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Most Torrent Downloaders Are Monitored, Study Finds
derekmead writes "A new study from Birmingham University in the U.K. found that people will likely be monitored within hours of downloading popular torrents by at least one of ten or more major monitoring firms. The team, led by security researcher Tom Chothia, ran software that acted like a BitTorrent client for three years and recorded all of the connections made to it. At SecureComm conference in Padua, Italy this week, the team announced that they found huge monitoring operations tracking downloaders that have been up and running for at least the entirety of their research. According to the team's presentation (PDF), monitors were only regularly detected in Top 100 torrents, while monitoring of more obscure material was more spotty. What's really mysterious is who all of the firms are. Chothia's crew found around 10 different monitoring entities, of which a few were identifiable as security companies, copyright firms, or other torrent researchers. But six entities could not be identified because they were masked through third party hosting. Now, despite firms focusing mostly on just the top few searches out there at any given time, that's still a massive amount of user data to collect and store. Why? Well, if a reverse class-action lawsuit were feasible, those treasure troves of stored data would be extremely valuable."
no, most normal people don't care
you really live in quite the bubble if you think MOST people are using VPNs...
Why is that mindblowing? It's exactly the attitude people have when speeding and just as true.
And there have been some worthwhile films made in the last 15 years from Hunger (re IRA, not the Hunger Games bullshit) to El Perro.
And sometimes I like to unwind with bullshit entertainment, not something deep and clever.
(Although Slashdot's almost as good for that.)
Scare tactic away. I'm going to keep downloading.
I can get a product the media assholes won't give me at ANY PRICE! For free.
It's not even up for debate anymore. I'm not listening to the media mafia anymore. Wrong? Illegal? Immoral? Stealing from the artists?
Sure whatever you say fucknuts. I'm going to keep downloading anyway. And teach other people how to as well.
Go try to convince and have an arguement with someone who still cares. I'm going to do whatever i want.
Why? Because fuck you thats why.
And no matter what i do. I'll never be as big of a douche as anyone from the media mafia. Never.
One day the illegal media cartels might actually get it, that the "pirates" provide a better product. No adverts for other films (Disney is top culprit but there are others), no trailers accusing you of being a crook despite buying a legit DVD / BluRay, no DRM... no regiuon coding, in other words, it just works. The illegal media cartels just p people off with their crappy product.
The problem is, the politicians in many countries that can sort this out have been bought and paid for by the illegal media cartels, so expect no change to their tactics.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
> there haven't really been any movies or music made in the past 15 years that are even worth downloading for free
um... either you are deaf & blind, a troll, an idiot, an illiterate barbarian or you have a vintage porn fetish... neither of these validates your point since there are TONS of good movies made every year. They just don't play in your local theatre, but they ARE available as a torrent.
I would say that torrents are about to save the movie industry. If only independent filmmakers would realize this and skip the whole distribution channel... For instance in Belgium, if you would take the government sponsoring out of the equation, 95% of all movies are a loss. I wish they would simply release torrents and add a nice donation banner at the end of the movie. I would gladly donate (1 euro if it is a shitty movie, 3 if it was okay, 5 or more if it was awesome) !
there is NO way of doing this legally...
the most baffling part here is that it is SO FUCKING EASY TO DO ! It takes like 10 minutes to make that banner, and 10 seconds to start a torrent. WTF is stopping them ???????????
Personally, there haven't really been any movies or music made in the past 15 years that are even worth downloading for free,
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man!"
Oh wait, that movie's not 15 years old. So you wouldn't get it.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
"I would assume that most people are using VPNs these days, even for casual web surfing."
The skewed perspective of slashdot never ceases to amaze me.
For my part I don't really know who to trust. How do I know that PrivateInternetAccess is a legit service, and that they are really doing what they say they do? If I'm going to pay for a VPN service, I definitely want to be sure that they are solid.
A friend of mine works for a UK company (musicmetric.com) that provides artist popularity data to record companies and other entities (top list providers, etc). One of their data points are monitoring of music torrents. Note that this data is not for the purpose of lawsuits but just to see which artists/albums/songs are popular in different countries and regions (even down to city level using geoip lookup). Their spiders/crawers/monitors they have deployed are, AFAIK, hosted by a 3rd party hosting provider. I also know there's another competing company in the UK doing the same thing.
