
Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic - Uncle_Sam
http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-funded-startup-aims-to-kill-bittorrent-traffic-120513/
======
haberman
There are so many players in this overall story, and so few good guys.

In one corner of the ring we have the content industry which seems to care far
more about chasing pirates than with making life nice for the people who will
actually pay them. Customers who play by the rules are "rewarded" with region
coding, DRM, and lots of arbitrary restrictions.

In the other corner are people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary
amount of music/movies without paying the creators anything. When confronted
with with the moral/economic questionability of this approach, they have an
extensive set of indignant rationalizations prepared; some of these are true
but irrelevant to helping content creators get paid ("record companies are
dinosaurs"), some of these are wishful thinking ("they can make money in other
ways"), all of these are fronts for the fact that they just like getting
things for free.

In another corner are governments and law enforcement which are gung-ho about
legislating against piracy and prosecuting it, without understanding or
properly considering the ramifications (see SOPA).

The good guys are: people who will pay a reasonable fee or watch a
small/reasonable amount of advertising to consume the content they like,
content creators who release their stuff in a convenient way without requiring
an absurd amount of control, tech companies that are providing media services
that strike a balance between creators and consumers (DRM-free Amazon, Google
Play, Apple iTunes is getting better but is still pretty locked down).

May the good guys eventually win.

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is a vast oversimplification of the problem. Sharing is not always
piracy. People tend to recognize sharing on a small scale (of movies, books,
music, etc.) as on balance a good thing, and overall functionally promotional
for the artists and makers who are having their work shared. The truth is that
the same mechanism exists even on a larger, less personal scale.
Unfortunately, the debate has been so polluted by vitriol and
misrepresentation that this gets labelled as "piracy" and "theft".

Yes, there are some people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of
music/movies without paying for it. But this is not "a corner", it is not the
norm for people who "pirate" or "share". The average person who downloads
movies off of bit torrent is someone who does so as part of a larger set of
media consuming behaviors which includes paying for cable, buying movies on
disc, and seeing movies in theaters. Also, current evidence tends to lead
toward the conclusion that engaging in "piracy" on balance results in more
support for artists, not less.

On the whole I very much agree with Jonathan Coulton's stance on piracy
(<http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/>), make good stuff and
make it easy to buy it. I've never seen a case where that has failed to reward
the artists.

~~~
haberman
> Sharing is not always piracy.

Didn't say it was. Actually I didn't use the word "piracy" at all (except in
reference to the content industry and their perception of what "piracy" is).
You're preaching the party line without reading what I've written.

For example, I have no problem with someone using BitTorrent to download
something they already bought once, but that they can't use on a new device
because of unreasonable DRM. I only have a problem with people who are not
paying creators at all, or justify a large amount of copying because of a
small/moderate amount of legitimate purchases.

I also agree that a limited amount of free sharing between friends is totally
reasonable.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I read exactly what you wrote. You used a characterization of media sharing as
"piracy", as "people who feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of
music/movies without paying the creators anything". As I said, this is an
incorrect and vastly oversimplified view of the issue.

It's not just about heavy handed law enforcement, or about the excesses of
DRM, it's also about sharing. If we eliminate sharing (of music, movies,
books, etc.) from the world in an effort to fight "piracy" we will have made a
grave mistake. Indeed, I think the rampant levels of impersonal sharing we see
today with things like bittorrent are probably better for content creators
than more traditional levels enabled by libraries and friends and restricted
by physical media forms.

The important point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that everyone who
reads a book, watches a movie, or listens to a song needs to have engaged in
some economic transaction prior to doing so (through either direct purchase or
subjection to advertising) is a wholly wrong and dangerous notion. We can, and
do, live in a world where content creators are rewarded bountifully for the
work and yet unregulated sharing runs wild and free.

~~~
haberman
> You used a characterization of media sharing as "piracy", as "people who
> feel entitled to consume an arbitrary amount of music/movies without paying
> the creators anything".

I meant exactly what I said: I am against "people who feel entitled to consume
an arbitrary amount of music/movies without paying the creators anything." I
didn't say this includes everyone who downloads things over BitTorrent (and I
don't believe that it does). I didn't say this includes everyone who sends
their friends songs sometimes (and I don't believe that it does). _You_ made
this association, not me.

