Swabbing Out Pirates

Movie studios spying on P2P networks is a phenomenon most users suspect occurs, but have never really seen proof of. Until now, that is—Warner Bros. in the U.K. has published a job listing for an intern to dig through known piracy mediums in order to "gather information" and report back to the studio. For £17,500 (or $26,000) per year, this internship sounds like the perfect opportunity for a student to learn about the ins and outs of copyright—and possibly get ostracized by content-lovin' peers.

According to the job listing taken from the University of Manchester (first posted by TorrentFreak), the yearlong internship would involve combing IRC networks, forums, and other P2P mediums for Warner Bros. and NBCU content. The goal would be to find new networks and private file-sharing sites for informational purposes, but that's not all. Warner also wants the intern to be able to develop bots to scan the Internet for links, send infringement notices, perform "trap purchases of pirated product," and collect "intelligence" on pirate activities.

The listing doesn't seem to imply that the company expects interns to turn in specific individuals, but who really knows what Warner expects when it says to "gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups, and other pirate activities." It also makes us wonder how Warner plans to protect itself from spies from the outside—that is, members of the "pirate" community who want to learn more about the company's antipiracy practices. After all, TorrentFreak is already encouraging its readers to apply for the internship so they can provide updates on Warner's efforts.

We reached out to Warner for answers to these questions, but did not hear back by publication time.

Warner Bros. has been in the news more and more lately for its assertive moves in the movie-rental space. After talking both Netflix and Redbox into delaying the DVD release of Warner's titles for 28 days after they hit the streets, the studio promptly turned around and gave same-day release rights to Blockbuster. It's clear that the company is still trying to keep the dying DVD sales market alive, and its online antipiracy efforts are intended to bolster this strategy.