IP Addresses From Sony, Fox And Universal Found Torrenting Music, Movies And More
IP Addresses From Sony, Fox And Universal Found Torrenting Music, Movies And More
Posted 12/13/2011 at 12:27pm
| by Brad Chacos
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This just in from the “Isn’t it ironic?” department: IP addresses from some of the top content creation companies, including Fox, Sony and Universal, have been caught red-handed downloading torrents of movies, music and TV shows. That’s the claim from TorrentFreak, at least, who sifted through data from YouHaveDownloaded, a Russian site that logs – and exposes! – IP addresses downloading many of the public torrents you can find out there. TorrentFreak did some digging and managed to match several infringing IP addresses to IP addresses registered to the aforementioned companies.
A Sony IP address from Culver City, CA and an NBC Universal IP address from Fort Lauderdale, FL went on especially naughty sprees, downloading several different torrents apiece, including a Halloween trance album, a Black Keys track, the complete first season of “The Game of Thrones,” the “Cowboys and Aliens” movie and more. An IP address registered to Fox was also found downloading “Super 8.”
An IP address from Google’s NY office also downloaded a ton of stuff, although interestingly enough, TorrentFreak notes that they couldn’t find any torrents being downloaded from BitTorrent Inc’s SF headquarters. Then again, YouHaveDownloaded only claims to track around a fifth of all available public torrents. (By the way, YouHave Downloaded’s owners say they’re exposing the IP addresses of anyone who downloads from the torrents they’re tracking in order to dispel the notion that you should expect privacy on the ‘Net.)
TorrentFreak also notes that an IP address from a Dutch music royalty collecting agency called Buma/Stemra was found downloading Battlefield 3 and episodes of “Entourage,” which prompted the company to claim that its address was spoofed. TorrentFreak invites the US companies mentioned above to do the same thing. “After all, if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders.”
Thoughts?
Image credits: torrentfreak.com
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BloodAgent
December 14, 2011 at 5:45am
Sooooo does MaximumTech ever get updated anymore? The last post on there was 4 SEPT 2011.
ABouman
December 14, 2011 at 11:05am
Well, yes. It's back to being a channel on Maximumpc.com but when I click on the tab I see news stories from today and a feature from November. Because we've folded Maximum Tech back into Maximum PC it doesnt get updated the way it used to, but there are current news posts going up and related features whenever we get them.
Holly Golightly
December 13, 2011 at 10:04pm
Wow, this website should be shut down after what just happen. They track you and then post your IP address for the entire world to see. If you ask me, this information could be valuable to the wrong kind of people.
whelderwheels613
December 14, 2011 at 6:02pm
Its not violating any laws so there wiould be very much difficulty obtaining an injuntion against it. Contrary to popular belive, your IP address is not private. If you go to any website, your address is logged, including this one. Any of the moderators or adminitrators of this site and of all others can see your or my address, and with the right tools, I probably could find the addresses of the posters of anyone here. Just like a persons home address is not private, an IP address is not private either.
Holly Golightly
December 14, 2011 at 8:03pm
But then my question is, when does the privacy invasion end? I do not see Amazon publicly posting the IP Address of all their shoppers. Even though they do have that access no problem. I do not understand how could anyone be okay with a website that publicly posts anyone's private information out there for the entire world to see. Maybe they would start enforcing privacy laws when people's Social Security numbers are exposed. Or maybe not... Who knows?
Carlidan
December 15, 2011 at 12:41am
Again Holly, As everyone keeps telling you. You are NEVER ever really anonymous when your on the internet. You are tracked whereever you go on the internet. But your personal infrmation is usually protected because of encryption. But not always.
Holly Golightly
December 15, 2011 at 9:01am
Apparently I am not making myself clear enough. There is a website publicly posting everyone's IP Address... Doesn't anyone care for their privacy at all? Gosh damn!
Caboose
December 19, 2011 at 6:31pm
Your IP address is public anyway. Any website can grab it. Same with what browser you're using, your OS version, etc. Heck go here: http://www.whatismyip.com/ and you'll see what I mean. Calm yourself.
Holly Golightly
December 19, 2011 at 7:06pm
You are not seeing the big picture.
Yes, I know websites can see your address. The difference is the websites aren't public posting your IP address for the entire world to see. How can you even be okay with this in the first place? Do you like the idea of having your IP address publicly exposed for free?
Anyhow, I don't do torrents. So I do not have to worry about that jackass posting my IP address for the world to see. I just rip my movies and music from Adobe Flash with KeepVid and Real Player. At least these two companies aren't publicly exposing my IP address to the world. Thank God.
Holly Golightly
December 14, 2011 at 11:52am
Yeeeeah... Why would you even care about your privacy? You are a loyal FaceBook user. So privacy is of zero concern to you.
Carlidan
December 14, 2011 at 2:54am
What they are saying, you are never really anonymous when going to the internet. You're tracked everytime you are online. you think if you shut them down, other sites don't have the same info as them?
Holly Golightly
December 14, 2011 at 11:50am
There is a difference of a website having access to your IP address, and some jackass posting your IP Address to the public for everyone to see.
noobstix
December 13, 2011 at 6:00pm
This is basically like when Ubisoft had downloaded and used a scene release crack for one of their games (I think it was a Tom Cuh-lancy game) and claimed it was a patch update or something.
RUSENSITIVESWEETNESS
December 13, 2011 at 4:59pm
Someone's been spoofing my IP address for years. Bastards.
DDRDiesel
December 13, 2011 at 3:45pm
Anyone else think that just covering the last octet is going to make kids want to learn that IP even more?
TechNinja49
December 13, 2011 at 1:06pm
I have an idea - everyone send them letters saying they'll get sued! XD
nsvander
December 13, 2011 at 12:43pm
Come on we all know that their reply back will be we were doing research to see if the movies were actually out there, so we can prosecute those involved in the deployment and hosting of such files.
Tenhawk
December 13, 2011 at 2:09pm
I thought the same thing at first, but Fox really has no business downloading Super 8 as that is a Paramount film and so they couldn't use that in any lawsuit cases they might fling around. Similarly the others listed didn't seem to be downloaded by companies that had any business 'researching' the availability of said films.
It would make for a pretty flimsy defense.
Vegan
December 13, 2011 at 12:40pm
Sometimes it's funny what companies don't block their employees from doing.
I work at a film restoration company and a few years back I kept finding movie torrents running 24/7 on the break-room computers. I had to tip off HR by saying that it would be pretty embarrassing and damaging if our clients (the studios) found out that we were stealing their movies.
Durp.
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