Only 0.3% of Files on BitTorrent Confirmed to Be Legal

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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Well, here’s a real shocker. In a recent study by the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory, it was documented that only 3% of a randomly tested BitTorrent downloads showed no copyright infringements. A similar study from Princeton showed only 1% of legal downloads….and those were probably the infamous Linux ISO distros. :D

The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. Additionally, 16 files were of ambiguous origin and 91 files were pornographic, which were unclear due to their oft-mislabeled nature. "Many files were tagged as amateur (suggesting no copyright infringement) but further inspection revealed that they were in fact infringing," wrote the researchers.
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Somehow I've had to use BTR a few times, but it actually was to just get a legal file... (that was then heavily scanned & scrutinized by a selection of AV software...)
 
I am shocked! I thought people only downloaded Linux and keyboard drivers over BT.
 
though im not a fan of studies like these. id be surprised really if only 0.3% is confirmed to be illegal :p
 
I'd really like to see exactly how they come up with 3%... (then I would poke holes in thier logic...)
 
Negative Decibel said:
I'd really like to see exactly how they come up with 3%... (then I would poke holes in thier logic...)
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Um, it's in the link to the article. Highlights:

University of Ballarat in Australia
Researchers from the university's Internet Commerce Security Laboratory scraped torrents from 23 trackers
The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used
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It's easy to check the methodology. Go to your favorite "linux" torrent site, go into a section, sort by seeds, copy down the top files. Repeat for other sections and for other sites. Sort out the top 1000 and start a-checkin'.

Seriously, if you're surprised by what you find, I have a bridge to sell you in NY.
 
They're only getting their samples from torrent files though. What happens when you factor in services that use a Bittorrent back end (like game patches and some streaming services)? How big of a difference would that make?
 
Torrents are a legitimate means of file distribution. However while I do think that their percentages are low, I believe that most torrents are copyright infringing in some way.
 
Um, the most popular torrents are obviously going to be the illegal ones? They will be popular movies games whatnot. The legal torrents probably won't have as many people looking for them. The study is flawed in that they have to take a random sample of all torrents offered in order to measure what % of content offered is legal. A study of outliers is just that, an outlier.
 
SockMan! said:
They're only getting their samples from torrent files though. What happens when you factor in services that use a Bittorrent back end (like game patches and some streaming services)? How big of a difference would that make?
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This is the big problem with all these studies. They goto a piracy website and claim torrents are used to infringe... No shit, you went to a piracy website.

But bittorrent and p2p is used consistantly for legal means such as game patching.
 
Nightbird said:
Um, the most popular torrents are obviously going to be the illegal ones? They will be popular movies games whatnot. The legal torrents probably won't have as many people looking for them. The study is flawed in that they have to take a random sample of all torrents offered in order to measure what % of content offered is legal. A study of outliers is just that, an outlier.
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That's what I was thinking.
 
demingo said:
But bittorrent and p2p is used consistantly for legal means such as game patching.
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And keyboard drivers!

What % of bittorrent bandwidth do you figure game patches are? 1%? It's probably a lot less than that. There are of course legitimate uses for BT. No one is arguing that in the study. It's just sticking your head in the sand if you won't acknowledge that the vast majority of the traffic is from getting things for "free" that you would otherwise have to buy, or of things that the copyright owner didn't give anyone else permission to "share".
 
entropy13 said:
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/

Quickly proven greatly inaccurate and flawed.
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Yeah their methodology is pretty flawed, and they seem to be using bogus data, just like every other piracy study.

However the numbers they came to probably aren't far off from what I can see from just eyeballing a few torrent sites. We all know that almost everything on Torrent sites is covered by some form of copyright or license that forbids that kind of distribution. Pretending that a significant portion of BitTorrent usage is legitimate is bordering on the absurd. Yes, there are legitimate uses, but the sheer mass of illegitimate torrent usage is far greater.
 
That last line in the quote really stuck out to me:
"Many files were tagged as amateur (suggesting no copyright infringement) but further inspection revealed that they were in fact infringing," wrote the researchers.
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"Honey, what's all this porn doing on our computer?"
"Oh, that? That's just, um, research! We're researching torrents, yeah."
 
