Warner Bros. Recruits Students to Spy on Pirates

[Darth Sushi]

http://torrentfreak.com/images/wb.jpgWarner Bros. Recruits Students to Spy on Pirates
Written by Ernesto on March 29, 2010

" Warner Bros Entertainment UK is recruiting tech-savvy students to help the company with their anti-piracy efforts. During the 12 month internship the students will have to maintain accounts at private BitTorrent sites, develop link-scanning bots, make trap purchases and perform various other anti-piracy tasks.

The people who work at the anti-piracy divisions of Warner Bros. and other large media companies have to be experts in file-sharing technology. It is therefore no surprise that Warner Bros. is actively recruiting students for a job as Anti-Piracy Intern, as most students have grown up sharing files.

Warner Bros Entertainment UK is currently offering an internship to “IT literate” students with knowledge of file-sharing networks to assist in the company’s ongoing anti-piracy efforts. The internship deals with both digital and physical piracy and among other things the applicant will have to make trap purchases and maintain accounts at private file-sharing sites.

The intern will further have to scour the Internet for illegally posted Warner Bros. and NBC Universal content and gather intelligence on the sites that offer these pirated goods. One of the more boring tasks listed in the job description is the sending of takedown requests and infringement notices to sites and users.

The full job description taken from the vacancy (pdf (http://torrentfreak.com/static/WBAP-vac.PDF)) at The University of Manchester reads as follows:

During the 12 month internship, duties will include: monitoring local Internet forums and IRC for pirated WB and NBCU content and in order to gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities; finding new and maintaining existing accounts on private sites; scanning for links to hosted pirated WB and NBCU content and using tools to issue takedown requests; maintaining and developing bots for Internet link scanning system (training provided); preparing sending of infringement notices and logging feedback; performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results; inputting pirate hard goods data and other intelligence into the forensics database; selecting local keywords and submitting local filenames for monitoring and countermeasure campaigns and periodically producing research documents on piracy related technological developments. Various training will be provided.

The lucky student who gets the job will receive a £17,500 salary for the 12 month internship that starts July 2010. Applicants are required to study a degree in a computing related discipline and programming experience with Java or JSP and PHP, Perl or Python is seen as a bonus.

We encourage all eligible TorrentFreak readers to apply for this exciting internship and provide us with regular updates on Warner Bros’ anti-piracy efforts. You have to be quick though, the vacancy closes on March 31. "

:source: Source: http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-recruits-students-to-spy-on-pirates-100329/

[Tv Controls you]

I wonder how many people would turn for that amount of money....

[Solariz]

£17,500 salary !

Haha, they have got to be kidding...
or have things gotten that bad with the American economy

[Tv Controls you]

£17,500 salary !

Haha, they have got to be kidding...
or have things gotten that bad with the American economy

That's actually around normal for an internship.

[cinephilia]

this is the job idoleyes left fst for

[SonsOfLiberty]

£17,500 salary !

Haha, they have got to be kidding...
or have things gotten that bad with the American economy

That's actually around normal for an internship.

I would but sadly there not paying me with "The Pieces of Eight"....


What Exactly Were Pieces of Eight?

Because of the many Spanish colonies in Central and South America, Spanish coins were the most common ones circulating in British North America. And the most common of those was the silver coin the Spanish called the peso de ocho reales, the “piece of eight reals” or “eight-real piece” – just as a dime might be called a “ten-cent piece.” There were one-real pieces, and two-real pieces, and so on, but the eight-real piece was made of precisely one ounce of sterling silver. The American colonists often called this coin a “Spanish milled dollar” – the term “milled” referring to the grooves around the edge of the coin which prevented anyone from shaving off slivers of it and then passing it off as whole. Today, people often think the term “pieces of eight” means that the coin was (or could be) cut into eight pieces. It could be, and frequently was; but that’s not what the term means. A “piece of eight” was a single coin; several such coins were “pieces of eight.”
Pieces of Eight and Pirates

