Warner Bros. looking for UK students to help in anti-piracy efforts
Today we learned via THR that in the past few weeks a whopping 20,000 individuals torrenting movies have been sued by the Washington-based US Copyright Group, and they are planning on suing another 30,000 soon. It really makes you think twice before even considering illegal downloading.
In the UK, though, Warner Bros. is recruiting tech-savvy students to use their powers for good. They are weeding through the pool of applicants in order to find “Anti-Piracy Interns.” The best part? They’ll actually get paid!
The job will begin in July and go for a year, during which they’ll be paid £17,500. Right now, that’s equivalent to about $26,400. Torrent Freak posted a PDF with the job details, which describes the position as follows:
“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.”
Is it just me or does the job sound like you’re getting paid to be a narc? That’s where I’m torn. I’m not sure that $26,400 a year would be enough for me if what I’m doing leads to some dumb 21-year-old getting sued for $80,000 he doesn’t have. Then again, it is illegal and college is expensive. Either way, it’s smart of Warner Bros. to recruit students, since young people probably have a better understanding of illegal downloading. After all, depending on their age, they probably don’t remember the world before Napster and BitTorrent.
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