Most File Sharers are Heavily Monitored

The same deadbeat leftists that whine that “information must be free” would be outraged to find out that all of their illegal downloads are recorded, tracked and often reported to collection agencies and groups of various kinds. Most file sharing protocols are open clear text and you can clearly see usernames, passwords, filenames, IP addresses and even delivery speeds. And for whatever reason, it took a British research team 3 years to figure out this obvious activity.

From CBS here:

A recent study found that those who participate in illegal file-sharing are not flying under the radar, but rather are closely monitored within hours of engaging in suspect activity.

The study, conducted at Birmingham University in the United Kingdom, used software created by computer scientists that emulated the file-sharing program BitTorrent and logged all interactions and connections made to it, the Korea IT Times reported.

Over the course of the three-year study, researchers reportedly saw monitoring firms tracking activity within three hours of a given download.

According to the tech website, those conducting the study were “surprised” at the diligent way in which such activity was monitored, and noted in their findings that there was no difference between frequent users and occasional downloaders.

The monitoring likely happens at several organizations at once. Your own ISP has a legal liability if you use their network for criminal activity, so they are the first tracker. Likewise for the ISP at the other end. And owners of intellectual property and copyrighted works have agencies that track these things for them too. The Tor network won’t help. Its seeded with sniffing points as well, decrypting traffic, recording it and then passing it along re-encrypted.