Nothing worth stealing, though.
"But six entities could not be identified because they were masked through third party hosting."
NSA
FBI
FAPSI
GCHQ
CSE
GCSB
sudo make me a sandwich
Not a bad idea actually. I really liked face2face feature in sneakernet. Going to a friend and get the latest CD on tape (some of my friends had 'auto-reverse'!) and then go - with the walkman playing my latest freshest copy - to other friends who copied the tape for themselves to their tape (some of those had 'doublespeed'!). Sit down and have a coffee, talk a little until the tape was done. Reverse both tapes. Have another coffee... Great times!
I wouldn't necessarily call it sneakernet though. I would call it a SOCIAL NETWORK!!
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
So only people downloading the latest movies/music are monitored.
WTF is stopping them ???????????
I make open source software. I have a donation link on my site and in my app. I have thousands of people using my app every day.
In an average month, I receive $3 in donations*.
That's what's stopping them - people love to talk about how they don't really want this stuff for free - they only want to be able to pay a reasonable amount of money to the people who create it. But the majority of these people rarely put their money where their mouth is when actually given the opportunity to do so.
I realize I'm comparing software and entertainment, but I haven't yet seen anything that tells me people would behave differently. If they're not voluntarily paying for software that helps them do their jobs every day, I don't see the likelihood of paying for a couple hours of one-time entertainment as being very high.
* Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to profit off of this version of my software and I appreciate even the $1.00 donations. But the data here illustrates my point nicely.
Obviously you're not a golfer.
Well, if a reverse class-action lawsuit were feasible,
No, my EULA explicitly says you drop your right for a class-action lawsuit.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Well, no, it's not worth actually going into someone's cinema/store/house and walking off with a physical copy of the film.
Downloading is another matter.
lol@my troll mod. Did I annoy someone in the past who has mod points today or something?
Well, what is the disadvantage? Why would you NOT want to use one?
Because unless you're running your own VPN, there's no proof or guarantee that whoever is running it isn't farming your data anyway, and just lying to you about it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That old Slashdot chestnut.
According to IMDb's these are the highest ranked films in their top 250 that were made in the last 15 years and scored 8/10 or higher:
The Dark Knight (2008), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Fight Club (1999), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Inception (2010), The Matrix (1999), City of God (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Memento (2000), American History X (1998), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Spirited Away (2001), American Beauty (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010), The Departed (2006), The Pianist (2002), Life Is Beautiful (1997), WALL-E (2008), The Lives of Others (2006), Amelie (2001), Gladiator (2000), The Prestige (2006), The Green Mile (1999), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Untouchable (2011), L.A. Confidential (1997), Avengers Assemble (2012), Oldboy (2003), Princess Mononoke (1997), A Separation (2011), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Downfall (2004), Batman Begins (2005), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Up (2009), Snatch. (2000), Gran Torino (2008), The Big Lebowski (1998), Sin City (2005), No Country for Old Men (2007), Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Sixth Sense (1999), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), The King's Speech (2010), Warrior (2011), The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), Into the Wild (2007), Black Swan (2010), Good Will Hunting (1997), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Donnie Darko (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), Million Dollar Baby (2004), There Will Be Blood (2007), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The Artist (2011), Amores Perros (2000), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Mary and Max (2009), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Howl's Moving Castle (2004), District 9 (2009), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Ratatouille (2007), Infernal Affairs (2002), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), The Truman Show (1998), The Wrestler (2008), Ip Man (2008), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Star Trek (2009), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003), Mystic River (2003), Shutter Island (2010), Let the Right One In (2008) and Big Fish (2003)
Are you really trying to say that none of these are worth watching?
In fact, the only merit to your argument is that all the films that scored higher than 8.8 were made before 1997:
The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), 12 Angry Men (1957) and Schindler's List (1993)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I'm behind seven proxies.
Yea, we know -
Six of them are ours.
Yours,
The NSA
Block lists don't work. The lists are overly broad and include a lot of ranges that are clearly not an entity you need to be worried about. Also, it's unlikely that the content holders would do their own research... it's going to be outsourced contractors that clearly would know the value in swapping out IPs.
I occasionally drop 10 bucks on DwarfFortress. But that's because it's unique, there's nothing out there like it and I'm paying to see it keep getting made.
