Case began Monday February 16th
This week marks the beginning of what will most likely be the most important file sharing trial to date. The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest torrent sharing websites, from which not only music but full 
length movies can be downloaded, is being sued in Swedish court by Warner Bros., MGM, EMI, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony/BMG, and Universal. Court proceedings began Monday morning. The site’s founders, Gottfried Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppl, and Fredrik Neij, all pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is claiming that The Pirate Bay is an elaborate criminal organization, complete with financial backers and share holders as well as financial officers. Much attention in the trial thus far has been focused on The Pirate Bay’s selling of advertisement on its site. After lunch, an ironic and highly unpleasant hiccup occurred for the prosecution. Hakan Roswall, head prosecutor and self-proclaimed “expert on computer crimes,” was unable to start his computer, and ultimately was forced to continue his case without any technological aides. Roswall so far is focusing on the volume of traffic the site experienced before it was raided in 2006. During the afternoon proceedings, Peter Sunde sent out a message to his supporters, via the internet, gloating over what he claimed to be an “epic fail” on the prosecution’s part. The case is scheduled to continue into next week.
I have known about this site for some time. Though much of its’ content is illegal, the site contains legal material that can be searched and download from a site that is very easy to navigate. The files don’t actually reside on the site but on the machines of the millions of users who frequent the site via P2P file sharing much like Napster once was. I have recently analyzed the P2P network and have found the following.
1. Many of the Torrent files contain unknown or scrupulous trackers.
2. After downloading a torrent your machine will be added to a list of other PCs to mask the true location of some copyright or illegal files.
I used Microsoft’s Network Monitor to analyze packets. My machine was receiving request for files I do not have on my PC, never had and never will have. While using BitTorrent I noticed many of the peers listed did not contain the files I was downloading. This activity can spoof the true location of illegal material by flooding the network with spoofed information containing innocent users address. It is no wonder Switzerland has gone after this source but the true bad guys are the trackers providing torrents to underworld files and photographs no one in their right mind would want to be associated with.
