Among the organisations behind the sting are some of the world's largest music and video companies.
SmartHouse has been told that thousands of Australians used the site which was run by Media Defender, a notorious anti-piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies which want to trap people who illegally download content so that they can prosecute them.
Media Defender is known for its shady tactics. Besides launching video upload services, it also traps people into downloading fake torrents so that they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs.
Most of the IPs of these fake BitTorrent trackers are already blocked by blocklist software such as PeerGuardian. However, the company still manages to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who fall for the trap and download content.
Media Defender recently registered a new domain and launched a video upload / download site with a web 2.0 name: miivi.com.
