File-sharers' details logged with copyright companies 'within three hours'

  • University's three-year study shows an average of 'three secretive monitors' watching you download
  • 'Almost everyone that shares popular films and music illegally will be connected ... and will have their IP address logged'
  • '...What is done with this information in the long-term only time will tell'

If you use popular file-sharing programs to download films and music from the internet, the chances are that your computer's virtual address has been logged, a study has claimed.

Computer scientists at the University of Birmingham monitored what is perhaps the largest file sharing site, The Pirates Bay, over the last three years.

The team discovered that the most popular files on the site, often illegal copies of hit TV shows or films, were monitored by, on average, three secretive parties - including copyright enforcement agencies, security companies and even government research labs.

The monitors are believed to be logging the IP address of the user - potentially identifying where the file is downloaded to.

A user downloads files from The Pirate Bay (posed image): Research at the University of Birmingham suggests there users are being logged on behalf of copyright holders

A user downloads files from The Pirate Bay (posed image): Research at the University of Birmingham suggests there users are being logged on behalf of copyright holders

However, for anyone now worried about a knock at the door, the researchers say it is unlikely the evidence gathered would be sufficient to lead to court proceedings.

When a user chooses to download a file, the users join a 'swarm' of other users who are either downloading the file, of have successfully received it.

But by downloading a file, the user's IP address is available to other members of the swarm, and the Birmingham University team found monitors actively grabbing this information.

The researchers found that:

  • Massive monitoring of all of the most popular illegal downloads from the PirateBay has been taking place over the last three 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.

The research was carried out by developing software that acted like a BitTorrent file sharing client, and logging all the connections made to it.

The team say careful analysis of the logs revealed the presence and behaviour of file-sharing monitors.

WHAT ARE TORRENTS?

A torrent file by itself is just a small document, smaller than a Word document.

But when you download a torrent, you are then connected to a 'swarm' of other users who are either downloading the file, of have successfully received it.

As the users downloads, he or she in turn uploads the file back to other users, a clever innovation which, when used for legal purposes, ensures files stay available and that people can get the best download speed possible.

But by downloading a file, the user's IP address is available to other members of the swarm, and the Birmingham University team found monitors actively grabbing this information.

Proponents of the technology praises its speed, and there are plenty of legitimate uses, from downloading large software updates to non-copyrighted materials.

But, with media companies being slow on the digital uptake, many users turned to the technology for both the ease-of-use and the lack of a price-tag.

The report said: 'Most large-scale monitors hide their identity by using third party hosting companies to run the searches for them, but other monitors are identifiable as copyright enforcement organisations, security companies and even government research labs.

'The researchers also found that the use of third party hosting companies allowed the monitors to avoid "block lists",that attempted to stop known monitors from connecting to file sharers.'

Dr Tom Chothia, researcher at the School of Computer Science, said: 'This work reveals the full scale of the monitoring of illegal file sharers.

'Almost everyone that shares popular films and music illegally will be connected to by a monitor and will have their IP address logged. What is done with this information in the long term only time will tell'.

With the number of prosecutions of file sharers increasing there is a legitimate concern of the standard of evidence used in these cases.

Dr Chothia added: 'All the monitors observed during the study would connect to file sharers believed to be sharing illegal content and verify that they were running the BitTorrent software, however they would not actually collect any of the files being shared.

'Therefore, it is questionable whether the monitors observed would actually have evidence of file sharing that would stand up in court.'

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