Third of Content On Popular BT Portals Are Fake 255
siliconbits writes "A study published by a group of researchers, most of them based in Europe, analysed the publishers of content on two major BitTorrent portals, Pirate Bay and MiniNova, and found out that almost a third of all files on the two sites were fake."
I suggest (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that I have not once downloaded a fake on TBP in the past 10 years or so that I have been using it, I think that either the "researcher" is fiddling with the numbers or has no idea how to download something.
So I get sued for downloading a fake file can I be (Score:5, Interesting)
So I get sued for downloading / uploading a fake file can I beat it based on that they are calming that I downloading / uploading the real file?
Is this like that professor sued for haveing a mp3 file in name only?
Don't have a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately I don't have a problem with leaking fakes, so long as you're not intentionally trying to distribute viruses or anything like that.
Apparently Batman: Arkham Asylum had a leaked version that was basically a demo. There was a level you couldn't get past because of an intentionally crippled feature. When people were screaming and complaining about a "bug" in the product they purchased on the support forums, they were informed that "bug" was only present in an intentionally leaked version on torrent sites. They knew people were going to pirate their game, and they tried to get in front of it and turn it into a scenario where the pirated copy did act as a demo, perhaps convincing people to pay for the real thing.
But the bigger issue is that game studios, music companies and Hollywood still haven't seen the bigger picture.
It is to your benefit to pirate rather than deal with DRM nightmares. And corporate America is more focused on punishing their customers than trying to attract new ones.
Re:The point.. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's actually a question I've had (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand someone creating spam pages for popular search terms but I've never understood quite how they manage to come up with really obscure shit, like if I type in "three inch frange demodulator" and there's the first hit proudly declaring "Internet's leader for three inch frange demodulators!" I just made that term up two seconds ago. How do they get that cached into google? A few years back they were doing that with porn text and it would be "'Harder!' she cried, and I thrust my three inch frange demodulator deep inside." I have two questions: how did they do that and is it even doing anything useful for them? Surely they couldn't generate real ad revenue off of banner cruft on that sort of page, right?
I'm not sure of the utility of the torrent spams, either. I know never to download video files that are compressed archives because it's just going to be a scam to get you to sign up for something or pay to get the password but those are few and far between. Pirate Bay and kickasstorrents are usually pretty good. It's the other oddball sites that don't even have the damn file you're looking for but give you a dozen "sponsored links" that pretend like they do and don't. Do they live off of money made from drive-by malware?
Re:Don't have a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I sincerly hope (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdotal, but this isn't my experience. I was trying to find a copy of Four Lions (easily the best comedy about suicide bombers from 2010) to clarify a scene that I'd remembered one way and a fellow TV Troper had remembered another; the DVD wasn't yet out and it was no longer on in the cinema (and in case you were wondering I paid money for both) and was delighted to find torrent sites awash with copies of the film, some with upwards of a hundred seeds. Yay! Downloaded the torrent and it started coming down at a 16Mb.
About 33% through the download, MS security essentials on my laptop (connected to the share on the linux box doing the download) that the file was infected with some trojan or other; waited for the file to finish and played it back on a linux VM. Got a message that said "you need to play this back in Windows Media Player!"; put it on a (unpatched) windows VM, played back in MPC and got the same message, played back in windows media player and lo and behold got the trojan payload. Didn't really bother to see what the trojan did, but tried a couple of the other seeds for different files. Downloaded those (again, quickly) and they were also trojaned. What surprised me the most was the complete lack of comments in any of the files I saw, even when I tracked down multiple tracker sites.
It might just be I was unlucky and started looking for it on the same day the first rips from the screener copies came out, but someone, somewhere, was providing a lot of bandwidth and servers for providing fake copies of what I thought was a non-blockbuster indie movie.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never gotten a fake or malware-infected file; oh wait, I actually pay for the software, music, and movies that I want to watch. Maybe that's why.
While you have a point, as history has proven, buying legit doesn't always protect you from malware. [wikipedia.org] And haven't there been cases where viruses and malware has gotten onto the installation discs of legit software at the CD factory?
That isn't an argument against buying legit software; my point is even with legitimate software you need to keep an eye out.