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Monday, April 29, 2013

MPAA executive admits to tampering with key evidence in Finnish topsite trial

In Finland, a long-running prosecution of six men who were accused of running a piracy "topsite" ended with disappointment for the big rightsholder groups when two men were acquitted and the remaining four got comparatively mild sentences. Now, TorrentFreak sheds some light on the situation with the revelation that the prosecution was forced to admit, at sentencing time, that a senior MPAA executive had tampered with the logfiles that formed a key piece of evidence in the case, and had not disclosed that to the defense or the judge. The MPAA exec made changes to ten files, apparently in a bid to hide the identity of a spy it had employed to infiltrate the group.
The video, a screencast of the investigation, showed a particular username accessing an Angel Falls FTP server. However, the corresponding text log for the same event showed a completely different username.
“When the IFPI investigator was asked about this he acknowledged that the names did not match. He said that the Finnish anti-piracy people and IFPI had collected the information together, but there was also an MPAA executive in the room while the evidence gathering took place,” Hietanen explains.
The IFPI investigator was then asked to reveal the name of the MPAA executive. He declined, but did offer an explanation for the inconsistencies in the evidence.
In an apparent attempt to hide the identity of one of their spies, the MPAA executive edited the evidence gathered during the session.

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