My coworker just got a nasty letter from his ISP (optonline) accusing him of copyright infringement. It turns out that his kid got caught downloading some warez from one of the trackers indexed by Torrentspy.
Conclusions are simple: someone is monitoring Torrentspy network. I don’t know if they do this by setting up decoys, or if they actually connect to legitimate torrents and log the IP’s in the swarm. But either way, they are out there and if you are not careful you might get caught.
The ISP my coworker is using seems to be doing the right thing. They notified him about the complaint, and warned him that future complaints may lead to termination of his account. It doesn’t seem that they were willing to cough up his personal data so far, so he might get lucky and avoid being slapped with one of those frivolous lawsuits.
The poor kid is not allowed to use BitTottent anymore. He got a stern talking to from his pop for using these new-fangled, easily trackable p2p technologies instead of leaching from Usenet the way internet Gods intended it. 
Sigh… I really liked TorrentSpy – it had lots of content, and large community behind it. But I guess it’s time to move on…
As many people mentioned in the comments, my assumption that Torrentspy itself is being monitored might not be correct. It’s possible that one or more trackers indexed by Torrentspy are monitored, but not necessarily the whole site.
In either case, IP blocking software such as PeerGuardian, or the SafePeer Azureus Plugin may drastically lower your chances of being caught.
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Holy crap. This many people read this blog? I’ve never seen more than like 4 comments on this thing before.
Matt` said:
Copyright stuff always brings on a big discussion of how much the enforcer-people suck
Sam said:
Also, the Geek News Central Podcast mentioned and linked to this article. The Geek News Central Podcast has thousands of listeners.
You damm people dont get it .
It dont matter how you hide your #ip it comes back to your server. And they still know who you are..
GROW UP FOLKS . Get a job buy something . look at the christmas presents yall bought now go to wolly world buy a movie not a music cd. they cost too damm much . sit down watch it and stop worrying about the damm torrents . and the fbi the cops. OMG .THE COPS ARE HERE LOOKING AT US DONT POST NO MORE LMAO
Wait… What? My IP comes back to my server? What server? Who are they? How do they know who I am? Music cd’s cost more than movies? Dude, I’m really trying here but I can’t figure out what are you talking about.
First, the kid I was talking about got busted for warez, not music or movies.
Second, the only people who can connect my dynamic IP to my name and address are working at my ISP. The copyright holders must subopena the ISP for that info, and not all ISP’s are willing to give it out without a court order.
Yeah, you can always get caught even if you use peer guardian (I’m guessing this was your point, but I’m still not sure) but then again, anything that lowers the chances of being fucked is a good thing no?
Btw, if you use tor then I don’t think anyone could trace it back in any meaningful and convenient way (though your connection speed would suffer).
Oh, and you should really not use IE when you post “You damn people don’t get it” comments cause it does not lend you any credibility. Just a tip.
And an old version of IE at that! He probably got an illegal warez’d copy of XP, and he cannot install IE7 due to the Genuine Advantage. Damned nub here. “Another Nut” is for sure.
[...] http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2006/12/28/torrentspy-is-mon itored-by-copyright-thoughtpolice/ [...]
Bittorent clients list the downloaders by their ip.
It is amazing that the downloaders / uploaders have never been gone after before by the RAAA with their itimidation tactics.
Just that it was millions of people to go after at one time.
Still if it is intimidation tactics you only have to go after seveal.
Goes to show you how the music industry after abusing both artists and the general public is out of touch with reality sequestering in luxury that it took them this long to even think if this tactic.
Guess they finally had it pointed out to them that there was difffirent p2p file sharing available than Kaaza.
It is always funny to watch the plants on various news shows of the banks and banks of computers with
the experts” manning them.
Nothing but movie sets in essence.
[...] Automated Content Policing: A number of new products that promise to spider online catalogs and flag copyrighted content will become vogue for both the discovery of infringing uses and for reporting content and context to refine ad targetting. Google’s deployment of their solution on YouTube should serve to indicate if such systems are currently realistic on a large scale. More aggressive policing could include more honeypots, client-side indexing by trojans and even malicious viruses. [...]
George Orwell’s 1984 – Big Brother is Watching You
=)
Use tor, proxies, vpn..
Amazing how all of these controls and controls over simple transactions and events in our lives have been introduced as standard , acceptable and even “for our own good” after sept 11
Go to inavid.com for easy step instructions on how to get around this minor problem. Its an easy solution that anyone should do no matter what torrent or p2p client their using.
Go to inavid.com for easy step instructions on how to get around this minor problem. Its an easy solution that anyone should do no matter what torrent or p2p client their using.
@Kiril – Tor operators will likely disagree. They really hate when people channel BT traffic through the network and this behavior is frowned upon.
Oh, and I’m done with Torrentspy. Demonoid FTW.
@jadog – I fixed your link. That’s why I put the little buttons on the top of the comment box. It’s amazing how many people mess up the link tag even if the button is there.
This is how it works. When you connect to your isp your mac address is logged. A mac address or Media access controll address is a physical address hardcoded into your network card. the mac address is the is included in all framed packets. all isp frame packets with your mac address. monitoring a torrent is not that hard you just download with out sharing. then you use what is already built into tcp/ip once you have the ip address of people you download from call arp. Address resolution proticol which just basically asks your computer for its mac address or any near by routers IE at your isp that respond to all requests and boom you now have a mac address and an ip. so you subpoena the isp for the owner of the mac address because it is leased to their ip address. There is no hiding. There is no safe ranges of ip you can ask the tracker who is downloading what or you can just subpoena the tracker to give all connected ip addresses tied with usernames and look at all files uploaded by the users. Bit torrent is not safe there is no safe untrackable way to torrent the basis of the internet is you request a packet and one is sent back but in order to have a packet sent back you must have a return address our source in the packet you sent simple logic would tell you that you cant hid behind the traffic on torrent trackers forever eventually they will make it though the list of users and you will get a CND or a lawsuit. so fight them legally by donating to orgs that are formed to do so.
to those of you wondering if comcast cares about torrenting, on their site in the FAQs they flat out say they don’t care if you torrent