IT-savvy students recruited to infiltrate P2P pirates

If you can't beat 'em, infiltrate 'em. Warner Bros Entertainment UK is looking for some "IT literate" student interns with knowledge of P2P networks to help in anti-piracy efforts.

The PDF version of the internship job posting says the following:

Job description:
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.

Type of vacancy:
Student work placement

Degree required:
Studying a degree in a computing related discipline.

Salary:
£17,500

Location:
London

Starting date:
July 2010

Skills required:
IT literate with Internet experience, ideally including peer protocols, IRC, FTP, web forums and newsgroups. Programming experience with Java or JSP and PHP, Perl or Python would be a bonus. Strong organisation and communication skills.

So, the intern would be like a mole, establishing accounts on some sites, making trap purchases, and even sending takedown notices (oh, the power!).

Since many students actively participate in P2P networks, and not by catching folks, but rather by downloading themselves, it's difficult to say how many would be willing to turn in their fellow downloaders. Still, money is money.

If you want to be able to turn your downloading friends in, however, you'd better hurry. The job posting expires on March 31st.