Sony, Universal and Fox Caught Pirating Through BitTorrent

New submitter Bad_Feeling sends in a followup to the story we discussed on Monday about a new site that scanned a few popular torrent trackers and linked torrents to IP addresses. The folks at TorrentFreak decided to check IP addresses belonging to major companies in the entertainment industry and published lists of pirated files from several, including Fox, Sony, and NBC Universal. Of course, they used the information to make a slightly different point than the industry usually does: "By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble, and for that reason we masked out the end of the IP addresses to avoid a witch hunt. An IP address is not a person, IP addresses can be shared among many people, and anyone can be behind a keyboard at any given time."

Comments

So they are uploading the movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

So surely the companies are distributing the movies to everyone. As they are the rights holder, it should be legal to download it?

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[HopefulIntern]

Not only that, but if they are indeed sharing, you could argue that all the stuff you have downloaded were from their IPs, so really the rightsholders were giving it out for free.

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[jpapon]

If they are downloading them, they are sharing them as well.

That's simply not true. They could have turned off uploading.

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.

confirms that even of the thousands of torrents I've downloaded over the years, my IP address comes up with zero records.

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[capnkr]

Are you accusing these fine, upstanding, all-taxes-and-royalty-paying media corporations of being greedy and/or acting solely in their own interests? Heh. Next thing you'll come up with is that they've intentionally uploaded corrupted files, stuffed the Obama administration and political process with their lobbyist sock puppets, or something else ridiculous like that...

For shame, you, you... pirate!

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[petermgreen]

Torrents work by establishing connections either peer to peer or peer to seed. Peers request blocks of the file over those connections, download them and then check their hashes against those in the torrent file.

Peers may perform some form of tit-for-tat to punish those who download without uploading but seeds aren't trying to download anything so can't perform tit-for-tat. So it's perfectly possible to download from a torrent while refusing to upload anything.

Oh and the stats collected by the tracker are completely dependent on the honesty of the clients that report them.

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[RubberMallet]

Tell that to the lawyers who are suing people. I received a letter from a law firm claiming to represent a movie studio. They stated that they had "proof" that my IP address was being used to download a movie called Split - I had never even heard of the movie prior to the letter. I took it to a lawyer and they are handling it.. it's been almost 18 months now... they challenged the idiots who are trying to sue me, and it turns out they blitzed out 10,000 letters in the city I live in... all claiming infringement on the same movie based on the IP addresses collected via torrent clients they were monitoring.

Proof? How do you prove it wasn't you? They say it was, and they have an IP address that may or may not have been yours at the time... they say that the IP address was at the time, involved in downloading said copyrighted material. Where's your defense? How do you prove it wasn't me (or anyone else) that was downloading the file. I can't prove it. All I can do is say.. I didn't do it, and if it goes to court... it's my word against theirs, and they have ISP records that appear to "prove" that I did download the movie.

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[gfreeman]

You live and learn. I go away for a few weeks and suddenly you can torrent without seeding and the speed of light is no longer a limit. Bloody technology, in my day .... blah blah blah .... lawns etc

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[KnightMB]

I don't know why this article at torrentfreak doesn't just list the IP address, it only took me all of 3 minutes to figure what the real IPs were.

For the world to see now:

208.84.225.10
United States (US), California, Culver City
Downloaded files
Conan the Barbarian 2011 ... 80p DTS AC3 dxva-LoNeWolf (12.19 GB) Nov, 2011
The Black Keys - Lonely Boy (7.50 MB) Nov, 2011
VA - Dubstep Meditations - 2010 [FLAC] (336.47 MB) Nov, 2011
{www.scenetime.com}Beavis ... port.480p.WEB-DL.x264-mSD (75.64 MB) Nov, 2011
[ www.TorrentDay.com ] - ... rls.S01E08.HDTV.XviD-P0W4 (183.19 MB) Nov, 2011

208.73.113.6
United States (US), Florida, Fort Lauderdale
Downloaded files
Beatport Halloween Trance 2011 {aSBo} (389.74 MB) Dec, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens [2010] dvd rip nlx (1.28 GB) Dec, 2011
Game of Thrones Season 1 Complete 720p (14.53 GB) Nov, 2011
2.Broke.Girls.S01E08.HDTV.XviD-P0W4.avi (174.89 MB) Nov, 2011
How.to.Make.It.in.America ... 20p.HDTV.x264-IMMERSE.mkv (1013.61 MB) Nov, 2011

216.205.224.10
United States (US), California, Valley Village
Downloaded files
Super 8 2011 1080p BRRip ... ac vice (HDScene Release) (3.70 GB)

Re:So they are uploading the movie?

[clarkn0va]

I trust we're not talking about the unlawful modification of a copyrighted work here.

Re:Dumb argument

[blackicye]

So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?

I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.

The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.

Then obviously we should ban cars.

Re:Wasn't that site a hoax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sorry that was me. I've been living in your roof for 3 years now.
How's Sally doing in school?

It's a TRAP!

[The Jynx]

FTA:

"In a response Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed. A very unlikely scenario, but one that will be welcomed by BitTorrent pirates worldwide. In fact, they’d encourage Sony, Universal and Fox to say something similar. After all, if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders."

This is quite a smart move. Getting these big organisations to explain this away will only add credence to the valid reasons that the public should be able to use to protect themselves. It doesn't matter what your personal opinion is on the morals of the situation the plain fact is an IP is not a person and the clearer this is made to the judges the better. Of course there is a the chance that the IPs were added manually by the guys who set the project up, they already admitted that there is still test data in there (do a check for 192.168.*.*) so it's far from perfect.

Re:This story is somewhat confused or editing was

[glop]

Actually it's pretty much a story if it's low-level employees doing it.
Come on! the MPAA and RIAA are always trying to get ISPs to police their customers and make sure nobody is using their connection to pirate stuff.
But then they can't even block their own freaking employees from going to torrents and pirating copyrighted works?

I mean, it should be easier to control employees than customers, no? So this makes the point of the ISPs that have long said that they can't monitor their customers and make sure they don't pirate.

Military folks love porn!

[gorzek]

I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.