100 P2P Users Upload 75% of Content

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers say that about 100 people (called pirates in the article) are responsible for 75 percent of all downloading on BitTorrent (and the same group does 66 percent of all uploading), and says that the way to shut down the p2p network is simply to disincentive that relatively small number of people. The other large group identified in the study were people (such as from copyright enforcement agencies) who uploaded fake content to frustrate other users. No suggestions were made about how to prevent people from uploading fake content — but it was suggested that the first group could have their ad revenue cut or could be heavily fined."

Comments

Contradiction

[DanTheStone]

Headline says uploading, summary and linked article say downloading. Headline is wrong.

100 accounts!!!

[Charliemopps]

Most of the major uploaders are actually groups of people. They have people responsible for getting content, for ripping content, for packaging and for uploading it. If any of these researchers had a clue what they were talking about they'd have realized that each one of these accounts is backed by at least 25+ people. Even if they did get the person doing the actual upload (which I doubt because that's what they specialize in) the reset of the group would just move on and find someone else to do the upload.

Patently Absurd--Run the numbers

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The idea that 100 people are responsible for even 10% of all content on P2P networks is laughable. Let's just consider torrents.

The Pirate Bay alone claims that it currently hosts 3,655,124 torrents. 75% of this is ~2.7 million, but lets say that means the 100 have uploaded 2 million torrents.

So in 10 years (bittorrent is less than a decade old), 100 users have uploaded 2 million torrents. That works out as 2000 torrents per user per year. That means each of these 100 people uploaded on average about 5.5 torrents every day.

5.5 torrents uploaded each day, every day for 10 years. That's what it would take to meet these researchers claims.

Assuming that these uploaders are the ultimate source of the illicit data, and that each torrent costs on average, say $10 (assumming they are largely movies and torrents), then each of these users is spending ~$55 a day on content meant for ripping and uploading. That's ~$20,000 a year, and that's before we even consider the time and resources put into ripping and uploading.

The numbers don't add up. Argue 1000 users and it still works out at $2000 a year and 4 torrents a week, both of which numbers I regard as still being too high. 10,000 users would seem far more feasible.