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Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal
Andorin writes "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright, though the exact percentage is unclear. The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory of the University of Ballarat in Australia has conducted a study and found that 89% of files examined were in fact infringing, while most of the remaining 11% were ambiguous but likely to be infringing. Ars Technica summarizes the study: 'The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. ' The study brings with it some other interesting statistics; out of the 1,000 files, 91 were pornographic, and approximately 4% of torrents were responsible for 80% of seeders. Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found."
They ultimatly found approx. 1% to be legal.
The Princeton piece makes for an interesting read because they do a good job of breaking down their catagories and providing some detailed context. For instance, 53% of the porn was in English and 5% of the software was Spanish language. Just really rich data for anyone into this kind of analysis. The final paragraph on how they decided if content was illegal reads:
Just so you know, University of Ballarat of a corporate whore. I went there for a while before I realised what a fucking joke it was. Not saying that this means the results are bullshit but it's certainly food for thought.
This article explains why the above poster is correct.
Disagree != mod troll.
I own a small hosting firm out of Chicago. Most of our business is made up of Fortune 500 clients and government contracts. We have a wholly owned subsidiary that only does adult entertainment (for obvious reasons). The adult content alone chews through almost 13-16Gb/s (roughly. We get transit from several providers but also peer at two exchanges). Fun stuff. It helped having worked in Van Nuys on the production side years ago. Ahh memories (horrible, horrible ones at that).
I'm actually a little disheartened by the lack of legal torrent distribution. It's a great medium for getting your content out there, people! If you're doing a straight HTTP server for your files, you could be saving a lot on bandwidth (and helping people to get your content faster) by setting it up as a torrent.
The ______ Agenda
Ok- NOBODY distributes to tens of thousands of people over the Internet. You might distribute parts of hundreds of movies over time but that isn't the same thing. Sharing movies has changed. It's not happening the way it used to thats for sure. It's easier to get together with friends now then it use to be too. Entertainment is also more common then it use to be. There isn't a boring moment these days with the ample entertainment available. Back in 1986 entertainment options were severely limited. You didn't have Internet, movies streaming into the home, tv late at night at least not like we do now, and lots of cheap gaming system options. Sure- you had some gaming systems- but not like today. With all the entertainment it is no wonder that there is less money going to any one entertainment industry. New industries emerged or gobbled up at least at a minimum some of that $$$. We have communications providers and hosting providers. We have a gaming industry that has expanded to the-30/40 adult crowd that once only were attracting kids/young adults. And so on.
No, as they went out and found the torrent files themselves, which while blizzard uses the bittorrent protocol, it doesn't use the files. A torrent file is just a list of trackers anyways, so instead the probably put that into the code or a config file somewhere.
Nope. While Blizzard uses a custom BT client, you can find a standard BitTorrent file in the clients files. This file works just fine with other BT clients.
for example see Pioneer One.
Pioneer One
Hey thanks, never heard of it before but I'm now seeding the first episode.
And to add my own current favorite free movie to the list, check out Sita Sings the Blues - a free animated movie that Roger Ebert practically gushed over. It's available in a bunch of different formats, I'm currently seeding the 4GB 1080p matroska edition myself.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What are you infringing if you can't buy the file at any price?
You're infringing on the right of the owner to distribute it as they please within the legal rights to the work.
Sorry if this bothers you but if a band wants to keep their album as a single work instead of being distributed piecemeal that is their right. If an artist decides they want to let their work be protected but not distributed that also is their right.
don't like the law? Change it. Don't make up your own set of rules as you go and act like it's legal. The law and commonsense don't always coincide. That's the breaks. Or are you ready to deny an artist the right to see how their work is distributed? Sure, you can make the lame argument that a work out of print should be free but that's not the law. It might sound illogical but that doesn't give you the right. If logic played into this at all squatters all over the world should have free run of properties abandoned by their neglagent owners. See how that stands up in court if you have the balls.
Did you host your fag pr0n on linsux servers?
We ran Irix on SGI machines.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How much of private gun ownership results in legal use?
Self-defense use: Between 100,000 and 2.5 million incidents per year, depending on who you ask and how they define their terms and gather their statistics. The low end of that range is from the anti-gun organizations, like the Brady Campaign. Most academic researchers get numbers towards the high end of that range.
Hunting use: Huge
Target shooting use: Seriously huge
I see what you were trying to get at, but you need a better example. Legal uses of firearms vastly outnumber illegal uses.
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