BitTorrent Users Beware—You Are Being Watched

CYBERSPACE—It used to be the case that one could traverse BitTorrent sites in relative anonymity, if only because the chance of being plucked from the crowd was akin to being struck by lightning. But the whole point of the six-strikes-and-yer-out campaign being undertaken by U.S. ISPs is to increase the odds of getting caught, and tallying the times you're caught, and to do that the ISPs need some high-power help tracking people as they allegedly infringe copyrighted content. According to TorrentFreak, that high-powered help has come in the form of two companies—Peer Media and BayTSP—the latter of which should be familiar to veterans of the adult internet. The provider of anti-piracy and copyright tracking services used to makes its services available to the adult industry, but for more than a decade it has also had mainstream clients (and more recently, government clients, too), including major film studios. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that BayTSP is now front and center in the search and identification of alleged torrent copyright infringers. Though the anti-piracy activity of both BayTSP and Peer media is well known, however, TorrentFreak is reporting that the tracking patters of both companies has increased since the six-strikes plan was unveiled in mid-July. "While there’s no hard proof that the increased activity is part of the six-strikes scheme, it wouldn’t be a surprise," wrote Ernesto for TF, adding as circumstantial proof that something is going on, "As for the number of torrents that are being watched, over a period of a month BayTSP connected to 3,657 torrent files and Peer Media to 3,752 torrents. ... To put the spying activity in perspective, the BitTorrent activity of these two anti-piracy companies is three times greater than that generated by all customers of a smaller ISP such as Sonic.net. It is comparable to the BitTorrent activity of all Comcast Business clients combined." Of course, for the six-strikes gambit to pay off, someone has to track and then identify alleged BitTorrent infringers. The news here is not that two companies are doing it—just that they are doing it with increased frequency. The takeaway, concluded Ernesto, is obvious. "BitTorrent users who are considering downloading the latest Hollywood blockbusters have a good chance of being watched."