Once monitored, who knows what else they may be doing with your IP address and it MAY NOT BE YOU. Go to somebody's yard use their open Wifi and touch just one of the Top monitored files and they'll get on the monitor list.
Hate your neighbor? use their Wifi to torrent a bunch of movies currently out in theaters. Six strikes...they probably won't even realize it is the Wifi before being banned by the local monopoly. (In my area both ISPs signed up with the content Mafia so you are probably banned from internet almost completely.)
Does anybody think it is time to start connecting their neighborhoods on their own?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Don't you mean "raping"?
That comment and your sig are offensive to those people who have gone through the horror of having their copyrights ignored.
I will pay $1 to $10, without much thought for something in the android market.
I just hit one button, and the payment is done.
Anything much more than 1-click, becomes work, and it's not even worth bothering, just to pay a few bucks.
If I have to click a donate button, then get redirected to paypal, then sign in, then verify the amount and from which funding source, then click ok, then get rerouted back, then check later to make sure that the transaction didn't go sideways.
android market. with all it's downsides, mostly just works.
build a square, make it attractive, provide a few ammenities, provide a bit of security and stability, and merchants will come, then the buyers.
you've provided a water fountain, where the drinking is easy, but the paying is an asswhip.
make the drinking a tad more difficult, and the paying very easy.
allow users to sample a taste with ease, then make it easy for them to pay for a full helping.
that's what a good market does.
it's not stealing, copying there is no theft and it was already ruled by high courts in switzerland that people that pirate wouldn't have paid for it in the first place so there is no sales lost.
http://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/
I've pirated and cut cable since 1996 when i started off downloading off passed around FTP servers and Newsgroups.
I still use newsgroups and torrents nowdays and a Western Digitial WDTV Live plus with a usb wifi adapter plugged in to stream downloaded movies off a shared drive on my lan to my tv.
I pirate television due to spam, I hate a 30 minute television show is streatched to 1 hour due to commercials every 3 minutes and they play so many commercials they actually have to remind you what you were watching "will be right back with xxx show in a few minutes"
got fed up with spam in 96 so cut cable and pirated ever since, where I live we have 1 local theater within a 50 mile radius and ticket prices are 13.50 for 1 person, if I take my family that's just over 40 bucks in tickets only plus another 10-20 for popcorn/soda FUCK THAT.
I pirate movies so I can enjoy them at home with my family on my surround sound (7.1 bluray rips ftw on http://kat.ph/ and can actually save money.
Why would I pay the same price to buy the movie on Bluray to go see it in a stinky, noisy, stuffy theater? movies are to be enjoyed at home alone or with loved ones, not in a gymnasium full of strangers lip smacking, gorging, laughing, glow of phone texting, etc.
Movie theaters in the 60, 70's and even 80's were a social experience, people dressed up in suits and ties, women in fancy dresses to go out to the movies, it became a social event almost as going to a church in a way. But the 90's then 2000's came long that made home theater systems as good or better quality than theaters and we now have it how it's supposed to be, movies should be an intimate enjoyment, an escape from reality which is better at home or with loved ones than a gym full of noisy, nasty, strangers.
so I'll pirate till I die :)
http://kat.ph/
http://thepiratebay.se/
http://h33t.com/
newsgroups which are free since my ISP offers them freely
there are still FTP sites floating around as well still used
fuck spam television and mpaa
Theater system is dead, Strangers all up in some gymnasium to watch a movie is a dead model. It's time to adapt or die.
Where I work, we have monthly-ish meetings that also includes watching a classic type of "Blood On The ____" workplace safety film. Naturally, at the beginning, there is the FBI warning about stealing imaginary property...
I really do hope to meet an example of someone who pirates safety films: a thieving cheapskate who is concerned for his employees well-being.
Cito (1725214), your IP has been logged.
If you mean "MS Office", I use LibreOffice instead because it's better, not because it's free.
I have zero problem paying for something good. I donate to every non-ad supported website that I regularly use, and many that are ad-supported (like Slashdot). I am fortunate in that I have sufficient disposable income that I can do this.
