CommanderFrank
Cat Can't Scratch It
- Joined
- May 9, 2000
- Messages
- 75,399
Well, here’s a real shocker. In a recent study by the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory, it was documented that only 3% of a randomly tested BitTorrent downloads showed no copyright infringements. A similar study from Princeton showed only 1% of legal downloads….and those were probably the infamous Linux ISO distros.
The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. Additionally, 16 files were of ambiguous origin and 91 files were pornographic, which were unclear due to their oft-mislabeled nature. "Many files were tagged as amateur (suggesting no copyright infringement) but further inspection revealed that they were in fact infringing," wrote the researchers.