Researchers Uncover Serious Issues With BitTorrent Tracking

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A group of researchers at the University of Birmingham have uncovered just how widespread BitTorrent tracking is and how evidence gathered in this manner might not be admissible in court. You can download the whitepaper here.

Research by computer scientists at the University of Birmingham has found that the monitoring of online file sharing is more prevalent than previously thought. They also conclude that in many cases, the evidence gathered through monitoring is not admissible in court. The researchers’ findings include:

  • Massive monitoring of all of the most popular illegal downloads from the PirateBay has been taking place over the last 3 years.
  • On average an illegal file sharer, using BitTorrent to download the most popular content, will be connected to and have there IP address logged within 3 hours of starting a download.
  • Poor collection methods mean the evidence collected by monitors may not stand up in court.
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It's cool. The world governments will just step in and seize the domain names of the trackers.
 
Unless you unfortunately think you are an IP address, or enjoy paying unknown people lots of money because of a scary, confusing letter, you have little to worry about.
 
The average bit torrent user has to worry, but not those who know how to hide themselves. Things like VPNs and utilities like PeerBlock. After finding out that uTorrent is going to put ads in their application, I made the switch to Transmission-Qt for Windows. Transmission was always awesome on Mac and Linux, and is cleaner and has a feature I like a lot, which is a blocklist. Which almost makes having PeerBlock pointless.
 
Ashbringer said:
The average bit torrent user has to worry, but not those who know how to hide themselves. Things like VPNs and utilities like PeerBlock. After finding out that uTorrent is going to put ads in their application, I made the switch to Transmission-Qt for Windows. Transmission was always awesome on Mac and Linux, and is cleaner and has a feature I like a lot, which is a blocklist. Which almost makes having PeerBlock pointless.
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PeerBlock? You still believe in that? :p Oh you silly, silly person.
 
On average an illegal file sharer, using BitTorrent to download the most popular content, will be connected to and have there IP address logged within 3 hours of starting a download.
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*shakes head*
 
indirect monitoring, where indirect clues of the sharing activity of a peer are considered (e.g., its presence in the peer list of a tracker)
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Using "its" as the subject of the parenthetical clause is incorrect, because the authors don't appear to be referring to "clues" which is the subject of the previous clause. The authors appear to be referencing "peer" which isn't the subject, or even the object of the preceding clause, it's just a lowly noun modifier.

You asked for it...
 
Zarathustra[H];1039110262 said:
I don't usually point out grammatical errors, but...

Poor grammar in a comment about poor grammar? :p :D

That's pretty amusing :p
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You'll catch on.
 
ghost6303 said:
another good paper I was just reading... this one is used as a reference in the paper you posted.

"Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice"

http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/uwcse_dmca_tr.pdf
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do-you-trust-this-printer.jpg
 
N4CR said:
Unless you unfortunately think you are an IP address,
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The thing isn't about thinking you are an IP address it's getting a jury to think you are an IP address. There have been next to zero criminal charges brought up against pirates/thieves/whatever whether it is music, movies or video games. Almost everything done has been in a civil court and the sad thing is in civil court you are not innocent until proven guilty, you're simply a person who's have lawyers who twist words and laws to convince said jury you are in fact an IP address.
 
stop!theradio said:
So uh, why exactly did their printer receive a DMCA takedown notice?
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...why not just read the article?

but basically, you can lie to some torrent trackers and announce an IP that isnt your own (eg. the IP of a public printer at their school). then when the copyright police go and pull a list from the tracker of IPs that are connected to that torrent, it sends a list including the erronious IP of that printer (or anyone elses IP you want to implicate).

then they can just send takedown requests for all IPs they scraped... regardless of whether or not the IP was actually connected to the swarm, or was actually observed down/uploading any content. obviously a printer (the only device on that particular IP in the test) doesnt host or download content, nor would it connect to a torrent swarm.
 
A headline like "Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice" begs cliffnotes in layman's terms as opposed to reading 7 pages of a PDF containing legal mumbo jumbo.

With that said - thank you for the explanation ;)
 
One of the issues with BitTorrent tracking is that the IP-Address, being tracked, often, does not belong to the person doing the downloading/uploading.
 
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