Warner Bros: £17.5K to hunt internet pirates

 

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By Hani Megerisi

Posted on 29 Mar 2010 at 17:54

Warner Bros is recruiting an anti-piracy intern to hunt down internet pirates.

Duties include monitoring local internet forums for pirated Warner Bros and NBC Universal content, scanning the net for infringing files and maintaining and developing bots for internet link scanning.

The successful candidate’s duties also include “performing trap purchases of pirated product[s]”, keeping information on pirate websites, groups and users on file-sharing websites, and logging “data and other intelligence in forensic databases”.

Warner Bros refused to comment on the vacancy, except to confirm that it was a legitimate position

The year-long work placement is open to students who have experience with peer-to-peer protocols and programming.

“It is legal and it is a very common practice,” a spokesman for law firm Pinsent Mason told PC Pro. “There are a couple of potential legal issues but it looks like they’ve covered their bases. They have to log the problems in case it comes up in court… [and] they can only monitor their own content.

“It’s very common across numerous sectors – music, film, visuals – they use it to monitor infringements.”

Warner Bros refused to comment on the vacancy, except to confirm that it was a legitimate position.

This comes as the UK is currently embroiled in disputes over file-sharing and online copyright infringement, with the problem being a central part of the Digital Economy Bill. In the dispute, the BPI has come under fire for allegedly influencing potential policy on file-sharing, pushing for harder penalties on infringers.

If the internship sounds attractive, there's bad news. Prospective candidates have only two days left to hand in their applications, with a closing date of 31 March 2010. See the full job ad here.