Conference paper
A week in the Life of the Most Popular BitTorrent Swarms
Mark Scanlon, Alan Hannaway and M-Tahar Kechadi. A week in the Life of the Most Popular BitTorrent Swarms. Proceedings of the 5th Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA 2010), pp. 32-36.
Abstract
The popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution is consistently increasing since the late 1990's. In 2008, P2P traffic accounted for over half of the world's Internet traffic. P2P networks lend themselves well to the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material due to their ease of use, the abundance of material available and the apparent anonymity awarded to the downloaders. This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted on the top 100 most popular BitTorrent swarms over the course of one week. The purpose of this investigation is to quantify the scale of unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material through the use of the BitTorrent protocol. Each IP address, which was discovered over the period of the weeklong investigation, is mapped through the use of a geolocation database, which results in the ability to determine where the participation in these swarms is prominent worldwide.
Contribution Summary
The paper investigates participation in the top 100 most popular BitTorrent swarms over the course of one week. It frames peer-to-peer file sharing as an investigative challenge because of its ease of use, the availability of copyrighted material and the apparent anonymity of participants. The authors collect IP addresses observed during the monitoring period and map them through a geolocation database. This provides a geographical view of participation in the selected swarms and supports analysis of the scale of unauthorised distribution through BitTorrent. The scope is the monitored swarms and observation period, rather than all BitTorrent activity. Readers should consult the paper for the sampling procedure, results and limitations.
Keywords: BitTorrent; Peer-to-Peer File Sharing; Copyright Infringement; Digital Forensics; Network Analysis; Cybersecurity; P2P Networks; Unauthorized Distribution
BibTeX
@inproceedings{scanlon2010week,
title="{A week in the Life of the Most Popular BitTorrent Swarms}",
author={Scanlon, Mark and Hannaway, Alan and Kechadi, M-Tahar},
booktitle="{Proceedings of the 5th Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA 2010)}",
pages={32-36},
month=06,
year="2010",
address={Albany, New York, USA},
abstract = {The popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution is consistently increasing since the late 1990's. In 2008, P2P traffic accounted for over half of the world's Internet traffic. P2P networks lend themselves well to the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material due to their ease of use, the abundance of material available and the apparent anonymity awarded to the downloaders. This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted on the top 100 most popular BitTorrent swarms over the course of one week. The purpose of this investigation is to quantify the scale of unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material through the use of the BitTorrent protocol. Each IP address, which was discovered over the period of the weeklong investigation, is mapped through the use of a geolocation database, which results in the ability to determine where the participation in these swarms is prominent worldwide.},
}