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How ~75% of PirateBay traffic is seeded by 100 people driven by profit
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoSummary: "some people give away free (others') movies, and then put some links to their private adsense-laden portals in a README file or somesuch. This accounts for a very large percentage of the downloads from the pirate bay." Very interesting findings, but it doesn't really answer the question of how important these people are to the pirate ecosystem. Are they just taking releases from more-private "underground" seeders and putting them on the pirate bay (in which case they are, effectively, just spammers and their elimination wouldn't really hurt the pirates) or do they actually provide the content themselves?
- mukyu 16y agoMost of the content on tpb comes from the scene which does not condone p2p sharing. These people just have access to scene releases early and want to profit from it. http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-slice-the-top-off-movie-piracy-pyramid-100727/ http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-slice-the-top-o... http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-are-the-new-kids-on-the-piracy-block-100729/ http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-are-the-new-kid... Sadly, the report does not list any of the usernames of those that they studied. However, if you just go to a category, pick a frequent submitter, and look at their uploads most of the time there tags from many different groups. Some even try to claim other's releases as their own.
- JonnieCache 16y agoYep. "The scene" really hates p2p in all its forms. They have been having inter-group drama over it for years. Pretty hilarious all round. See: http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1847 http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1847 http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1920 http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1920 and many others on that site.
- julian37 16y agoDon't these people have ANYTHING to do?
- getsat 16y agoIt seems to me that they are doing what they enjoy.
- peterwwillis 16y agoHaha, that's awesome! The FTP scene is so big they need distributed ftp agents to FXP their wares? I always thought their drama and "wars" over shit like sharing files (....like it's not going to happen? not like they're using DRM or something) was incredibly overblown, even as a kid. Glad to see they're just as retarded now as ever.
- robryan 16y agoTheir elimination would slow the system to a crawl I'd imagine, in Australia at least the uploads are always capped low enough that seeding back will slow down the rest of your web activities. So it isn't feasible unless your not at the computer to seed back at any decent frequency. When something new hits the pirate bay and is popular it is already pretty slow.
- foljs 16y ago> Very interesting findings, but it doesn't really answer the question of how important these people are to the pirate ecosystem. If they account for 75% of the downloads, then they are VERY important.
- galuggus 16y agodiscussion on slashdot http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/1342236/How-Do-Seeders-Profit-From-BitTorrent http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/1342236/How-Do-Seeder...
- julian37 16y ago... which is a dupe of this one: http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/26/1611226/100-P2P-Users-Upload-75-of-Content http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/26/1611226/100-P2P-Users-Upl...
- patio11 16y agoI am shocked, shocked that piracy is not driven by music connoisseurs and film buffs eager to bring the artistic and cinematic masterworks of our times like Baby and Salt to poor wretches who can barely afford their $60 a month broadband and $500 computers to say nothing of their $0.99 music downloads.
- tomjen3 16y agoIn the US sure, but how many can afford it in the third world?
- foljs 16y agoHow many "need it" in the third world? Don't they have a local scene adjusted to their culture? Do they absolutely have to see the latest hollywood crap?
- Stormbringer 16y agoGet them reliable electricity, clean water, access to capital and stop propping up their corrupt governments... and give them all computers. And then we can talk about whether their music downloads are priced fairly.
- JonnieCache 16y agoPeople have been putting those little files in for years, the only thing that's changed is that now the destination sites are bittorrent trackers with adverts and the txt files are poorly spelled and ugly, whereas back in the day they'd have awesome ASCII art advertising the various scene dumpsites the release had been FXP'd through.
- dalore 16y agoThey still have those ASCII art and scene dumpsites. Problem is that someone with access to scene material takes that, and then retags it with their shitty website and uploads it to bittorrent.
- Stormbringer 16y agoWhat a shame that their beautiful art which they invested time and energy into is being misappropriated by someone else so that they cannot profit from their creative endeavours.
- steveklabnik 16y agoThe difference is that the scene shrugs and says "oh well, everyone knows who we are anyway" and doesn't try to bring the power of the state to bear.
- swombat 16y agoSounds like some good entrepreneurship going on there. These creative business models should be applauded. Some of them, if encouraged, may even lead to viable distribution business models for movies and music in the future.
- notahacker 16y agoI'm far from a fan of the big movie studios and their rigid distribution models, but I'm still unconvinced that annotating other people's content with spam portals is either (i) a particularly creative business model or (ii) a viable alternative revenue source for those creating and selling the content.
- swombat 16y agoYou have to make do with what you can. At the moment, any more legitimate form of content monetisation is effectively ruled out by the "rigid", as you call it, stance of the copyright holders. I'm sure the people setting up those sites would rather use more profitable business models. In fact, if you read the article, you will see a screenshot of one enterprising bit-torrent site offering monthly subscriptions. So even with all the hurdles thrown into their way by the current owners of the time-unlimited copyrights on these works, they still manage to do more than just spam portals. I think that's to be applauded.
- pestaa 16y agoBitTorrent community is a hydra, and will grow two new heads if one is cut down. If GrooveShark pays royalty fees, I indirectly pay for music, but movies in my country are nearly unavailable, and only the elite can afford to go to the cinema or buy disks.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoThere are also cases where one username corresponds with a few IP addresses from the same ISP, which is known as the NAT [network address translation] effect. Aren't they getting this backwards? NAT takes multiple computers (i.e., users) and concentrates them into a single outwardly-visible IP.
