UK Study: BitTorrent File-Sharing Monitored by Large Corporations

A recent paper published from the University of Birmingham has found that file sharing through the BitTorrent software is being heavily monitored by large Internet companies. The researchers studied hundreds of the most downloaded files on The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular torrent web sites, and found that all copyrighted material that was observed in the study was being monitored. The researchers suspect that these monitoring companies are acting on behalf of copyright holders and/or enforcers. The BitTorrent file sharing system works by facilitating connections between users that have a specific file (seeders) and users that wish to download the file (leechers). No files are actually stored on the torrent web site. At the heart of the system is the tracker, which houses a list of seeders and leechers relating to a specific file. Users on the tracker are identified by IP addresses. Whenever a user’s client software communicates to the tracker its interest in a particular file, the tracker facilitates a connection between the user and the IP addresses of the seeders and leechers that are sharing the file so that downloading can begin. The study found that the monitoring companies were engaged in both direct and indirect methods of monitoring. Indirect monitoring is simply obtaining the list of IP addresses relating to a file from the tracker. This method is less expensive than direct monitoring, but can lead to inaccurate results because IP addresses on the list are often not actually engaged in sharing the file. This can be due to tracker errors but is also sometimes attributed to the presence of random IP addresses intentionally placed on the tracker list to thwart monitors. Direct monitoring proceeds one step further than indirect monitoring by not only obtaining the list from the tracker but also connecting directly to those users to ensure the users are actually sharing the file. Regardless of the form of monitoring used, such activity may have legal hurdles to overcome before it may be tendered as evidence in a court. This type of evidence may contravene federal or provincial privacy laws and there are also the added issues related to authoritatively tracing an IP address to a specific individual. For more commentary, see: http://tinyurl.com/bn94rrk. Summary by: Thomas Wong