File-sharers' details logged with copyright companies within hours

[SUVE]

File-sharers' details logged with copyright companies within 3 hours

-University's three-year study shows an average of 'three secretive monitors' watching you download.
-'Almost everyone that shares popular films & music illegally will be connected ... & 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 & 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 & 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.

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 & 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, & logging all the connections made to it.

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

All the monitors observed during the study would connect to file sharers believed to be sharing illegal content & 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.

***dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2201611/If-steal-films-music-copyright-companies-IP-address-hours.html#ixzz26BiWDjEx