New study finds most BitTorrents used for copyright infringement

A new study funded by Village Roadshow and conducted by the University of Ballarat Internet Commerce Security Laboratory has found the majority of BitTorrent files being downloaded are illegal copies. Village is part of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, which is suing ISP iiNet for allegedly allowing its customers to download copyrighted films and […]

Patrick Stafford 25 July, 2010

Village is part of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, which is suing ISP iiNet for allegedly allowing its customers to download copyrighted films and television shows. While the Federal Court found iiNet didn’t infringe copyright itself, AFACT is appealing the decision.

Part of iiNet’s defense is that BitTorrent is a legitimate technology. However, the new study finds 89.9% of all torrents were found to be infringing downloads, excluding pornography. If these videos were added to the total, and classed as infringing content, then the number would grow to 98%.

The study also found the top two categories of downloads were film and television shows, while 9.9% of torrents accounted for 90% of the total seed population.

“As part of an ongoing project looking into monitoring P2P network traffic, we have developed a methodology to objectively answer some simple questions about copyright infringement,” ICSL director Paul Watters said in a statement.

“We have been able to detect the percentage of shared files that infringe copyright, and what percentage of shared material belongs to different categories. Using our sample of trackers we discovered that a total of 117 million downloads had been completed across more than one million torrents.”