File Sharing Study Spreads False Data

It’s hard to guess the impact file sharing studies have on those interested in the issue but when a pretentious institute puts its endorsement on them it tends to give them more credibility. So many readers have come to accept statistics and data without questioning just because behind them there’s a imposing name.

According to a recent such industry-commissioned study conducted by the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory, "at least 89.9 percent" of the files currently on the Bittorrent scene are infringing copyright and there were 117.4 million seeds for the files that went through investigation. The research used data gathered from17 BitTorrent trackers and 1,000 popular torrent.

Luckily, there are some who don’t swallow information without chewing it a bit. Torrent Freak was prompt to debunk figures put forward by the researchers. "The real seed count at any given time lies between 10 and 20 million," says a post by Ernesto who points to misleading conclusions in the statistics due to "painfully inaccurate data".

What allows Torrent Freak access to reliable data is the fact the guys have their own machines working for them to dig out BitTorrent statistics.

OpenBitTorrent tracker was one of trackers featured in the study, which Ernesto said was one of the largest with currently almost 10 million seeds.

"This tracker tracks ~90% of all torrents, so an estimate of 20 million would be on the high end," he detailed.

Among the blatant errors of the study was also the naming of The Incredible Hulk as the most seeded file, supported by 1.1 million seeders: "We're not sure where these numbers originate from but the best seeded torrent at the moment only has 13,739 seeders, that's 1 percent of what the study reports," clarifies TorrentFreak.

What’s even worrying is that the Australian anti-piracy outfit AFACT might use this ‘realistic’ study in court to argue that the local ISP iiNet is liable for the copyright infringement activities of its subscribers.

Read the whole post here.