Warner Bros. Seeking Paid Student Interns to Spy on Torrent “Pirates”

Since SIGINT hasn’t done much in the fight against file-sharing, it’s been revealed that Warner Bros. is exploring a new, insidious HUMINT tactic that’s getting routinely blasted by tech types: Hiring students to lurk on torrent sites, issue takedown requests for WB and NBCU material, “performing trap purchases of pirated product,” and collect hard data on known pirates.

TorrentFreak got ahold of the job description:

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.

Lest you think that no student would betray the Gen Y ideal of all media being free and torrentable, Warner Bros. is sweetening the pot, should helping Warner and good ol’ Uncle Sam not be sufficient motivation: The internship pays$26,000 for a year’s lurking.

(TorrentFreak via Boy Genius Report)