BitTorrent seeders IP-addresses easily traced

Employees of a French government research institute have recently presented a number of reports showing BitTorrents users privacy is in a bad state. Without much effort the institute managed to monitor the IP-addresses of new seeders (uploaders of content). And with result: after one month 70% of seeders IP addresses were traced.

The results show a large portion of The Pirate Bay content derives from a small part of the users. Of all the millions of Pirate Bay users, 100 IP addresses are responsible for 30% of the offered content. More than half (60%) of the content comes from 1000 IP addresses.

These research results offer new possibilities for identifying and pursuing internet users infringing copyright on a large scale. Using the IP address of a particular infringing internet user, a Dutch provider can be requested to provide the associated name, address and residence. These data are needed to start up a civil procedure in which compensation and a ban can be demanded.

It is not said that the IP addresses the research tracked can all be traced back to individual internet users. It is possible that the most notorious uploaders do not use a home computer, but so-called online ‘seed boxes’, which cannot simply be traced to a physical user. Nevertheless the elimination of some seed boxes is still a step forward in tackling large-scale copyright infringement on the internet.

4 May 2010