Publicado em: 22/03/2013

Dissertação de Mestrado em Redes de Computadores / Redes Par-a-Par

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL
INSTITUTO DE INFORMÁTICA
PROGRAMA DE POS-GRADUAÇÃO EM COMPUTAÇÃO
———————————————————
DEFESA DE DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO

Aluno: Adler Hoff Schmidt
Orientador: Prof. Dr. Luciano Paschoal Gaspary

Título: Characterizing Dissemination of Illegal Copies of Content Through BitTorrent Networks
Linha de Pesquisa: Redes de Computadores / Redes Par-a-Par

Data: 28/03/2013
Hora: 10h30min
Local: Sala 220 (conselhos). Prédio 43412 – Instituto de Informática

Banca Examinadora:
Prof. Dr. Raul Ceretta Nunes (UFSM)
Profa. Dra. Ingrid Eleonora Schreiber Jansch Porto (UFRGS)
Prof. Dr. Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville (UFRGS)

Presidente da Banca: Prof. Dr. Luciano Paschoal Gaspary

Abstract:

BitTorrent (BT) networks are nowadays the most employed method of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing in the Internet. Recent monitoring reports reveal that content copies being shared are mostly illegal and movies are the most popular media type. Research efforts carried out to understand the dynamics of content production and sharing in BT networks have been unable to provide precise information regarding the dissemination of illegal copies. In this work we perform an extensive experimental study in order to characterize the behavior of producers, publishers, providers and consumers of copyright-infringing files. This study is based on seven months of traces obtained by monitoring swarms sharing movies via one of the most popular BT public communities. Traces were obtained with an extension of a BitTorrent “universe” observation architecture, which allowed the collection of a database with information about more than 55,000 torrents, 1,000 trackers and 1.9 million IPs. Our analysis not only shows that a small group of active users is responsible for the majority of disseminated illegal copies, as it unravels existing relationships among these actors and characterizes consuming patterns respected by users interested in this particular set of contents.

Keywords: P2P Networks, BitTorrent Networks, Data Sharing, Illegal Movie Copies