It _does_ include people who say things like "I just discovered BitTorrent,
which is great because now I don't have to pay for movies any more." Which as
I mentioned in another comment, includes someone I met in real life just
yesterday.

> The important point I'm trying to make here is that the idea that everyone
> who reads a book, watches a movie, or listens to a song needs to have
> engaged in some economic transaction prior to doing so (through either
> direct purchase or subjection to advertising) is a wholly wrong and
> dangerous notion.

Well if we're talking in extremes, it is an equally wrong and dangerous notion
that the compensation of creative people should be solely dependent on
charity, with no recourse against freeloaders. What do you think would happen
to the movie industry if the ticket booth at theaters were replaced with an
offering plate?

------
kika
I've built a company a few years ago which competed with these guys in their
previous market - bittorrent optimization for ISPs. We've built the product
(sort of a bittorrent cache) and achieved some positive results on a few
production installs but never hit the real mark. The optimization we provided
for ISPs wasn't worth for them the cost of the service we were considering
minimally acceptable. The 'long tail' was really longer than we anticipated
and this long tail spoiled our cache. But we've developed the 'carrier grade
bittorrent client', i.e. hundreds of thousand connections, tens of thousand
downloads, millions of files. Erlang + C. Hack value was something to be proud
of. The next attempt would be to convert it to this - spoil the downloads and
charge the copyright owners. We discussed this many times within the company
but finally decided to wind it down. I believe breaking the protocols is
beyond the line and we're too old school to cross this line. I wouldn't have
been hesitated to, like, chasing individual violators, given the proof of
violation, or identifying child porn distributors or something along these
lines, but not breaking the internets. I talked to this guy once, btw. They
were quite behind us in terms of technology and I don't think they progressed
much. Well, I'd like to think :-)

~~~
haliax
Can you share some technical details/details of your conversations with this
guy please?

~~~
kika
Or you're interested in our implementation?

~~~
haliax
Yes, your implementation and the general idea, I've some familiarity with the
bittorrent protocol.

------
skymt
I'm less interested in the politics and more in the technical details. They
seem to be keeping their secret sauce a secret. The best I could find in a
brief search is this quote from the article:

 _We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every p2p
client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to
confuse these clients about the real I.P. addresses of other clients and to
make them disconnect from each other._

My guess: the software connects to seeds and floods them with peer-exchange
messages containing fake peers. (Essentially it's a DoS attack.) If that's the
trick, then disabling PEX would leave a seeder immune.

~~~
ajross
How is this possibly legal? Interfering with someone else's computer system
without permission is criminal (!) behavior pretty much everywhere.

~~~
wpietri
But as the article states, the head of Microsoft Russia likes it! Both
Microsoft and Russia are known for probity, respect for the law, and
supporting the little guy. And when you combine the two, it should be double
the respect for democracy. I'm sure it must be legal.

------
charliesome
> _It was able to stop BitTorrent traffic if needed, which made the developers
> realize that they might have built the holy anti-piracy grail._

That's flawed reasoning.

Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy? Of
course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring data
from one host to another.

Calling some protocol specific denial of service exploit the 'anti-piracy holy
grail' seems out of touch to me.

~~~
batista
> _That's flawed reasoning._

You don't say.

> _Suppose their technology killed BitTorrent over night. Will it stop piracy?
> Of course not - we have a myriad of other technologies adept at transferring
> data from one host to another._

Yes, but it would be a very significant setback. Already the raids on DDL
sites have had a large impact on the availability and easy access to pirated
material. For example, they made 5 years worth of DDL links unreachable in one
night.

