Pittsburg Post-Gazette TV Critic Instructs Readers In How To Get Pirated Copies Of DVD’s…and Fund Terrorism?

You’d think a newspaper writer would understand that the reason  he/she hasn’t got a raise in 10 years is due to content theft.  And you’d think they’d not encourage people to buy pirated material.  You would also think that a respectable company Post Gazette  wouldn’t want to send their readers into the arms of scammers, mobsters and terrorists. Think again.

A reader recently alerted us to a Q & A by Pittsburg Post-Gazette TV critic Rob Owens, in which he points readers to an illegal bootleg DVD site where they can get copies of shows not legally available on DVDs.  He does warn users that the DVDs are of an undetermined quality.

What he doesn’t tell his readers  is that this site is in Kuala Lampur and hosted by the hosting company Piradius.net.  Just search that name and you will find dozens of reports of serious scams and malware coming off this host.  This writer simply describes them as “black hat hosting” and details the many sketchy websites hosted by this company:

http://blog.dynamoo.com/2009/07/piradiusnet-yohostorg-black-hat-hosting.html

This guy claims they have ties to terror groups:

http://tannsteven.blogspot.com/

Seriously!

So yes the reader may actually get a DVD of the entire China Beach Series but it’s highly likely that they will get much more than they bargained for: Malware? Credit Card Fraud? Identity Theft?  And in the process of buying that DVD it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some of that money ends up supporting terror groups!

This illustrates a point we like to make here at the http://www.trichordist.com.  Many of the illegal sites that trade in stolen content appear to be linked to people committing much more serious crime. They are after all criminals.  And no matter what your trade, it’s always good to diversify. And of course if you’re that morally impaired then a terrorists money is just as good as anyone elses money.  Right?

Content theft has been incorrectly portrayed as innocent teenagers in their bedrooms sharing music and movies.  We understand why the public is confused cause the “innocent teenager” bullshit has been propagated by know-nothing tech bloggers and fake civil libertarians from foundations like EFF who do know better.   In reality the bulk of the traffic in illegal content is really coming off enterprise level sites and oftentimes  these sites are operated by people with direct  ties to very bad people.  Buyer beware indeed!

And by the way….how is what the Post-Gazette published different than the CBS Interactive/CNET case where CBS was found responsible for inducing copyright on its CNET property by instructing readers in how to obtain illegal files from Limewire? This cost CBS a shit load of money.  I doubt the Post-Gazette has the cash to pay the kind of penalty that CBS paid.

Isn’t this column by Rob Owens also inducement?   Doesn’t the Pittsburg Post-Gazette have some exposure?  And now that this column appears to be syndicated to many other papers who rely on the editors at the Post-Gazette to get it right not induce infringement.  Further–since this hosting company is offshore (update: and tied to big league terrorism)  shouldn’t the DOJ and DHS  get involved?

Finally I find it kind of disgusting that the writer reflexively blames recording artists for the non-release of many many TV series DVD packages.  In my experience what is happening with these DVD packages is the TV show’s producers are trying to low ball the musicians, or pay them virtually nothing for these DVD releases.  It’s the show’s producers holding up the releases of these shows not musicians.

Editors Update: HOLY FUCKING SHIT  DOES THIS HOST HAVE TIES TO Al QAEDA?

http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/15122-Al-Qaedas-New-Digital-Shingle-Al-Fidaa.html

AQ’s New Propaganda Board:

“Al-Fidaa, the newest site in the Al Qaeda webring to spread the usual propaganda. This site popped up last week and I am just getting round to checking it out fully….

….Could we in fact get some digital forensics love on those boxes out there? One also wonders just how many Malay jihadi’s there are out there and how many of them may in fact work for networks like Piradius. I ask this because many a server has been stealthed onto boxes run in those networks and I think from the looks of them, that they are being managed locally, not just hacked.”

http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006869.html

“That IP address (124.217.252.55) is provided to the Afghan Taliban by Malaysian company piradius.net. Piradius.net has been central to the online activities of al-Qaida and its affiliated organizations for many years.

The following is the most reasonable explanation I can come up with to explain why this is the case:

1. Piradius provides services to jihadi terrorist organizations because at the highest levels of Piradius there is substantial support for the ideology and goals of those terrorist organizations, if not for their methods. This is not the work of some rogue low-level employee, nor is it reasonable to suggest that this behavior is strictly coincidental.”