- chopsueyar 16y agoshould be "...which is known as a dynamic IP address." Actually, it is a bad sentence, 'which is known as' is referring to 'cases'.
- piguy314 16y agoSounds like multiple VPSes/seedboxes
- hackermom 16y agoHaving been part of the "XviD scene" for many years in the not too distant past, I have to say that the whole angle on this being profit-driven is just... wrong. NFO-files have been around since the early days of BBS trading in the Amiga scene and the PC scene alike, and the presence of web addresses in these files today doesn't change the reality that people just don't care for reading the NFOs when it comes to audio and video, and the vast majority don't even care when it comes to software unless they absolutely need to check the NFO for instructions on how to apply a crack, a registry key or similar. Furthermore, people don't give a damned about looking for web addresses in the NFOs to find out where to "get more"; they don't need to, they already know where to get their warez. To say that there is anything close to even moderate traffic going to the various groups' ad-laden addresses is a gross, gross exaggeration.
- mattmanser 16y agoThe trouble with a declaration like this is that it has no basis in fact, just your own personal experience. I have never seen anybody click on an ad on a webpage. By your reasoning that means that obviously no-one clicks them. And yet google makes billions off it. Apparently 10% of internet users make up almost all the advert clicks. I would agree that it's even more of a small % for nfo files and txt files in torrents because of the effort of getting to them. It could still easily translate to serious money when you're talking about 75% of the entire torrent ecosystem using only 100 peoples' torrents. I have no facts, but the odd behaviour presented in this article makes me suspect you're actually way off mark as I find it hard to imagine that there is some small group of altruistic French seeders using one ISP who wish to bring the joy of movies and music to everyone for such a massive amount of effort. The more likely explanation, just as presented in the article, is that there's good money to be made as long as you take the operation to scale.
- Goronmon 16y agoI have never seen anybody click on an ad on a webpage. By your reasoning that means that obviously no-one clicks them. And yet google makes billions off it. Apparently 10% of internet users make up almost all the advert clicks. I disagree that NFO files are anything like web ads. Web ads are in your face and surround content you are trying to access at all times. They are more like spam e-mails that show up in your Spam e-mail folder. You have to open that folder to see them, and then decide if you want to click through any links contained inside. Plus, the demographic that is a much more specific demographic than users of the internet as a whole.
- vipivip 16y agoInfinite greed, torpedo their link backs
- aw3c2 16y agoThat is one awful article. Arbitrarily cut in 4 pieces and never getting to the point. It is about a paper: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/co-next/2010/CoNEXT_papers/11-Cuevas.pdf http://conferences.sigcomm.org/co-next/2010/CoNEXT_papers/11... [pdf] which from a first glance is not very good either. Also the traffic is not what this is about but users uploading things. Did anyone read the paper? Worth a second look or is it rubbish? "We demonstrate that a small fraction of publishers is responsible for 67% of the published content and 75% of the downloads." suggest the ladder. Not to mention that they talk about Bittorrent but actually mean The Pirate Bay.
- double122 16y agoArticles like these make me wish HN had a TL;DR option. Something like: How ~75% of PirateBay traffic is seeded by 100 people driven by profit "Seeders put links in their content requesting that you visit their Adsense driven site" Click to read more... Nice idea for my next hacking project maybe.
- schintan 16y agoi did not read the paper but sigcomm is one of the premier networking conferences...so i do not expect the paper to be rubbish
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoA couple of things struck me while reading this article: 1) Everything is a market. Any time people get together, for any purpose, trading occurs. That means the art of trading -- your time for a few ads, or whatever -- is happening. The users of Pirate Bay may be sticking it to the man or whatnot, but it's just another marketplace -- albeit one with much cheaper entry and transaction costs. (So it's a winner for the participants) 2) The confusion, yet again, between correlation and causation. Yes, there may only be 100 people who start all the torrents, but the 100 people are not the cause of the torrents, they're just the statistical artifact of having a marketplace in which certain behaviors are rewarded more than others. Take away those specific 100, and a new group would form. It's not like those 100 people are somehow directly causing the effect, they're just the people who fell into that role in that community at that time.
- mahmud 16y agoEverything is a market. Any time people get together, for any purpose, trading occurs. The truth of that assertion hinges on us not remembering the billion other counter-examples. It might comfort free-market capitalists like ourselves to paint humanity with that thick brush, but truth tells differently: people don't always gather with the intention to buy/sell, in fact, sometimes, commercial intent is detrimental to a healthy assembly and is frowned upon.
- msh 16y agoa market dont require the intention of buying and selling, just the exchange of something in return for something else.
- mahmud 16y agoa market dont require the intention of buying and selling, just the exchange of something in return for something else. Exchange of what? Goods and services for other goods and services of comparable value, or cash, or notes of debt? Is that not the definition of a market? Here is a human gathering for you: a funeral. What goods & services are changing hands? And please don't say "the family's savings going to the funeral home".
- x4m 16y agoUhmmm...Do they really call that piece of crap "research"? Agrhrrrr
- goosmurf 16y agoI can't agree more. The site is also incredibly irritating. Why split an otherwise average length article over 4 short pages and stuff each with pointless images? We really shouldn't be linking to such crappy sites.
- jonallanharper 16y agoProfit is a form of value. Big surprise that people are deriving value in different ways. Anyone that uses PirateBay without deriving some sort of value is either irrational or has blindly accepted the irrational premises of altruism.