In the end, you don't have to kill piracy --you just have to make it
inconvenient enough, and most of the people will give up.

~~~
moe
_you just have to make it inconvenient enough, and most of the people will
give up._

Let's verify that claim, shall we?

1\. Fact: For the past 10 years the content industry has been doing everything
in their power to make file-sharing as inconvenient as possible.

2\. Result: [http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/201...](http://disruptive-music.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/usmusicindustryevolution.jpg)

I'll tell you where your (and their) mistake is. Instead of trying to make
"illegal" sharing inconvenient, the focus should be on making "legal"
consumption convenient.

When the content is available immediately, everywhere, at good quality, for a
reasonable price, then most people have no reason to consider other channels.

The content industry has only themselves to blame for not providing that. Case
in point: I'd like to watch avengers, on my flatscreen at home, asap. Chances
are PirateBay will make that happen before iTunes, even though I _would_
happily pay $10 for it, if they'd let me.

~~~
huggyface
You seem to have a confused message. On the one hand you are arguing that it
is futile trying to stop file sharing by linking to dropping music sales. But
then you argue that they simply need to make legal consumption convenient:
Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant
gratification.

What you're really demonstrating is that a lot of people _simply like things
for free_. Hopping on the soap box and pontificating how it is everyone else's
fault is a ruse that we've seen since the early days of piracy. It is always
someone else's fault, and it's always some natural right to have everything
for nothing.

~~~
moe
_Music is superbly convenient to legally purchase online, with instant
gratification._

That is a _very_ recent invention with spotify and the ilk - and even they
still have ways to go.

iTunes may seem superficially convenient, but in reality it is only convenient
when you already know what you want. Discovery is non-existent, and that's
what many people want. And: It is way too expensive. (There, I said it!)

You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph, but: Reality is
that people value movies higher than music. $10 for a film is reasonable to
most people. $10 for (most) albums is not. $10/month flat for _all_ music is
then again in their comfort zone, as demonstrated by spotify et al.

You can now either take the stance of the music industry; i.e. cry, complain
and spend all your money on trying to turn back time to the golden 80s - where
consumers had little choice other than pay whatever you asked.

Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has ended
because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the market
has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that you
either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy.

~~~
huggyface
_It is way too expensive_

It's hard to compete with $0, which is the price that thieves are willing to
pay.

 _You may be kicking and screaming after reading this paragraph_

I'm not in the music industry. I'm not in the movie industry. I would
_benefit_ , financially, from piracy by simply engaging in it myself. But, you
know, I don't because I can't justify it. I find the arguments that do
completely transparent and selfish.

I honestly find these piracy excusing arguments _sad_ for society as a whole:
It is the tragedy of the commons, everyone taking a dump in the well simply
because they _can_ , making laughable arguments why what they're doing is
justified ("If only there was a toilet every 10 feet and someone wiped my arse
for me..."). It's hearing a teenager justify why they litter (it's the city's
fault and McDonald's fault and their parent's fault and...).

 _Or you can accept that the era of the middlemen (the "distributors") has
ended because consumers don't want to pay for their Yacht's anymore. That the
market has decided on two prices (for movies and music respectively), and that
you either make do with that, or continue on your path to irrelevancy._

Yachts....another adorable excuse for theft.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Well, Russia watches Game of Thrones and we couldn't if not for pirates.

This makes me un-sad for society as whole. We become richer from piracy than
we could be without.

Martin sells much more books in Russia right now than he would without the TV
series, and HBO aren't losing money because they don't want our money anyway.

~~~
huggyface
The essentials of life -- life, liberty, the Game of Thrones without delay.

Even if I accepted that argument, it has perilously little validity for the
majority of participants in English language piracy discussions.

~~~
moe
You say that as if there's a godgiven right for distributors to make money
from art that others create, and for said distributors to decide when a given
market is allowed to have access to it.

You also seem to assume nobody wants to pay for anything that they can get for
free.

Neither is true. People _want_ to support their artists, they just want
different infrastructure than what is available today.

Personally I have bought multiple physical books on amazon _after_ reading the
pirated ebook. I didn't even bother to unbox them after they arrived. It would
have been easier for me if the books had been available on amazon as ebooks in
first place.

Likewise, when I hear a song that I like (e.g. on youtube or soundcloud) then
often I'd spontaneously tip the artist $1, or $5, or just $0.10 - if only I
could.

