Muso.bot: Another copyright bot for hire.

[lucia]

I've been compiling a database of things that got blocked by ZBblock. I noticed a connection that was blocked -- and it looks like an image copyright enforcement bot.  The useragent string is:

Mozilla/ 5.0 (compatible; musobot/ 1.0; info@muso.com; +http:/ / www.muso.com)

Their services include

Piracy detection right to the furthest corners of the Internet, simultaneously scanning millions of blogs, message boards, streaming sites, websites and P2P channels.

Translation: The will send their bot to scrape your site.

Disrupt & destroy illegal file distribution by quickly removing each and every instance of illegal files discovered, with a market leading average removal time of 3.5 hours and over 50% instantly removed once discovered.

Translation... they claim they are going to remove illegal files. How? This sounds like it might not even be legal-- and it sure is scary.   
(OK.. it later reads "Automatically issue takedown notices direct to source - cyberlockers, p2p torrents, streaming and auction sites". If that's the mechanism for removing in 3.5 hours, it's not quite so scary!)
Other claims here
http://www.muso.com/home/services/

As I noted: I blocked this thing. The rule that blocked it was that it was using Amazon to crawl through the site. But I'm not blocking by user agent.  I advise others to do similarly. (Note: Bots can fake user agents, and the company can use other hosts. So this might not be effective. But if their business plan is to burn up my cpu and bandwidth, I'd prefer to make them do it using a high cost service rather than lower cost amazon.)

[Oscar Michelen]

Thanks for the info lucia!

[jot]

I have also blocked their domain and what IP addresses I could find for them on our firewall and on the web server. 

I need to do more research on these fake user agents has I have noticed a huge influx of unusual traffic like that.  Figured it was hacking attempts and now I know.