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| BitTorrent Traffic Surges After LimeWire Shutdown Posted: 17 May 2011 12:03 PM PDT Sandvine, the company that's best known for manufacturing the hardware that slowed down BitTorrent users on Comcast, has released their latest Internet traffic report. The company has measured the traffic consumption of Internet users in March of 2011 which allows us to highlight several emerging trends in the P2P landscape. The overall conclusion we can draw from the data is that in Europe and North America BitTorrent traffic continues to grow spectacularly, something that may in part be attributed to the shutdown of LimeWire. The Gnutella network (used by LimeWire) on the other hand has all but disappeared. The bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours in North America reveal that a massive 52% of all upstream traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent at these times. This is up from 34% in 2010, and since it’s a relative comparison, the absolute traffic consumed by BitTorrent has risen even more. The BitTorrent percentage of downstream traffic in North America lies at 10% of all Internet traffic during the busiest time of the day, up from 8% last year. Netflix is the absolute king in terms of downstream traffic here, accounting of nearly 30% of all traffic during peak hours. Traffic generated by the Gnutella protocol (used by Frostwire etc.) in North America has nearly vanished after the LimeWire shutdown. Last year it was responsible for 11% of upstream traffic and 2% of downstream traffic during peak hours. In 2011 it is no longer among the top 10 downstream applications, while the upstream traffic is stuck at little over 2%. Top Applications in North America during peak hours. (source: Sandvine)In common with North America, BitTorrent also remains the most used file-sharing protocol in Europe. In fact, the surge in peak hour traffic compared to 2010 is even more pronounced here. Bandwidth usage patterns during peak hours show that nearly 60% of the upstream traffic in Europe can be attributed to BitTorrent during these times. This has doubled compared to last year when it accounted for ‘only’ 30% of the upstream traffic. Similarly, downstream traffic during peak hours went up as well, rising from 8% last year to over 21% in March. With upstream and downstream traffic combined, BitTorrent tops the list of most used ‘applications’ leaving HTTP (including cyberlockers) in second place with 18%. Top Applications in Europe during peak hours. (source: Sandvine)Whether there’s a direct link between the LimeWire shutdown and the increase in BitTorrent usage has yet to be seen. This may explain the fall of Gnutella coinciding with the rise of BitTorrent in the North America. However, in Europe Gnutella was already virtually nonexistent last year, and here BitTorrent traffic has risen even more sharply. While keeping in mind that Sandvine might benefit from overestimating the percentage of P2P traffic because they sell traffic shaping applications, the above data shows that BitTorrent is still going strong in North America and Europe. The relative share of BitTorrent traffic increased on both regions, and since the overall Internet traffic has grown as well, the absolute increase is even greater. |
| U.S. Bill To Criminalize Illicit Movie / Music Streaming Posted: 17 May 2011 10:18 AM PDT In March, the White House published a white paper with several recommendations on how to make copyright law compliant with the digital age. Among other things, it suggests classifying unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material as a felony and to allow for wiretaps in copyright related cases. The first suggestion has now been turned into a bill that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons officially introduced last week. The bill (S. 978) was presented in the same week as the PROTECT IP Act, another major anti-piracy bill designed to clamp down on sites that facilitate online copyright infringement. If adopted, the bill will criminalize sites that offer streams of copyrighted content (such as YouTube) if they don’t act within the boundaries of the law. Under current definitions the law considers streaming to be a “public performance” instead of "reproduction and distribution." Under the new bill, streaming sites (and users) will get the same treatment as the more traditional forms of file-sharing such as BitTorrent and direct downloads. This opens the door for the authorities to crack down on streaming sites more aggressively. But the big question, however, is whether this additional power is really needed. Those who’ve followed the news about the U.S. Government crackdown on ‘unauthorized’ movie streaming sites in recent months might reasonably think that providing streams is already a felony. As part of “Operation in Our Sites” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have already launched several criminal investigations into such sites. One of the affected sites was Channelsurfing.net, a website where links to external sports streams were listed. The site itself did not offer any streams, it merely linked to streams that were offered by third-party sites. Nevertheless, ICE and HSI classified the site as a criminal operation and arrested the alleged owner, 32-year old Brian McCarthy from Texas. McCarthy has been charged with criminal copyright infringement for "reproduction and distribution" of copyrighted material. In addition he was charged with aiding and abetting copyright infringement. The above suggests that the authorities already treat streaming, or linking to streams, as a felony. This means that either the arrest of McCarthy and the seizures of a dozen domains last year were illegitimate, or that the new bill isn’t really needed to deal with streaming sites. If the bill is adopted, streamers of copyrighted content face a maximum prison sentence of five years. This is the same sentence as Brian McCarthy is currently facing, even though he was arrested in March for ‘linking’ to streams. The law can often be confusing, and apparently so confusing that it may even fool justice at times. Source: U.S. Bill To Criminalize Illicit Movie / Music Streaming |
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