*waits for RIAA/MPAA to call for banning torrents*

"BitTorrent is used to commit crimes! It should be banned!"

Well, computers, cars, guns and pencils can be used to commit crimes of varying types. Should we ban those too?
 
Those numbers sound a bit high to me, I would be suspicious. :p
 
Sovereign said:
*waits for RIAA/MPAA to call for banning torrents*

"BitTorrent is used to commit crimes! It should be banned!"

Well, computers, cars, guns and pencils can be used to commit crimes of varying types. Should we ban those too?
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I am just trying to play a devil's advocate here.

If the finding is true 99.7% of the traffic is illegal. What is the percentage of computers, cars, guns and pencils that are being used for illegal purpose? Surely nothing near 99.7% isn't it.
 
So in other words they themselves downloaded illegal files....?
 
Additionally, 16 files were of ambiguous origin and 91 files were pornographic, which were unclear due to their oft-mislabeled nature. "[M]any files were tagged as amateur (suggesting no copyright infringement) but further inspection revealed that they were in fact infringing," wrote the researchers.
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I lol'd. Researchers gettin their fap on.
 
i'm surprised that for every 1000 files, 3 are legit, i thought the numbers would be more like .0001%
 
entropy13 said:
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/

Quickly proven greatly inaccurate and flawed.
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What did you expect? Honest reporting on the internet? This news post is a simple regurgitation of the same headline with a different footnote. I can go to anandtech, ars, tom's, hexus, dailytech, etc. etc and many many other tech sites and see the exact same headline or a paraphrase of it. If the internet "press" actually took more time to research and confirm what they post like newspapers used to do (notice the past tense) ...hmm nah. I'm just going to stop myself here, because that's never going to happen.

Back on topic. All this article does is highlight how useless and backwards the concept of copyright and copyright laws themselves really are. Instead of embracing a new flourishing medium of distribution these middlemen cling to outdated business models based on old distribution channels because they've gotten used to and expected to perpetually milk the monopoly they've had for decades and never sought to innovate themselves to bring better value for their costumers.
 
Who funded this "study? Wonder how many other "studies" got done before they decided this one should be published?
 
The torrentfreak article should be posted in the OP, right beside the article it debunks.
 
Right away I saw "top 1000 most active" torrents and realized this was bs.

The top torrents are always albums, TV shows and movies. ALWAYS. In 99% of cases, it's not the movie company who uploaded them, so of course they'll be illegal, there's no reason to spend 1 cent "researching" this.

Their top 10 torrents are 2-year-old movies. No file is still the highest shared even after a few months, let alone years! More and more torrents now are fake. If you look up any new movie, there are at least 10 fake torrents for every real one. I love these "studies", I should be a researcher too just so I could get paid for doing fuck all for a few months then just making up some numbers at the end which help the case of whoever is paying my salary.

The Torrent Freak article does a good job of pointing out some flaws which completely falsify the claims of that "study".
 
rahavsmt said:
I am just trying to play a devil's advocate here.

If the finding is true 99.7% of the traffic is illegal. What is the percentage of computers, cars, guns and pencils that are being used for illegal purpose? Surely nothing near 99.7% isn't it.
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Every speeder is breaking the law thus the vehicle is being used as a tool to break the law and should be impounded and destroyed.

Computers are used to download illegal stuff, porn, gambling, you name it, buy stuff and not report cross state tax purchases.

Who uses pencils in this day and age outside of school children?

Guns? um well that one the constitution says everyone can have and the SCOTUS agrees so good luck.
 
Big D. said:
Right away I saw "top 1000 most active" torrents and realized this was bs.

The top torrents are always albums, TV shows and movies. ALWAYS. In 99% of cases, it's not the movie company who uploaded them, so of course they'll be illegal, there's no reason to spend 1 cent "researching" this.

Their top 10 torrents are 2-year-old movies. No file is still the highest shared even after a few months, let alone years! More and more torrents now are fake. If you look up any new movie, there are at least 10 fake torrents for every real one. I love these "studies", I should be a researcher too just so I could get paid for doing fuck all for a few months then just making up some numbers at the end which help the case of whoever is paying my salary.