Silver was mined in New Spain (now Mexico) and made into pieces of eight and other coins before being shipped back to the royal treasury in Spain. These treasure ships were often preyed upon by pirates, eager to capture the chests full of pieces of eight; hence the frequent occurrence of that term in pirate stories. It is possible to obtain genuine pieces of eight today without the trouble of locating a pirate’s buried treasure chest; coin dealers and online auction sites are readily available sources. And those sources will usually know where each particular coin came from – whether a sunken Spanish galleon which had taken it from the mines of Mexico, or a sunken pirate ship which had taken it from a galleon.
Colonial History on a Coin

The “tails” side of the piece of eight contains various symbols of Spanish power. The two hemispheres of the earth are shown topped by a Spanish crown, indicating that Spain ruled the whole world. On either side of this symbol is a column, the two together representing the Pillars of Hercules, an ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar, the boundary of the known world. Beyond this point, it was thought, lay nothing; ancient maps therefore had printed on or near the Pillars, Ne Plus Ultra, Latin for “Nothing More Beyond.” On the piece of eight, though, the Pillars are wrapped in scrolls bearing the words Plus Ultra, “More Beyond,” another symbol of Spanish sovereignty. Some people believe that the scroll wrapped around the right column is the origin of the US dollar sign ($). This may or may not be true, but certainly the coin was so common for so long that Americans would have become quite familiar with it. The piece of eight was in such widespread use in the United States that it remained recognized by the federal government as legal tender until 1857.

Pieces of eight are not just part of American history; their influence can be seen in very recent years in at least two interesting ways. If you were to cut a “piece of eight reals” into eight equal parts, each part, obviously, would be worth one real. Since this was the smallest unit of the coin, each such part was known in colonial times as a “bit.” So two bits would make up one quarter of the whole coin, or dollar, four bits would make up one half, etc. Later, after Americans had adopted a 100-cent dollar as their currency, they still referred to one quarter of that dollar as “two bits.” Hence the phrase (still heard occasionally) “two bits” to mean twenty-five cents; and the adjective “two-bit,” as in “just a two-bit affair,” to refer to something of little value, practically worthless. Also, when the New York Stock Exchange first opened in 1792, one bit (one-eighth of a Spanish milled dollar) was the minimum value that could be traded; and prices of stocks were still quoted in eighths of a dollar until the year 2000.

[Cabalo]

Maybe sites like FST should ban IPs from the ranges belonging to WB, if we ever got to know which they are. Not that it's foul proof...

Also, trackers should stop recruiting UK members, as a security measure. Starting tomorrow.

[iLOVENZB]

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-news-section-95/t-warner-bros-thinks-p2p-gets-unfairly-vilified-377341
I knew WB was full of shit.

[sjames1682]

Damn it, read the article people! It says Warner Bros. UK, NOT US! I can't remember when Manchester became part of the US! Nothing to do with us Americans! Damn British spies!

[thisguy]

Damn it, read the article people! It says Warner Bros. UK, NOT US! Nothing to do with us Americans! Damn British spies!

yes what he said, but any ways everyone apply and spy on them give us the scoop

[bobbintb]

why would a kid who "grew up with file sharing" that knows enough to have a computer science degree and likely has been sharing himself, all of a sudden decide to work for the other side?

[Cabalo]

why would a kid who "grew up with file sharing" that knows enough to have a computer science degree and likely has been sharing himself, all of a sudden decide to work for the other side?
Because they pay him. And the prospect of a professional career.

[bobbintb]

why would a kid who "grew up with file sharing" that knows enough to have a computer science degree and likely has been sharing himself, all of a sudden decide to work for the other side?
Because they pay him. And the prospect of a professional career.

yea, but i still dont see it. i sure as hell wouldnt do it. or do a shitty job on purpose.

[Cabalo]

How old are you?
Don't tell me 1,500 USD month in an internship is bad pay.

[QPD]

How old are you?
Don't tell me 1,500 USD month in an internship is bad pay.
I wouldn't turn you for that money...but for 500K...( we'll split the money):naughty:

[dimtim]

this is pretty disgusting. Wait how much are they paying again?