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May 29 2008 11:48AM EDT

MediaDefender, Revision 3, and the Journalist CEO

In business school, they ought to teach a rule: Never mess with a CEO who can write well. MediaDefender made the mistake of launching an attack on Revision 3, an Internet TV site that's mostly about tech topics. Over the Memorial Day weekend, MediaDefender hit Rev3's servers with a denial of service attack, allegedly mistaking Rev3 for some kind of pirate site because Rev3 uses BitTorrent to -- very legally -- distribute programming. The attack shut down Rev3 for the whole weekend, materially damaging the company.

Rev3's CEO is an old friend of mine, Jim Louderback, who for a couple of decades was among the leading tech journalists and editors. On Revision 3's blog today, Jim wrote a lengthy, well-written, easy-to-understand piece about exactly what happened, concluding that it's chilling that a company like MediaDefender can unilaterally take actions like this. "Because in this country, as far as I know, we're still innocent until proven guilty - not drawn, quartered and executed simply because someone thinks you're an outlaw," Jim concludes.

This episode won't much held MediaDefender's already-sketchy reputation. The tech industry practically cheered when it struggled late last year. Earlier this year, Portfolio ran a story about a hacker culture trying bring down MediaDefender. As a company that tries to poison free file-sharing sites so no one wants to use them, MediaDefender makes a lot of enemies. And now it has made a significant one over at Revision 3.

 


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