This article was published on December 26, 2012

BitTorrent logs suggest Hollywood studio employees are pirating movies at work


BitTorrent logs suggest Hollywood studio employees are pirating movies at work

Well, this is awkward. TorrentFreak reports that workers at Hollywood top studios are illegally sharing movies on BitTorrent from IP addresses associated with their employers.

The site worked with Scaneye, a BitTorrent monitoring company, to reportedly compile data on what files are being shared from within the movie studios. It found a handful of movies and TV shows being distributed on BitTorrent from Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney.

This isn’t the first time that such a discovery has been made. Last year, data from a different BitTorrent IP-address tracker suggested that piracy was widespread among studios and even the RIAA and the Department of Homeland Security.

For its part, BitTorrent has worked to erase the association between its filesharing platform and piracy. It recently launched the site DoesBitTorrentEqualPiracy.com to promote its legal contributions to the Internet.

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BitTorrent CEO Erick Klinker has said that the company doesn’t endorse or encourage piracy. Interestingly, TorrentFreak found only legal files when it ran a search for files shared from BitTorrent IP addresses.

It does seem like BitTorrent is here to stay. Earlier this month, it announced that its mobile apps had reached 10 million downloads.

Image credit: iStockPhoto

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