[Infowarrior] - Comcast Funds BitStalker Anti-Piracy Research

[Richard Forno]

Comcast Funds BitStalker Anti-Piracy Research
Written by Ernesto on March 10, 2010
http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-funds-bitstalker-anti-piracy-research-100610/

Together with Cox and Warner Cable, Comcast has aided in the  
development of a new piracy tracking tool. Named BitStalker,  
researchers claim it can effectively collect evidence on millions of  
file-sharers with relative ease. Operators of large BitTorrent  
trackers have their doubts.

For years the RIAA and other copyright holders have been sending  
copyright infringement notices to ISPs, requesting they forward them  
to their customers. ISPs including Comcast have always kindly complied  
with these requests, but remained a neutral party.

It therefore came as a surprise when we found out that three major US  
ISPs – Comcast, Cox and Warner Cable – have been funding research  
which aims to help copyright holders track down and gather evidence  
against BitTorrent pirates more efficiently.

Unlike most of the ‘passive’ BitTorrent tracking tools that are in  
fashion today, BitStalker uses an ‘active’ method through which they  
can actually prove that the BitTorrent client associated with an IP- 
address is sharing files. Where the passive methods wrongfully accuse  
1 in 10 downloaders, BitStalker promises to avoid such false positives.

The researchers who developed BitStalker further claim (pdf) that  
their tool is much more effective than the current competition, as it  
would allow copyright holders to get information on 20 million  
BitTorrent users for a bargain price of $12.40. What remains unclear,  
however, is why three large ISPs are interested in funding this project.

It is no secret that the RIAA has been pushing Comcast, Cox and other  
ISPs to take stricter measures against copyright infringers, including  
the ultimate sanction of terminating customers’ Internet access.  
However, thus far the ISPs have largely maintained their neutral  
position as information carriers.

Whether the funding of BitStalker’s research is a signal that this may  
change is open for speculation. Another argument for ISPs to join  
could be that they want to protect their customers from receiving  
copyright infringement notices in error.

Regarding the BitStalker method of tracking BitTorrent users, we can  
say that it is not as revolutionary as the researchers portray it.  
TorrentFreak spoke to several people who are currently operating the  
largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet and none of them was  
impressed by BitStalker’s technology.

If BitStalker is indeed implemented the large scale monitoring will  
have to be executed from thousands of IP-addresses. Most trackers have  
rules in place so that one single IP-address will be banned from the  
tracker if it connects to too many torrents.

Similarly, if BitStalker was put on a cloud service like the research  
suggests, it wouldn’t take long before these IP-ranges would appear in  
block-lists, rendering BitStalker useless.

If we add to this that BitStalker’s active BitTorrent tracking method  
will require users to be ‘connectible’, which a large percentage of  
users aren’t, this means that it will result in many false negatives.  
The researchers report that they could only connect to less than half  
of all available peers, which might be caused in the main by the  
connectability issue.

Whatever the motivations are for Comcast and the other ISPs to fund  
this project, the good news is that less people will be accused of  
uploading something they haven’t. Whether BitStalker will really be  
that more efficient depends on one’s definition of efficiency. For  
now, we doubt that it will result in a global BitTorrent crackdown.