p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- BitTorrent was the most popular fle sharing protocol in 2008, and in America, MIT was the school harbouring the largest number of  ‘Pirates’.

Abroad, the University of Botswana, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and National Technical University of Athens had the most infringements in 2008 with rates at nearly four times those found at US universities.

All three statements come from BayTSP, the US bounty hunter which makes its money by tracking file-sharers and sending infringement notices to ISPs.

However, data are aggregated from BayTSP clients, “and may not reflect all  activity online,” the company told p2pnet.

“BitTorrent and eDonkey expanded their dominance as the preferred P2P protocols for downloading pirated content, according to a threat level research project tracking unauthorized downloads of BayTSP client content,” says BayTSP’s Online Trends & Insights 2008 report..

“Second tier and older P2P distribution protocols, like Ares, Gnutella and DirectConnect, continued to de  cline in 2008 and account for close to 10% of infringement found during the year.”

Youtube continued  to have  the highest number of  infringements of BayTSP client  content  in 2008, although MySpace increased  toward  the end of  the  year, it says, going on:

“Infringements found on Google Video dropped substantially by the end of the year because  they stopped hosting  their own content.   Stage6 disappeared completely due to potential copyright litigation and significant costs in keeping the site running.”

Television

In an experimental project, BayTSP  collected data  for  a  “popular,” but unnamed,  “television asset,” the objective being to,  “develop new tools and methodologies” to provide “intelligence  data”  related  to  user  behavior and P2P usage.

“In this illustration, Spain continues to be a hotspot, hosting a combined 172,841 unique  users for both protocols over the one week  timeframe,” it says, noting:

“As expected, BitTorrent median download times were substantially  lower  – hours vs. days  -  in comparison to download  times on  the eDonkey protocol. The much  larger number of users (and files) available on eDonkey over BitTorrent  can be attributed  to  the nature of  the protocol.

“Users on eDonkey  tend  to  ‘permanently’  share  their collection  of  files whereas BitTorrent users tend to clear completed fles from their client  application after a period of time.”

Major  networks  and  cable TV  shows  in2oo8 began tapping  into  the demand  for Web-based access  to TV content, says BayTSP, stating the winning  strategy  appears  to  include  a mix  of  full length  episodes posted online  24  hours to  a  week  after  initial airing, along with clips  from shows  that  lend  themselves  to shorter pieces , “like  theDaily Show and many programs  from Comedy Central”.

“The challenge facing broadcasters in 2009 will be balancing the public’s desire to view shows online for free against the potential loss of revenue from people who cancel their cable subscriptions in favor of watching shows on their computers,” it says, also noting:

“The issue becomes even more of a challenge when factoring in appliances like AppleTV, Boxee and other hardware and services that allow consumers to stream high quality video content from their computer to their HD televisions.”

There was also an increase in the ‘pirating’ of live and pay per view events, says BayTSP.

“Unauthorized online broadcast of  live and pay-per-view events caught the public`s attention with  the launch of   Chinese sites like Sopcast  in 2006,” it says, going on:

“With  the advent of digital broadcasts and more consumer friendly technologies like MyP2P and Ustream. Individuals in the US and abroad are rebroadcasting TV shows, sports,  live  concerts  and  pay-per-view  events  and,  in  some cases, making money from display ads appearing alongside the stream.

Schools

MIT, University of Washington and Boston University topped  the list of  US universities with the most infringements in 2008, says the company.

“MIT was the top infringer in 2007, but overall the number of  infringements being  found at domestic universities has held relatively steady since BayTSP began collecting statistics in 2006,” it says.

Countries

Spain, Italy and France with “lax copyright protection laws” are named as having the most infringements  of  in  2008.

But, “The  United  States,  which topped  the  list  in 2007, dropped  to  fourth place,  largely as a  result of stepped up responsiveness by U.S.-based ISPs, accounting for nearly a 35% drop in the number of identifed infringements,” says BayTSP.

Canada is listed at the Number 6 position.

ISPs

Comcast, AT&T,  and  Road  Runner  topped  the  list  of  US  ISPs with  the  most  infringements, “each with more than one million apiece,” says the report.

Comcast has been the domestic ISP with the most infringements since BayTSP began collecting statistics in 2006, it states.

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May, 2009