[Infowarrior] - New Research Sets The Stage For Next Round Of Cat-And-Mouse Between BitTorrent Users & Snoopers

[Richard Forno]

New Research Sets The Stage For Next Round Of Cat-And-Mouse Between BitTorrent Users & Snoopers

from the don't-look-now,-you're-being-watched dept

The BitTorrent protocol is an extremely efficient way of moving files around the Internet, especially big ones. That makes it highly popular with those seeking to download unauthorized copies of music and films, for example. But the clever approach that enables BitTorrent to do that, which involves downloading fragments of a file from a shifting swarm of fellow peers holding some or all of it, is also a weakness from these users' point of view: it means that downloads take place in public, rather than as a private transaction from a client to a server (as with cyber lockers.)

Fascinating new research entitled "The Unbearable Lightness of Monitoring: Direct Monitoring in BitTorrent" (pdf), from researchers at the University of Birmingham, explores just how public. It seeks to quantify how many peers in a swarm are actually being run by companies monitoring unauthorized downloads, and how long it takes for them to detect such activity:.....

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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120904/14433020269/new-research-sets-stage-next-round-cat-and-mouse-between-bittorrent-users-snoopers.shtml

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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.