Do not install any Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, or any ISP related software. Comcast has been making a big push to have customers install Norton Antivirus, Caller ID on PC, and a number of other enticing programs. While this isn’t confirmed information, if they’re going to make this whole Bit Stalker thing work, it’s to get customers who wouldn’t have any good reason to be on a blocklist to be a zombie in their BitStalker strategy.

Don’t install any software they provide. Then that should slow the process considerably.

Wow, what a great biz tool, once you have sold a single list for 12.40 and sold 20mil names there there will be no more names to sell.!

http://www.multichannel.com/blog/BIT_RATE/30860-Cable_Ops_Didn_t_Fund_Research_Into_BitTorrent_Tracker.php

Jason – Comcast

We all know who own comcast use Google if your clueless, warner are in the same boat, all your seeing is big media companies who have bought into a few US ISP companies dpoing the work of their monopolistic and anti creative paymasters, lets face it however, if folks act like sheep they are pretty easy to round up and using plain bit torrent is simply asking to be facing the hounds of the media mafia.

You are the fag

Why do you think you have a right to privacy, when you do not respect anyone elses right to privacy?

“@53 they dont want to tune it down, its cost thema fortune to tune it up.”

ISP dont pay for bandwidth on a per customer basis, they buy it wholesale: an agreed amount of bandwidth at an agreed price.

Bandwidth is still payed for regardless of how it is used: therefore one heavy user – eg. Bittorrent – paying $X to the ISP is less profitable than 4 light to medium users who all pay $X. In other words ISP’s prefer light users as they can sell the same bandwidth for 4 times as much (in this example).

“And besides torrent files there really isnt any need to super fast connections.”

Sorry – how new are you to the internet? Any file beyond a trivial size, say 1 MB for arguments sake is faster to the end user so the faster the better.

There are many, many uses beyond piracy and P2P applications that require a very fast connection speed.

TV streams are delivered at 720p and 1080i. Movies, from Youtube to full features are delivered in 1080p x264 with DTS – the streams are enormous. Don’t forget porn streams, same resolutions and quality. To stream mere PDTV (or SDTV – standard resolution of 480p) requires at a minimum 3.5 Mbps and that will be choppy – 5 Mbps is recommended. For standard definition.

Games aquired from outlets such as Steam can be over 20 GB (eg. upcoming APB MMO – already out in limited beta release.) Purchase GTA4 from Steam 14 GB download.

The gaming service onlive, set to launch July 17, is streaming fully rendered images fast enough to provide at least 30 FPS gaming with all frames sent over the network.

There are many others uses that require very fast internet, I could go on – please stop being so naive as to think the internet exists for Bittorrent – you really are quite misinformed and apparently not even bothering to even glance at any internet news sources.

You are badly misinformed. If you think you have a “right” to privacy used to facilitate unlawful activity, tour your local prison sometime. The more “privacy” is being used to defend forms of unlawful activity, online or off, the less we will have.

Pro: BitStalker won’t catch me.

Con: I’ll have about 75% of peers/seeds available.

And people are investing (wasting) money on this?

privacy is privacy. it doesnt matter what you sign in this country; if the document is deemed unreasonable, unjust, or unconstitutional, then it can be considered null and void instantly. people can sign their homes away or their rights at any time an any number of forms.. right now i can sign something that says that i dont get due process in court. but do i still have a right to due process in court?? the answer is yes.

so if i sign something that says that comcast can wiretap my phone, (or open/examine my packets), it doenst matter, because i cant sign away my right to privacy and/or protection of the law.

why are you such a douche, neo.
when i read your posts the first thing that pops into my head is the term ‘menstrual cramp’.

Didn’t Comcast recently merge with NBC?

If you’re a media company looking at this landscape I’d think you’re damn well going to want to be an ISP. That way you get to regain control that at present is sorely lacking.

Does anyone believe this isn’t what’s happening/going to happen? Seems quite the incentive to roll out something like this.

All ISPs – at least in the USA and probably the world over – contain a specific clause in their Terms of Service stating that usage of their services for the purposes of copyright infringement is prohibited.

It’s hardly surprising that ISP are interested in pirates considering that they use large amounts of bandwidth compared to other customers.

Using your ISPs service for the purposes of spam, hacking or disrupting other web services or other illicit material such as distribution of child pornography is also against the ToS – for some reason the commenters seem less concerned about these violations.