This all may sound foreign to you, but I promise you this is where we are
heading. The new platforms emerge as we speak, and slowly replace the old
cruft. Evolution at work; your choice is to either adapt or die, it really is
as simple as that.

~~~
batista
> _You say that as if there's a godgiven right for distributors to make money
> from art that others create, and for said distributors to decide when a
> given market is allowed to have access to it._

No, it's not a god given right. It's a right given to them by the artists. You
know, those "other's that create".

~~~
moe
The majority of artists seems to be very happy with the emerging distribution
methods. You know, the 99% that didn't get a major deal in the past or that
have been strangled by buy-out contracts and "less than fair" revenue shares.

If you have other data then I'd be curious to see it. My impression is that
complaints only ever originate from mainstream artists, major labels or lobby-
groups.

I have yet to see a small band or indy speak up against the demise of the
major labels.

~~~
huggyface
Wow, you really are pulling out all the best for this discussion.

"The majority of artists seems to be very happy with the emerging distribution
methods."

So why are we even talking about piracy? Clearly these people are pursuing
alternative distribution models, relying upon concerts or whatever, etc.
Therefore the torrents are full of legally allowed sharing.

That's right, right? Surely it must be.

Of course that's not reality at all. This bullshit Robin Hood act is yet
another adorable piracy defense technique.

~~~
moe
_So why are we even talking about piracy?_

That's what I asked you. Who is, really? Sources?

I'll give you one from my side:
[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_b...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all)

 _This bullshit Robin Hood_

You know what's bullshit? People who can't even form their simplistic world-
view into a coherent argument and try to compensate by charging up each of
their comments with random insults.

What is _your_ solution to the piracy issue? Tougher laws? 3 Strikes? What do
you propose when this doesn't work (for which we have strong indication)?

------
DanBC
A Google search for [“Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m alive”] returns 13 hits,
all about this start-up.

Searching for [“Vysotsky" Thanks to God, I’m alive] returns some more hits
about the film, including some Youtube copy-vios.

Searching for ["Vysotsky" amazon] returns a bunch of out-of-stock items.

Sony - I want to pay for this. I want to give you my money. I want to buy this
film. I want to buy many films, especially if they're not mindless
blockbusters. You need to learn how to make search engines work and you need
to make the official site have some kind of link to sales.

~~~
eps
<http://www.google.ca/search?q=высоцкий.+спасибо+что+живой>

> _I want to buy this film._

No, you don't. It is of a very little interest to anyone outside of a Russian
demographic circle.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, I do.

You can say that no-one is interested in Japanese horror or Hong Kong crime or
etc etc.

~~~
eps
"You" in a collective sense. There is no enough you/s for Sony to justify
adapting the movie to the non-Russian markets.

------
FuzzyDunlop
"44,845 transfers" were 'successfully stopped', according to this article, at
a cost of anywhere between $12-50k.

Assuming $50k, that would put it at a cost of approx $1.10 per 'stopped'
transfer. With the caveat that they've no idea if the 'stopped' transfers just
resumed later on. That seems like wasted money.

Now, it'd be interesting to see what they could do to get nearly fifty
thousand extra sales at a similar or proportionate expense.

~~~
dbcoops
This is what I don't understand about the anti-piracy interest group. Piracy
is simply competition. These prevention tactics tell me, the consumer, that
this company believes it cannot compete on any level with the ease and
availability of pirating content. If they stop all pirating everywhere, will
it force me to buy content through their (less than amazing services)? Maybe a
little. Is it possible to stop all pirating everywhere? I doubt it.

In other words, where is the "piracy killer" service that is so awesome, I
give someone my money and stop pirating? Hulu? Load of crap. Netflix? It's
okay, I guess. Steam? Ok, so there's one.

~~~
citricsquid
> These prevention tactics tell me, the consumer, that this company believes
> it cannot compete on any level with the ease and availability of pirating
> content

of course they can't! Piracy has one major value to people that engage in
piracy: it allows people to acquire content without abiding by the acquisition
policy set out by the content distributors. It's "competition" in the same way
that it's "competition" when 1 athlete in an Olympic running event is taking
steroids and has jet boots on. You can't treat piracy as fair competition.

