RIAA Website Caught Sharing Copyrighted Content
The folks over at Torrent Freak have made a habit of monitoring certain known digital pirate havens using ScanEye, a BitTorrent tracking platform. While we assume that is mostly an uneventful task, yesterday they came across something very interesting: a dozen or so instances of adult content videos being seeded by an IP address originating from the RIAA, which is known for rabidly pursuing those who share content via torrent networks.
The first round spotted showed 16 adult content videos, all of them copyrighted, being distributed by torrents via the IP address "76.74.24.200," which ScanEye showed as belonging to the Recording Industry Association of American, better known as the RIAA. Most of the videos were shown as being made available in April, with a couple being posted just a couple weeks ago.
A closer look was a bit more interesting, revealing that the IP address was specifically pointing at the RIAA website. As Torrent Freak points out, this could indicate the IP address is originating from a webseed added to the torrent files so that even if the files aren't hosted on the website, they still point to it, making it appear the RIAA is sharing copyrighted videos.
Such an action can be accomplished by anyone, and the most logical explanation is that it would be done in an effort to get the RIAA in trouble or to make some kind of point. This theory makes more sense when it is noted that, according to the EyeScan platform, none of the 16 video files were ever downloaded, indicating they weren't hosted where they were alleged to be.
Whatever the reason the videos have surfaced, this underscores a solid point – that via the so-called webseed method, any individual can spoof an IP address of someone else, making it appear to watchful eyes that an individual is sharing copyrighted content who isn't actually doing so. Unless someone performed due diligence and checked out the matter thoroughly, an innocent individual could possibly be pegged for copyright infringement.
SOURCE: Torrent Freak