The pirate bay claims to have found evidence that several huge media corporations have hired hackers, supposedly to strike back at file sharers and mainly torrent trackers. This raises a very important question: Is it really right to fight crime with criminal actions?

Some may argue that it’s a kind of self-defence, trying to kill the thing that is killing you; but can you really transfer a real-world concept such as self-defence to the digital world? I don’t really think so – even though what TPB does might be illegal, the doesn’t justifie the use of illegal actions to battle it.

Anyway, the information TPB referenced was MediaDefender’s internal emails (TorrentFreak has reported this on their blog) that were acquired, probably by illegal means, by a hacker group calling themselves MediaDefender-Defenders. Now, MediaDefender is a controversial company that sells services such as spreading fake torrents, infecting torrents with bad data, spamming and even hacking to media corporations. Even more controversial was their Miivi project, a fake file sharing service designed to collect IP addresses.

Shortly after the emails were posted a recorded phone call, supposedly from their lawyer, where he discusses the leakage and draws the conclusion that no damage had been done. After that all their IP lists were also stolen and released as torrents by MDD. Their stock plummited by 20% and they spent some time sending threatening letters to ayone who had anything to do with the email hack.

TPB has filed several complaints to the police, although there will probably not be any action from them (the police), since no real evidence exists. Besides, I doubt the police would help TPB, no matter what crimes they are the victim of.