Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal 321
Andorin writes "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright, though the exact percentage is unclear. The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory of the University of Ballarat in Australia has conducted a study and found that 89% of files examined were in fact infringing, while most of the remaining 11% were ambiguous but likely to be infringing. Ars Technica summarizes the study: '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. ' The study brings with it some other interesting statistics; out of the 1,000 files, 91 were pornographic, and approximately 4% of torrents were responsible for 80% of seeders. Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found."
Boo hoo hoo. (Score:4, Interesting)
1986: Hey man, want a copy of this movie I got? Sure, I'll just pop it in my VCR and make a duplicate.
2010: Hey man, want a copy of this movie I got? knock, knock Aw crap, it's the police! *thud* *smack* ow! ow! ow!
RIAA -- Advocating social and technological progress since... ha ha, never you dopes!
Re:Princeton Study (Score:5, Interesting)
. Maybe someone with a little insight into how BitTorrent works could comment on the rigour of their methodoly?
Those statistics look familiar. (Score:4, Interesting)
infringing torrents :: ambiguous :: legal
porn :: probably porn :: normal content
spam :: probably spam :: real emails
blog posts :: lazily disguised reposts :: real news
fake google results :: crappy sites :: what you were actually searching for
And so forth...within a small margin, this appears to be the standard ratio of the internet.
Re:As I said in the earlier story on porn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet = porn.
I used to work for IEG (Internet Entertainment Group - WikiPedia Page [wikipedia.org] - once the largest Internet porn company in the world). We regularly seeded the Interwebs with snippets of our best porn because while the majority of people would accept our 2 minute gifts of hardcore fucking and sucking and grunting drenched in lube and sweat and go no farther, a small percentage - maybe 2 or 3 - would sign up for the full deal. VERY profitable. We never really cared much about "piracy" since most of the people interested in spending money on porn would eventually end up giving us their credit card number.
Of course, in 20% of the sign-ups, "wife" would find out, and we would have charge-backs from people that denied ever having been to our sites.
On a different note, we had one of the biggest Internet "pipe" into a single company in the world in the late 1990's and early 2000's. People never believed me when I told them what our conx was, they insisted it must be for the entire building, not just our half floor in a beautiful glass tower in downtown Seattle (a block from Pike Place Market). And, while we had a HUGE library of porn, our offices did not have naked porn stars running about, no free blow jobs.
!random (Score:2, Interesting)
The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used.
Clearly then the sample isn't a random subset of 'all torrents' but instead of 'popular torrents on certain trackers.' This does not justify the proposition in the title "Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal."
That aside, fat chance I'm going to trust The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory to keep their science unbiased in this regard. Seriously, for whom would a sample size of 1,000 torrents seem even close to enough?
Re:As I said in the earlier story on porn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. I setup the network for Flying Crocodile. I had 2.5Gb/s available and 100 racks in the Westin circa 2000. We should have been peering. (For those that don't remember, Flyingcroc was known as Sextracker.com)
Selection bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Non-representative sample (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Note "from the most active seeded files"
In other words, this doesn't really mean that only "0.3% of BitTorrent Files" are definitely legal.. far more might be legal but not among the top active torrents.
That could mean there are plenty of legal torrents, but they don't make the list of top active ones, because (perhaps) illegal ones are more popular for an audience that is larger.
Doesn't negate that there are plenty of legal torrents, Linux ISOs, etc, and BitTorrent is commonly used as a legal distribution mechanism. But they are looking at public free-for-all trackers which are already potentially biased towards containing spam and other crap that you would expect people on any pre-bittorrent P2P system to be offering.
In fact, their study only applies to the most active torrent files.
I am not surprised that if you consider only the most active seeded files, that a lot of them are illegal, especially in regards to music files.
But if you use a methodology that doesn't artifically limit your sample to the most active torrent files as indicated by TPB or isoHunt, something completely different may be found.
IOW: researchers, take yer study and shove it until you can uh stop using a biased sampling method like "most active".
This is like taking a survey of FTP servers, and only looking at ones that report having the most users connecting, and allow anyone to upload any file, and others to immediately download it.
To claim 0.3% of files on FTP are definitely legal.
Re:Definitively 0.3 per cent (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you saying Linux is profiting off pirated movies? The MPAA is going to love this!
Re:What do I buy when I buy a record? (Score:1, Interesting)
You buy the right to listen to that song, so long as you are the demonstrable owner of that right. It's always been this way.
If you destroyed, then yes, like anything else, you have to pay to replace it, just as with a ticket to a show or fare on a train. Proof of original purchase is not proof that you haven't sold it and are trying to scam.
If stolen, you deal with it like any other stolen property/assets. That means if it's not insured and the thief is not found, you're paying to replace it like anything else.
If lost, you're paying to replace it unless part of what you paid was for a replacement service. Many merchants, like Ticketmaster and oftentimes digital distributors, offer the ability to replace unique goods by disabling the lost/stolen item and re-issuing (one silver lining of DRM).
If it's damaged, you might have to pay to replace it. It's your responsibility to take care of the things you own (just imagine trying to cash in an illegible and shredded stock certificate!). You may be able to send the damaged unit back for a replacement for a nominal fee. Many CD/DVD publishers do this as a value-added service. If you failed to safeguard your purchases, it's no one's fault but your own.
Is it really immoral to pretend i made a copy of it and download it from bittorrent?
Of course it is. Lies and deception are immoral. They may be justified in some circumstances, but that doesn't change their basic nature.
It's just a form of rationalization to say "I did something wrong but it's not really wrong because someone else wronged me first." Two wrongs don't make a right.
Is it justified for you to participate in an unlawful distribution in order to remedy your carelessness? Perhaps.
Thus, is that copy of Spice Girls really illegal in my case?
Absolutely.
You participated in an unauthorized distribution and have no demonstrated ownership of the applicable legal rights. If it were litigated in a vacuum, you'd lose on the merits.
What you're asking is simply whether the ends justify the means, and 99.9% of the time, breaking the law as self help is still just breaking the law.
Chances are the injury is so marginal as to not be worth anyone's time, like when the traffic court decides to dismiss a citation because it's not worth the effort. It's a cost/benefit analysis.
You're asking three discrete questions: Is it moral? Is it legal? Will I be punished?
In your example, the answers are no, no, and probably not.
Definitively, (Score:5, Interesting)
Cloud storage (Score:4, Interesting)
I use bittorrent as a bit of a poor-man's cloud storage.
I've got a ton of CDs I've purchased, and after a flood and a series of moves the HDs where I stored the ripped (low quality) MP3s were destroyed.
So now whenever I want to listen to a CD that I've purchased, I just download the CD using bittorrent, usually as FLAC, and add the FLAC files to the library I'm rebuilding. I don't have to worry about setting up the ripping software, and I'm actually getting it a bit better organized this time.
So for me, that 'illegal' content is just me rebuilding my digital copies of CDs or DVDs I legally own.