Warner Bros. needs interns to spy on file-sharers

At Warner Bros., it doesn't take a hardened copyright cop to gather intel on file sharers, just a university student with a bit of training and a modest salary.

TorrentFreak spotted a job at University of Manchester career services for "anti-piracy intern" with Warner Bros. The year-long internship begins in July and pays 17,500 pounds, or roughly $26,000.

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The position requires students to visit chat rooms, Internet forums and private Bit Torrent sites to find pirated content from Warner Bros. and NBC Universal, with the goal of gathering  "information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities." Students also get to scan for links to copyrighted material, send out takedown requests and keep a log of responses. Another interesting part of the internship entails "performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results," suggesting that students will get to do some sting operations on behalf of the movie studios.

Warner Bros. seeks someone who is "IT literate with Internet experience," and prefers a candidate with computer programming skills. The right person will also be studying for a degree in a computer-related discipline.

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The big question is how Warner Bros. uses the information its interns gather from file sharing Web sites. Perhaps it's just educational, providing the studio with data on how easily or how often its movies are illegally shared. On the other hand, it's never been clear to me how studios actually find individual file sharers that it pursues in court or through Internet service providers. Infiltrating file sharing groups and gathering intel could be crucial.

All of this makes me wonder whether the role of anti-piracy intern crosses an ethical boundary. On one hand, these file-sharing groups are breaking the law, and they've erred by letting studio operatives into their circle. On the other hand, Warner Bros. isn't law enforcement. Still, they're responsible for protecting their copyrighted materials. I feel bad for whoever gets the job.

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