MediaSentry

The record companies use a company called MediaSentry to collect evidence of file-sharing activities for them.

MediaSentry captures a list of all of the files a particular user possesses in his shared directory by taking what are called ‘screen shots’ of the user's shared directory. Screen shots are actual pictures of the screens that MediaSentry and other users on the network view when accessing the user's shared directory. In other words, these screen shots are actual pictures of all of the files available for downloading from the user's shared directory.
 * MediaSentry searches for Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings over the network, views the files that a user has in his shared directory, obtains the internet protocol ("IP") address and screen name of that user, and downloads a sampling of the copyrighted recordings contained on that user's shared directory. In doing so, MediaSentry uses the very program employed by the alleged infringing user.


 * Once MediaSentry has a list of all of the files contained on a user's shared directory, it searches the list for Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings. If the list includes some of Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings, MediaSentry will download a sampling of those recordings from the user's shared directory on the user's computer.