As you may have heard, Revision3 recently suffered a DDoS attack brought on by Media Defender. What happened is that Revision3 uses BitTorrent to host their files, giving viewers another way to obtain the show, and lessening the load on their servers. For one reason or another, they left their tracker open, allowing anyone to add torrent information to it. Many people ended up using this to their advantage, adding torrents which linked to copyrighted content. Media Defender, rather than contacting Revision3 about this, decided to host spoof files (files which appear to be copyrighted content such as the Iron Man movie) on the tracker. A member of the Revision3 forums discovered the illegal content one could obtain from Revision3′s tracker and let them know. Revision3 responded by locking up the tracker so only authorized Revision3 shows could be obtained via this tracker. Media Defender responded by sending out numerous SYN packets to Revision3 servers (approximately 8000 per second according to Revision3 CEO, Jim Louderback). This crippled the Revision3 servers, preventing access to the website and apparently even internal corporate email.

According to the latest episode of TWiT (this WEEK in TECH), the FBI is investigating this matter. While no one is arguing that Revision3 should not have made their tracker public, Media Defender should not have reacted this way. When Media Defender noticed that this tracker was open, and that one could obtain copyrighted content using it, they should have contacted Revision3, as the forum member did, and let them know about this. By DDoSing Revision3, Media Defender broke the law and caused Revision3 considerable financial harm.

Perhaps the most interesting thing, however, is not the attack that Media Defender committed, but rather when it committed the attack. Media Defender was silent for the five weeks when Revision3 was unknowingly providing access to copyrighted content, but the second that Revision3 cut off access to the illegal content, they attacked. It seems that they did not care so much about copyrighted content as they did to having access for their files. Once the tracker was locked down, they responded the same way a two year old would at the grocery store when you take away the candy he wants to buy, throwing a massive tantrum.

On TWiT, Jim and Leo Laporte speculated that perhaps this whole incident occurred because Media Defender and so-called old media companies that back it do not understand the concept of new media organizations such as Revision3, and cannot grasp the idea that BitTorrent would be used for anything other that piracy. This brings out a major problem with old media. Old media is a dinosaur losing out to new media. People are getting sick of paying $20-30 for a DVD or Blu-ray disk, then being told what they can and cannot do with it. Companies such as Revision3 give you their content and basically say “you can whatever you want with it as long as you aren’t making money with our work”, and people love this. A person can take the latest episode of Diggnation or The Totally Rad Show and put a copy on their iPod, a copy on a DVD and another copy on their laptop, and watch them wherever they want. Aside from their monthly internet bill and the time required to download the shows, there is no fee and you get high-definition and high-quality content. Even shows with advertising such as Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, Hak5 and TWiT, the advertising is minimal compared to that of many television shows, which like layer it on in excessive amounts.

The only way for companies such as CBS, NBC, Fox and Disney to survive in the long run is for them to finally embrace new media, and remove many of the restrictions. Let the user download the latest episode of their favorite television show, even if they don’t live in the United States (hint, hint Comedy Central, NBC and MTV), DRM-Free, and let them do what they want with it. Restricting the rights of their customers is nothing short of suicide and will lead to the inevitable downfall of television, music and possible movies.