It’s about time ISPs took an active role in policing the violations of their customers when it somes to copyright infringment.

I’m sorry – proven wrong? How was it “proved” and who by exactly?

Common sense – from people who know a little mind you – tells you that that blocklists are are at best pointless and may contribute to slowing any swarm down.

They don’t work for the reasons I explained: changing IP addresses is trivial and blocklists are public record meaning any party monitoring swarms knows exactly when they need to change the IP they are currently using. They also know exactly when they don’t need to change – IE. they are undetected.

I am not offering “proof” mind you and I doubt you can offer any “proof” either – but please do so if you can.

Godspeed brave and chivalrous Knights of copyright enforcment. Slay the3 evil P2P scum and their minions! :)

Ben Jones was also proven wrong so I wouldn’t go saying peer blocking programs are useless. Its quite the opposite.

“Lastly, it is possible that peers may be able to detect the
monitors and blacklist them. Siganos et al. show that the cur-
rent passive BitTorrent monitors can be detected by observing
that the frequency with which the monitor’s IP addresses oc-
cur across a large number of tracker lists is statistically higher
than that of normal peers [7]. Our active monitoring may also
be identi?able in the same manner. To address this, we recom-
mend that the monitoring be distributed across a large number
or dynamic set of IP addresses.”

In other words blocklists are pointless.

Very unlikely. To begin with 60% of users infringing copyrights does not mean 60% of users will jump ship – some will have no viable alternative, some will be casual pirates who don’t care or don’t know about this inaitive, some will simply change to other methods of obtaining files.

And the users that do leave will likely be infringers who download large amounts of data – meaning hey are the least profitable customer for any ISP that buys wholesale bandwidth. Often it’s the case that 20% of an ISPs userbase accounts for somewhere in the region of 80% of bandwidth used – which must be purchased by the ISP. For the same price plan this means that those customers cost many, many times over the cost of an average customer to service. If you consider that getting rid of these customers means another 4 average users can be put on then it’s not rocket science to work out that the ISP now makes a lot more money and they let a competitor lose money by not having these new, “average” customers.

Add to this the liklihood that the BitStalker program will likely be profit generating in itself also.

I fail to see what infrastructure has to do with this plan either.

To be clear, business operations are highly unlikely to voluntarily embark on a path that will lead to profits dropping significantly. This is particuarly true of larger, well established businesses.

That’s specially true if they don’t own the infra-structure they use to deliver the service.

The remaining companies that fail @ suicide [because they actually own some infra-structure] will probably be full of people using encrypted connections, vpns, proxies, you name it making the tool completely useless…

All because of useless failed copywrong laws and MAFIAA pressure…

Will this be another epic failure for our amusement?

Well as already mentioned two of the ISPs are divisions of larger organisations that sell copyrighted material – this may have something to do with it however I wouldn’t be that quick to jump to judgement. I’m no expert: I have no idea of the control arrangements in place but, as I see it, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are influenced in this way. For example if the stakes are majority shareholders it still leaves other institutional and single investors whose interests must be accounted for.

Another possibility is that pirates tend to be an ISPs “worst” customer – every customer pays however pirates tend to use the most bandwidth of all meaning the ISP pays for more wholesale bandwidth to service that one customer.

And if there’s a profit to be made – obviously that’s motive enough really.

FTA: “Similarly, if BitStalker was put on a cloud service like the research suggests, it wouldn’t take long before these IP-ranges would appear in block-lists, rendering BitStalker useless.”

Umm no, this is incorrect – it is a trivial matter to obtain more IP lists and since the lists are public the operators of BitStalker will know exactly when to change IPs as well.

I’m surprised to see TorrentFreak publish that paragraph as one of your previous regular contributors, Ben Jones, has pointed out several times on TorrentFreak that blocklists and the applications to use them are simply a waste of time and resources and lead many users into a false sense of security (and quite possibly damage their already slow public tracker speeds heh).

@Rabbit80: “…Neither does it work for trackerless torrents…”

@Anonymous” “with DHT enable and no trackers what are they going to do?”

It will still record people using trackerless torrents so they will catch you infringing as normal – your IP is in the swarm still unless you’ve taken measures such as a VPN.

You fu*king suck. As soon as there is another high speed internet provider, I am jumping ship.

- A Customer

PS. You Suck.