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Major Flaws Found In Recent BitTorrent Study
Caledfwlch writes with a followup to news we discussed a couple days ago about a study that found only 0.3% of torrents to be legal. (A further 11% was described as "ambiguous.") TorrentFreak looked more deeply into the study and found a number of flaws, suggesting that the researchers' data may have been pulled from a bogus tracker. Quoting:
"Here's where the researchers make total fools out of themselves. In their answer to the question they refer to a table of the top 10 most seeded torrents. ... the most seeded file was uploaded nearly two years ago (The Incredible Hulk) and has a massive 1,112,628 seeders. The torrent in 10th place is not doing bad either with 277,043 seeds. All false data. We're not sure where these numbers originate from but the best seeded torrent at the moment only has 13,739 seeders; that's 1% of what the study reports. Also, the fact that the release is nearly two years old should have sounded some alarm bells. It appears that the researchers have pulled data from a bogus tracker, and it wouldn't be a big surprise if all the torrents in their top 10 are actually fake."
They also take a cursory look at isoHunt, finding that 1.5% of torrent files come from Jamendo alone, "a site that publishes only Creative Commons licensed music."
I've compiled a list of the general nerd population's mentality of bittorrent here:
Up until research: But bittorrent is used for legit and legal things!
While discussing research: Dur hurrrr, so funny! It's almost all illegal!
Someone without any additional evidence refutes claims: Totally legit.
Don't get me wrong, even if there was anything the RIAA or MPAA could do about bittorrent itself, I would be against it (can't do much about a protocol anyway...), but I fully support them in their legal battles against sites that publish torrents of copyrighted material. You didn't pay for it, so you don't get to benefit from it.