For years companies such as BayTSP and Peer Media have been hired by movie studios and record labels to track the IP-addresses of file-sharers so these can be reported to their Internet providers.

In the U.S. this process is about to change as it will soon be formalized with the upcoming “six-strikes” anti-piracy scheme. Under this mechanism customers of five large ISPs will receive so-called copyright alerts.

Besides being warned, repeat infringers face a variety of punishments under the new regime including temporary Internet disconnections. Worse still, the MPAA and RIAA may eventually use the collected data to sue those file-sharers who refuse to kick their habit.

While the Center for Copyright Information has yet to announce the names of the companies that will do the “spying” for the six-strikes system, TorrentFreak recently learned that both BayTSP (recently acquired by Irdeto) and Peer Media will be involved. In this light, we thought it would be interesting to see what these companies have been up to recently.

With help from ScanEye we obtained the lists of torrent files that these companies were connecting to over the past month. In addition, we looked at changes in tracking patterns to see whether their activity increased or not.

As can be seen on the right, the monitoring activity (hits on torrents) of BayTSP spiked around July 12, the initial launch date of the six-strikes scheme. For Peer Media this spike wasn’t as pronounced, but monitoring activity clearly increased over time as well.

While there’s no hard proof that the increased activity is part of the six-strikes scheme, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

As for the number of torrents that are being watched, over a period of a month BayTSP connected to 3,657 torrent files and Peer Media to 3,752 torrents. Although ScanEye tracks hundreds of thousands of torrents, these lists are not extensive.

Another thing that catches the eye when going through the list of torrents is that it mostly consists of movies and TV-shows. In part this can be explained by the fact that most content on BitTorrent is video related. Alternatively, if this is part of the six-strikes scheme, the music labels might just be slow on submitting titles.

To put the spying activity in perspective, the BitTorrent activity of these two anti-piracy companies is three times greater than that generated by all customers of a smaller ISP such as Sonic.net. It is comparable to the BitTorrent activity of all Comcast Business clients combined.

However, the numbers pale in comparison to the larger Internet Providers. In the U.S. Comcast generates by far the most activity on BitTorrent, followed by Road Runner and AT&T.

Finally, the lists of torrent files that BayTSP and Peer Media connect to also include a lot of fake torrents. These could be purposefully shared by these companies, or they may be uploaded by scammers which is much more common according to recent research.

Whatever the case, BitTorrent users who are considering downloading the latest Hollywood blockbusters have a good chance of being watched.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“After conclusion of due diligence by the parties we were unable to reach agreement on a definitive contract,” said Dimitri Villard, Chief Executive Officer of Peer Media. “We are now focused on pursuing our own future strategic direction.”

Peer Media Technologies was the result of the joining together of two other anti-piracy companies that readers will be more familiar with – Media Sentry (which worked extensively with the RIAA for many years) and BitTorrent-poisoning company MediaDefender.

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Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Now, following an announcement by ARTISTdirect CEO Dimitri Villard, it seems that the sullied names of both MediaDefender and Media Sentry will be consigned to the archives as the company rebrands the pair under a new name: Peer Media Technologies.

Despite the hacking chaos that all but destroyed Media Defender’s business, coupled with the controversy when Media Sentry’s investigative tactics were deemed illegal in several US states (and was promptly dropped by the RIAA), ARTISTdirect is still touting the pair as a force to be reckoned with – albeit with a new coat of paint and a new name.

“The combination of MediaDefender, the leader in Internet Piracy Prevention (IPP) with Media Sentry, the leader in business and marketing intelligence derived from P2P channels, creates a true powerhouse in the field of intellectual property protection,” says a notice on Peer Media’s shiny new website.

CEO Dimitri Villard also announced that he had hired ex Macrovision and Blackwave director Terri Denver as head of worldwide sales at Peer Media.

According to ARTISTdirect, the rebranding and consolidation of MediaDefender and Media Sentry under the Peer Media banner will benefit the customer base “by offering higher quality products than either company did previously.”

Services being offered by Peer Media include spoofing and decoys on file-sharing networks, sending cease and desist notices to ISPs to forward to their customers and sending the same to file-hosting sites carrying copyright content. Other services include monitoring networks for leaked movies and music, and assessing demand for media by monitoring what file-sharers do on the Internet.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.