Most of the files you grab are being logged and tagged

Sep 4, 2012 16:21 GMT  ·  By

Most pirates think they’re safe. While BitTorrent is inherently open, even more so maybe than other file-sharing networks, being that you're connected to any number of other people trying to get the same files, pirates seem to think that it's exactly this openness that makes them anonymous, the anonymity of the mob, if you will.

The fact that most pirates aren't targeted by copyright holders, the authorities or ISPs for their actions gives them a piece of mind. But perhaps this temporary state of laissez faire is exactly the reason why pirates should be worried.

Even though no one is suing them doesn't mean that no one is watching. Quite the opposite in fact, as a recent study discovered.

The researchers at the Birmingham University found (PDF) that, for popular torrents, anyone queuing up to download them would be tagged by at least one monitoring firm within three hours.

The research was carried out over the course of three years so you can expect the results to be fairly accurate and representative.

Anything in the top 100 most downloaded items will get you logged by a monitoring firm within hours. Less popular torrents are scanned less frequently, the researchers found.

The practice of BitTorrent monitoring is not exactly secret. There are several known companies that offer this type of services.

For the most part, large scale monitoring like this is just that, monitoring, the copyright holders that appeal to these services want to know who is downloading what, where "who" refers mostly to segments of the population rather than individuals. BitTorrent can provide great market research material.

However, the researchers discovered about 10 organizations that regularly monitor the swarm. Among them were known companies that do this, copyright-enforcement agencies or even other research projects. But six of the big ones were hard to track down and it was difficult to discover who's behind them.

More worrying for pirates is that the blocklists some use to try to bypass these monitors don't really work. All of this data is not really used to bring pirates to court, at least not now. It would make for poor evidence in any court. Still, there are people out there who know what you've been downloading for the past few years better than you do.