When the owner of LokiTorrent was ordered to shutdown its BitTorrent service and pay a fine of $1 million, he was also ordered to provide the MPAA full access to all logs and server data related to the illegal BitTorrent activities. However it appears that these stored logs are actually not all that useful in finding what users had downloaded on the network. Basically what the logs track are those who download the .torrent key files, but does not record if the user actually downloads the content using that key.
Another problem is that as the logs typically grow around 1GB per day on a typical BitTorrent tracker site, many BitTorrent tracking sites, especially the more popular ones either clear their logs every few days or disable logging altogether. However, if a log file reveals a substantial number of logs relating to a given IP, at best this may trigger some investigation to be carried out on this IP. While LokiTorrent also logged torrent uploaders, they did so by username and not IP address.
Finally, only LokiTorrent's trackers actually logged the actual upload and download transfers . However, their tracker software XBTT does have a drawback in that it stores its logs only in memory and thus automatically loses its logs once its shutdown. The Entertainment industry would be better monitoring active public trackers. In the end it appears that their announcement that they have a roadmap of those file sharing is basically no more than a scare tactic. brantdk submitted teh following news via our news submit:
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However, registered users will be relieved to hear that very little, if any, useful information will end up in the hands of the MPAA. 'They don't have anything, they have air," an ex-torrent site owner told Slyck. He chose to remain anonymous. For arguments sake, we will call him Paul. Paul also ran a Torrent site based on the same scripts and source used by LokiTorrent. They conferred regularly. Referring to the website logs: 'Those access logs have no value it all. They only display whether you downloaded the .torrent file, not if you actually downloaded the content using that Torrent," Paul explained to Slyck. The Torrent file is merely a key; the MPAA can not prove that it was used in any locks. Paul went on, 'We both didn't log [seed and leech] information because first it would allow us to know too much about the people using the network and what they were sharing. 2nd it would require huge resources to keep track of all that. That's the tracker's job." Read the full article here. |
Then again, while the former users of LokiTorrent may feel more relieved, this does not apply to users currently sharing or downloading over BitTorrent on active sites. For example the RIAA or MPAA could decide that rather than shut down the next BitTorrent site, they could instead monitor and track the user's traffic while most users using that site believe that as the site is still up, they can continue transferring files.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about BitTorrent and other file sharing services including legal issues on our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: Slyck News
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