However, most people have considerably less disposable income as a percentage of their income than they did 15 years ago. The reason you're seeing more "free" content is because the realization is growing in the corporate world that "Oops, we succeeded in limiting the power of the middle and working class but now they don't have any money to buy our shit." Of course, paying people more is harder than trying to come up with cockamamie "free2play" business models.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the working and middle classes (here in America) were stronger and richer than they had ever been. People were retiring with money, leaving money to their kids, expecting political power. If you go back to that period and look at the Wall Street Journal editorial pages you will see that this was a growing concern of the people at the top economically. Minorities were becoming more powerful, more prosperous. Women were becoming more powerful, more prosperous. The god-kings of Wall Street didn't want to share space at the table and "supply-side" was invented. To cement the trend, "EZ Credit" was invented, where not only could wealth be diminished, but future wealth, generational wealth could also be diminished.
Now people don't have money. Credit has dried up. No more money left in the real estate ATM. My guess as to why new game consoles have not come out in the past several years is that there is because Sony and Microsoft's market research has told them people can't afford them in numbers like the original PS3 and Xbox.
So now the model has changed from the $199 application to the $1.99 "app". The cable TV providers are all looking for other income streams. Today, starting salary for an auto worker, in real dollars, is about $13. In 1978, the starting salary for an auto worker, in 1978 dollars, was about $17. If you adjust for inflation, it would be like a current-day auto worker making about $5/hr. Of course we're going to have to see a lot more of these "innovative" business models.
We're going to see a lot more changes like this in the marketplace as we move toward a minimum wage society.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yep, they frequently have the sound turned up way too loud.
Then add in screaming kids, sticky floors, crappy seats that don't let you get closer to your date, horrifically overpriced and crappy food/drinks, and insane ticket prices (you can buy a Blu-Ray for less than a single ticket), and you have to wonder why anyone even bothers with the theater any more. I will note however, that the budget cinemas ("dollar theaters", though the one here is $3 I think) are a much better deal, since the price is so much lower.
It must be exciting for them to monitor me downloading Fedora or openSUSE.
Really? Not in the 60's 70's and 80's that I lived in. What was different was that people were better behaved.
If where you lived was anything like where I lived, part of that was because the movie theatres had a guard walking around, and if you were disruptive, he shone a torch in your face and the second time told you to leave. If you were really obnoxious, they would snap a photo of you and ban you for a year.
These days, they don't want to pay that guy's salary, and don't really care what kind of experience you have. The main thing is to be able to sell overpriced popcorn and soda.
Nothing worth stealing, though.
We are sorry. Because your IP is not a US IP, you cannot view or purchase this content. You will have to wait for a year or so before this shit is available in your country at 3 times the price or more. We like to fuck you in the ass as much as possible. Well, if you're asking me, they are inducing people to donwload illegally. I and many users would love to pay a fair price and download a legal HQ copy of my favorite show, only I have to use a VPN connection to watch certain content in the US, like Hulu, or purchase certain items that I like. It seems that borders even exist on the Internet. Soon you'll need a green card just to connect to an American server. It's disgusting what they are up to. So fuck all trackers and attack or DDoS the shit out of them. I want them off my Internet.
Of course cheaper isn't a reason on it's own, otherwise you are condoning stealing because that too is cheaper.
The vendors' selection of a price point is something that has gone astray here. And it's linked to competition from other entertainment devices - music and video are a smaller fraction of the pie than they used to be.
I'm willing to pay up to euro10 for a DVD, and less than that for a CD. This means I wait several months (or a year) after a new release before it reaches my price point. DVDs typically start out here at euro20+ and some CDs are amazingly priced at euro20+ when "hot". After a few months, one has a better view on whether a CD/DVD is worth getting for the long term. There was a time I'd pay the crazy prices being asked for new releases, but it passed a long time ago.
A few years ago, a survey (maybe in The Economist magazine) indicated that people were spending about the same fraction of their income on entertainment as they had 25 years earlier. However, the share taken by music and video (predominantly VHS then, DVD now) had declined significantly, while that taken by gaming and suchlike had grown, and dining out etc. had not changed much. Clearly, if we're expected to buy just as much music and video, the price has to be more attractive. They're competing with PlayStations, internet, and suchlike for money and attention.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
why are you pirating bluray rips, when obviously they are available for purchase. I'm sure you might have a reason other than because it's cheaper, but you didn't give it.
One very good reason in my opinion is this this
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Pirated copy != lost sale
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun