Murdoch's News International used hacking to undermine corporate rivals

[Cain]

Oh dear, shit just got serious again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723

A News Corporation company recruited a pay-TV "pirate" to post hacked details of a rival's secret codes online, BBC Panorama has found.

Lee Gibling set up a website in the late 1990s known as The House of Ill-Compute or Thoic.

He said NDS, a pay-TV smartcard maker, then funded expansion of the Thoic site and later had him distribute the set-top pay-TV codes of rival ITV Digital.

NDS denied this and said Thoic was only used to gather intelligence on hackers.

It says Lee Gibling worked as a consultant who was used legitimately to inform on hackers.

ITV Digital was first launched as "On Digital" and was set up as a rival to News Corporation's Sky TV in 1998.

But the widespread availability of the secret codes meant ITV Digital's services could be accessed for free by pirates. The company went bust in 2002.

The idea that News International had tons of hackers to hand, but only used them to spy on celebrities and the occasional public figure is, to put it bluntly, ludicrous.  I am just surprised it has taken this long for allegations of corporate espionage and sabotage to emerge.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Someone I know was once offered a job by some consulting firm as a "competitive researcher". Given what the friend did, doing research on competitors seemed like a bit of a stretch.

[Deepthroat Chopra]

The Australian Financial Review has just done a five page splash of this, with timelines and copious links. Four years of investigation, they allege. Someone is in the shit -

http://afr.com/p/business/marketing_media/pay_tv_piracy_hits_news_OV8K5fhBeGawgosSzi52MM

[Cain]

If anything is going to sink News International, it will be proof that these allegations are true.

[Junkenstein]

Murdoch backlash begins..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17547568

"Writing on Twitter, Rupert Murdoch took a clear swipe at the BBC, asserting "enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monopolies"."

His twitter account must be fucking hilarious. The total lack of irony here is startling.

""Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels," Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

"So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing," the 81-year-old tweeted."

Add this to the rumours that the current cruddas snafu was his initiative, Forcing those who dare to investigate him to suffer similar inquiries...

The Germans probably have a term for how to feel about this.

Cain, even if these were all proved totally true, I doubt this would stop NI. I'm fairly certain the reason he's still around is so he can be put out to pasture and blamed when everything does go to shit. New people, new direction new model totally not business as usual.