Most people don't pirate out of a "It's too difficult for me to buy this song
via itunes", they pirate because they don't want to spend money. Content
distributors can't compete with that, even with services like Netflix and Hulu
people still pirate because they don't like adverts. If they are unwilling to
pay and unwilling to view adverts what other options are there besides just
giving away content for free? People that pirate (in general) want content
without compromising on the way they want it, while piracy exists these people
will continue to pirate.

~~~
hxa7241
'Fair'? That seems an invalid concept here. What is 'fairness', assuming a
strict copyright system? -- it is a race with the qualifying runner, but where
no others are allowed to run! That is a strange notion of fairness.

But 'fairness' is just a diversion: these copyright trade monopolies are
supposed to _prevent_ competition (of distribution), that is their point. That
is how they increase one kind of revenue and so supposedly increase
production.

When non rights-holders are copying/distributing it is competition _de facto_
\-- according only to the basic rules of physics. And it can therefore be an
important signal: because what is basically physically possible is what the
economy should really be aiming for. If people can distribute informational
goods themselves better than the authorised channels, those channels are
clearly underachieving according to the real baseline measure.

~~~
citricsquid
Fair is when the people that own content control that content. It's not a
difficult concept.

~~~
slowpoke
How so? I would see it as a lot fairer if we'd all follow a liberal approach:

    
    
        I can't force you to give me things.
        But neither can you stop me from sharing them.
    

I completely reject the illogical, nonsensical crazy idea that you can _own_
virtual, abstract things. It's impossible by their very definition.

 _Die Gedanken sind frei._

------
lunarscape
If I'm reading this correctly the software attacks ordinary peoples PCs to
prevent them seeding a specific file (by spoofing other peoples IPs?). Anybody
want to guess how many laws they could potentially be breaking in Europe and
the US?

~~~
kika
In Russia they're breaking the laws too.

~~~
lunarscape
I wasn't suggesting Russia didn't have laws against cyber crime. I'm just not
familiar with them. It'll be interesting what the legal ramifications will be
be if this service gets more traction and customers.

------
micheljansen
Interestingly, if this would be widely deployed, it would probably result in
adaptations to the BitTorrent protocol being developed to counteract this
technique. Just look at the history of Distributed Hash Tables and Magnet
links. Ironically, rather than stopping people from pirating content, they are
actually spending money to make BitTorrent more resilient. While this will
surely come in handy when SkyNet finally takes over, I'm sure the money would
indeed be better spent on more competitive products and services.

------
voidr
I wonder how would this "wonderful" technology would perform in private
torrent networks. Also I think it would be relatively easy to build protection
against this kind of an attack also I wonder if doing this is legal in the
first place...

These studios should spend their money on competing with torrent networks
rather than always trying to destroy them.

Just create a descent media streaming service that makes accessing content
easier and faster and most people will probably ditch torrent. To me my time
is worth a lot, when I hunt down a movie on the internet it takes my time away
and by extension my money(time = money) if the media companies would help me
out with this, and offer a service where I could get anything in no time, I
would gladly pay them for the time they saved me.

------
guard-of-terra
It is old news, and the technology revolves around extracting extra money from
IP holders while disrupting a small number of transfers on selected files.

Consider skipping.

~~~
kika
Given how Russian internet is structured it may actually work. I mean the
small number might become not so small. You can relatively easy (given the
appropriate administrative support) break the download for 1M people at once
(a whole city) from a single server.

The upside of this is that you can easily get 20-30Mbit for $20-30/mo from 3-4
competing ISPs in a relatively large city.

~~~
guard-of-terra
It would not because users will immediately switch to ipv6, vpns, encryption,
private trackers, other protocols.

Sites that actually provide competitive service (like ivi.ru) pose much larger
threat to piracy.

~~~
kika
All these sites (like IVI and the likes) share the same, very limited, library
of content. It is like 10% of Netflix/Hulu, or even less. But potentially
sure, I agree.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Of course they would never gather a decent library of rarer, older or foreign
content. Just torrent that, nobody cares.

------
darksaga
Hardly the holy grail they're talking about. The fatal flaw is as soon as you
close you one door, the pirates are already looking for 10 other ways to get
around your technology.

Case in point? Look at how many times they've tried to shut down Pirate Bay.
They just keep re-tooling and continue on.

