Studios mine P2P logs to sue swappers
Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 24 August 2005
Hollywood studios filed a new round of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday, for the first time using peer-to-peer companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online.
The group previously said in February that a Texas court had ordered that the server logs of one big site, called LokiTorrent, be turned over to Hollywood investigators. An MPAA spokeswoman said that none of Thursday's suits were related to that action, however.
"Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcom said in a statement.
So why did they keep any logs at all? If I operate a tracker for "illegal" torrents, I know that I can be held responsible. The best thing to do is to secure yourself as much as possible. Turn off the tracker log, don't log torrent downloads and don't count the total downloads. The less evidence the better. On a side note: the former owner of Lokitorrent, Lowkee (aka Edward Webber) doesn't have many friends in the P2P community anymore after he screwed those over who donated money for his lawsuits. Instead, he rolled over and used the money to pay the music industry. This should prove that you don't have friends left if you join the dark side. So much for Malcom's comment.