ONE Blog

A University of Ballarat Internet Study into BitTorrent has found that close to 90% of all files or traffic distributed via the Peer to Peer protocol is illegal.

The study, conducted by the university’s Internet Commerce Security Laboratory sampled a thousand Bittorrent Files, which found over a million seeders (that is computers that have finished or are are in the process of downloading, and are sharing or uploading the file to others).

Not surprisingly, the study found 89.9% of all available files were illegal. The remaining 8.2% was found to be pornography.

Given that the pornography is also likely to be distributed without the approval of copyright holders, that could potentially bring the total of all files transmitted via peer to peer to around 98%, a staggering figure, and supports the view of ONE that BitTorrent is primarily used for illegal file sharing, or piracy.

The study was funded by Village Roadshow, who is a member of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), who are currently in court proceedings with a Pert-based Internet Service Provider for allegedly permitting it’s subscribers to distribute illegal content.

Other action recently taken by Copyright Holders includes copyright infringement notices served against over 5,000 individuals found to be sharing the movie “The Hurt Locker”. This is a first of it’s kind case, where Voltage Pictures, the movie studio behind the film ordered offenders pay $USD 1,500 to release themselves from a potential lawsuit, and whilst legal and privacy issues surround the action, it certainly scared some offenders into making the payment, and is a sign of the studio’s determination to protect their property.

The outcome of the AFACT case in Australia may also have potential to shake up the way copyright infringements are handled and pursued within Australia.