Most Torrent Downloaders Are Monitored, Study Finds

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Most Torrent Downloaders Are Monitored, Study Finds

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 4, 2012 @03:36AM from the you-ah-being-vatched dept.

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."

16 of 309 comments (clear)

Re:VPNs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 03:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

you really live in quite the bubble if you think MOST people are using VPNs...
Don't care by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 03:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Better products by Wowsers · 2012-09-04 03:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Better products by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 04:03 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yep.. if you don't like the terms the artist provides the content under, you can just do what ever you feel like.
  Like when Linksys used Linux for it's routers, and didn't provide the source code... the FSF went after them for it, and they eventually settled and provided the source.
  And that was their mistake. They should never have settled or provided source. They should have just told the FSF to fuck off. GPL non-compliance makes for a better product!
2. Re:Better products by Baloroth · 2012-09-04 04:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  OK, you're right. They aren't illegal. That is to say, they aren't illegal under the letter of the law (because they paid a lot of money to help write those laws), they're legal ones that write the laws that they then use to bully, intimidate, and extort individuals to pay them money while ensuring no one can form competition against them.
  They totally are a cartel, though, and a thoroughly scummy one at that.
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
3. Re:Better products by DCstewieG · 2012-09-04 04:44 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I was stunned when I watched the Hunger Games Blu-ray this weekend as what I thought was the lead up to the main menu in fact lead to a large message: "Previews for Your Mandatory Viewing". This was a purchased copy mind you, not a rental version. Of course now the Main Menu button was disabled, fortunately the chapter skip button was not (it must not be able to or it would have been).
  This button disabling shit is unbelievable, even the Stop button. Yes, the Stop button.
  To paraphrase John Siracusa, everything about Blu-ray sucks, except the AV quality, which you can't get anywhere else (legally).
4. Re:Better products by girlintraining · 2012-09-04 09:25 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yep.. if you don't like the terms the artist provides the content under, you can just do what ever you feel like.
  Small problem: The artist has no say in how the content is distributed. Take Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Ever seen it on TV? Can you find a copy on the internet? As a matter of fact, it's very rare to do so because Martin Luther King's dysfunctional family wants money for it. A seminal work, part of our cultural heritage, and easily one of the top 100 speeches ever given in the United States, can't be shown in public because now that King is dead, his family owns the copyright.
  I do not think King, if he were still alive, instead of his shit-eating family, would say that people who air his speech should give him or his descendants royalty payments. I think, in fact, he may have been rather shocked at how his own family is participating in this new form of slavery and oppression of his people -- by preventing his own message of peace and goodwill from being heard by others.
  So would you propose that we allow his speech, and that of all civil rights leaders who have died and the rights to their words passed on to their greedy children or a trust, corporation, etc., be striken from history? Because that's what copyright law has done here, and in many, many other cases.
  Our children don't know much about history because it's all been revised, and then copyrighted, and then sold off piece by piece. Their only culture is a collection of brand names, pop music, and shitty internet memes. You can thank copyright law for that... it has cut off our access to the past, to our own history and culture... and most of the damage is irreparable.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Re:This just in.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 03:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

> 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 ???????????
Re:VPNs by Karlt1 · 2012-09-04 03:57 · Score: 5, Funny

"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.
Analytics by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 04:02 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Re:This just in.... by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2012-09-04 04:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
Re:This just in.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 04:18 · Score: 5, Funny

Obviously you're not a golfer.
Re:This just in.... by Mr_Silver · 2012-09-04 04:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Personally, there haven't really been any movies or music made in the past 15 years that are even worth downloading for free, I'll never understand why people bother wasting drive space.
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)

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Re:Name the 6 entities! by CanHasDIY · 2012-09-04 04:29 · Score: 5, Funny

"But six entities could not be identified because they were masked through third party hosting."
NSA
FBI
FAPSI
GCHQ
CSE
GCSB
Please tell me FAPSI has something to do with porn...

--
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Re:This just in.... by Cito · 2012-09-04 05:31 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Re:This just in.... by rullywowr · 2012-09-04 05:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Cito (1725214), your IP has been logged.