but how else could the man glean said info without stealing it? Play for it over nice ol’ game of Blackjack? Ask for it kindly, perhaps?

Keep in mind, all of these actions made by Anderson at the behest of the MPAA have so far either been deemed acceptable or ignored by judicial authorities, despite the clear misuse and abuse/overreach of the association’s powers. 

And perhaps in this particular instance justice will never be served, as the fact that an “outsider” like Anderson was utilized allows the MPAA to more or less keep their hands clean of this very grimy issue.

Yes, how unfair. Regardless of where the fault for the transgressions against TorrentSpy may logically lie, there’s likely no technical reason that the MPAA can be penalized in a court of law for what Anderson was “hired to do.”

Which is very unfortunate, considering that, if the hired hacker’s interview with Wired is anything of a smoking gun, the MPAA is clearly eyeballs-deep in sin.

Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com

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