The Torrent Freak article does a good job of pointing out some flaws which completely falsify the claims of that "study".
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Actually... Viacom got hit rather hard for the lawsuit they pulled on youtube when they were found to be the originators of the majority of the infringing content...

Web sites like hulu put a dent in TV shows being torrented but not completely, given all shows were found online within hours or at the same time as broadcast I am sure a large chunk of the current torrents would vanish.
 
Negative Decibel said:
I'd really like to see exactly how they come up with 3%... (then I would poke holes in thier logic...)
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Its common sense really. I dont know how you can poke holes in it. :rolleyes: About 0.3% of the stuff i DLed on torrents was legal, so yeah seems about right.
 
out of the roughly 100gigs a month I DL in bittorrent 80% are 100% legal, 19.9% backups (yes I DO own the copy on blu-ray but no blu-ray in my HTPC so I like to have it around)....the other 0.1% is "trial run" content before I buy. Hey its available on my $200 dollar a month cable TV and my $30 dollar a month netflix, so I am paying the artist (mainly lables and RIAA)...so I say screw them....

I will start pirating if the RIAA and the likes start hammering my torreting/DLing in general.
 
Really, honest, I have only ever used bit torrent for Linux ISOs. I know it's cliche, but it's true. :rolleyes: Years ago I used Kazaa for music, and I use the thing we don't talk about, but seriously, never tried downloading a DVD or TV show through bit torrent.
 
Bman123 said:
100gigs a month, that's alot of stuff man.
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with traffic shaping its running all day! 24/7/365

its easy to do actually

i buy a new blu-ray every week or so (30+gigs)
on distro-watch CONSTATLY (40-100gigs right there!)
 
rahavsmt said:
I am just trying to play a devil's advocate here.

If the finding is true 99.7% of the traffic is illegal. What is the percentage of computers, cars, guns and pencils that are being used for illegal purpose? Surely nothing near 99.7% isn't it.
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Heh, well... probably a high percentage of computers used those torrents. And probably a good percentage of criminals used cars for getaway.:D

I get your point though. Still, I believe it was 3 percent rather than .3 percent. They said 97 percent were infringing. Not that these researches should really be believed. Half of this stuff is just some pencil pusher trying to get their way.
 
GDstew4 said:
That last line in the quote really stuck out to me:

"Many files were tagged as amateur (suggesting no copyright infringement) but further inspection revealed that they were in fact infringing," wrote the researchers.

"Honey, what's all this porn doing on our computer?"
"Oh, that? That's just, um, research! We're researching torrents, yeah."
Click to expand...

LOL:D

Not surprised if the percentages are true.
 
rahavsmt said:
I am just trying to play a devil's advocate here.

If the finding is true 99.7% of the traffic is illegal. What is the percentage of computers, cars, guns and pencils that are being used for illegal purpose? Surely nothing near 99.7% isn't it.
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I would bet at least 99.7% of people have gone over the speed limit at least once when driving...
...or didn't come to a full stop at a stop sign
...or had a passenger that didn't wear a seat belt.
....or played music too loud
...or some other petty law

I say we ban cars! Only criminals use them!

(note: I couldn't care less about BT. I mean...even when I d/l linux distros via BT, the speed is slower because no one seeds :( )
 
I probably mainly use bittorrent for "illegal" things. Some of it is to download the digital form of something I do indeed own and am too lazy to find and rip to the computer. And torrenting is the fastest way for me to download my linux ISOs, so that's what I use.
 
from a comment in TF said:
I have only started reading this ‘study’ but it looks pretty weak. The first citation is a story on torrentfreak:
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-king-of-p2p-traffic-090218/
this citation is given as evidence that 43% of internet traffic is bittorrent protocol. can you see that figure anywhere on the page?
if this was a serious study they would have cited the original research by ipoque, not the bittorrent study, and explained how exactly they got that figure.
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Wow, they actually cited torrentfreak in the study too, and cited something TF didn't even say. lol
 
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