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Microsoft-Funded Startup Aims To Kill BitTorrent Traffic

Posted by timothy on from the momma-said-knock-you-out dept.

TheGift73 writes "The Russian based 'Pirate Pay' startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads. Hollywood, software giants and the major music labels see BitTorrent as one of the largest threats to their business. Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup 'Pirate Pay' has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files."

5 of 601 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Interesting technology by Ignacio · · Score: 5, Informative

    casual piracy really is hurting the industry.

    Lots of "people" say this, but the evidence is lacking.

  2. Peer ban hammer by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 5, Informative

    "The company doesnâ(TM)t reveal how it works, but they appear to be flooding clients with fake information, masquerading as legitimate peers."

    All it would take is for a client to verify to data in the chunk (probably by it's MD5 or SHA), and if it's busted then try and download it again from the same peer. If it fails the second time then just ban the peer.

    But I imagine they already do this, don't they?

    --
    Summation 2
  3. This is how Peerblock comes in handy by Cito · · Score: 5, Informative

    Downloaded the blocklists for Pirate Pay as well as the antip2p blocklists.

    I tested on a poisoned swarm that had listed 5000 seeders (which were mostly mediadefender and pirate pay poisoners)

    Peerblock dumped over 4500 of the poisoned seeds from the torrent by blocking them and my torrent speed went from 20K/s download to 2500-3000K/s download

    So for companies like this I highly recommend picking up Peerblock and getting some blocklists, especially the antip2p blocklists.

    http://www.peerblock.com/

    Never ever again have problem with companies like Mediadefender or PiratePay and their ilk.

  4. Re:Protocol encryption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This service doesn't appear to be listening into BT chat between two parties. It is joining existing swarms and spreading misinformation to the swarm to confuse clients into halting their downloads.

  5. Re:Interesting technology by Mista2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    1: use encrypted peers
    2: use a block list to avoid contacting known tainted peers.
    3: if the torrents go down, resume downloading via usenet binary forums
    4: continual attacks on the open Internet will just drive it into a new darknet.
    The signal wants to be free 8)
    And I 100% agree with the oatmeal. If they would sell it to me DRM free, I'd buy it.