------
pmorici
How is this not a computer crime?

~~~
dkulchenko
I was thinking the same. How is this not a blatant violation of CFAA
1030(a)(5)?:

(A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or
command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without
authorization, to a protected computer;

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030#a_5>

------
mutantmonkey
Based on the description of the product, it sounds like it performs man in the
middle attacks on BitTorrent trackers or an attack on the Peer Exchange
feature of some clients. I am willing to bet that either TLS-enabled trackers
or disabling PEX would be all that are needed to get around this.

------
WiseWeasel
Now if only there was an easy way for me to all but kill BT on my own LAN, so
my roommates stop using up all my upstream bandwidth, and so I don't start
getting nastygrams from my ISP because of them once they start doing that in
July. As a network admin, BT sucks!

~~~
mdaniel
Back a few years ago when I was the net admin for our small company, my boss
asked me how to set up his home network so that his daughter could not access
games or chat or whatever kids do that parents don't approve of.

My answer to him is the same advice I offer to you: don't try to use
technology to solve a social problem. In his case, I know for certain that his
daughter has a _lot_ more free time to think of ways to circumvent the
restriction, and he has less time to think of, and then implement, new
firewalls.

I don't know your situation, but I would be willing to bet a compassionate
plea to only torrent during off-peak hours, or to set the upstream throttle on
their client would go a lot further than trying to "kill BT".

Of course, having said all of that, controlling bandwidth usage is a slightly
different use case than trying to prevent certain content from
entering/exiting the network. If you are having a problem with one peer using
too many resources, I would think IP throttling would solve that problem
(presuming the softer social strategies didn't pan out).

~~~
WiseWeasel
The main problem is they can't be bothered to figure out how newsgroups work,
or pay a little money for the privilege of using a less network-intensive
protocol with better performance. BitTorrent is just a drain on the network,
and makes things like gaming impractical no matter how much you throttle it
(though it certainly helps a lot). And people often leave it running for long
periods out of civic duty.

IP throttling isn't specific enough. I don't need to throttle an HTTP download
that's going to be done in a few minutes. I just want BT to die on my network,
at least when I want the resources free for other use.

/rant

------
pimeys
Even if I couldn't download movies, I wouldn't buy blu-rays and I would
continue watching movies in theaters only in some festivals like Berlinale or
HIFF. Same losses for the industry. Money well spent.

------
mratzloff
Microsoft "investing" $100,000 is like you giving $1 (insert small
denomination currency of your choice) to a beggar. They're not stupid. They
know there is a relatively short expiration on this technology, so they
probably reason they can make it difficult enough for maybe 500 people to
pirate copies of Windows and Office that they'll buy them.

They may not even think that, and this is the old Microsoft strategy of
structuring a contract in such a way that they now secretly own all of your
technology.

------
NHQ
If I were trying to break a torrent, I'd put thousands of peers in the swarm
and share bad data.

I'm all for the culture spammers getting better at busting p2p, so p2p gets
better and subverting the culture spammers.

~~~
CraigRood
Sending bad data won't prevent anything either, It will merely slow down the
peers by wasting bandwidth.

Torrents by nature work against bad data being received by hash checking each
chunk of data. (You can't trust anyone on the internet). Most clients would
simply block each "bad" peer after several bad chunks.

------
gouranga
It's another whack-a-mole job.

People will just tunnel a new internet through the old one based on peer trust
and this is instantly no longer an issue.

~~~
chucknthem
$100,000 of seed funding. I wonder what share of the company they gave up for
this. Heavily funded anti-piracy agencies are almost guaranteed to make this a
good investment.

------
silentscope
smarter mousetrap, smarter mouse. it's pirate pay vs. the internet. man, I
would not want to be them.

------
ktizo
This behaviour will push file sharing further into anonymised and encrypted
networks, which will push down the statistics of files shared online as they
are based on what can be measured.

So the upshot will be that visible torrents will fall, allowing the company to
claim success, even while they are making it harder for the people who are
paying them to have any clue about the actual situation on the ground.

If there wasn't a slew of technologies waiting in the wings as drop in
replacements, this kind of approach would have some success, but there is, so
it probably wont.

