A group of Russian programmers have realized, apparently for an elaborate joke,
the provocatory website www.youhavedownloaded.com: such portal, using a crawler technology very similar to the one used by Google to spider webpages, continuously indexes into a searchable public database all IP addresses connected to many famous nodes (so called “trackers”) of BitTorrent-based peer2peer networks.
By retracing torrent files’ data, the automated website is then able to show, in a very simple way, what users connected through such IP addresses are downloading. Accessing the homepage while a BitTorrent client is connected to monitored BitTorrent trackers will show a (more or less complete) list of what a user is downloading using the relevant IP.
Moreover, by inserting a known IP address into the search box, users can see what other people are downloading with BitTorrent.
Leaving aside the obvious curiosities, this initiative uncovers one of the most critical points of the famous BitTorrent P2P network: as every other online distribution network, it has to rely on central nodes – the trackers – that periodically map all IP addresses of users connected, to ease their interaction during download.

Ironically, the technical limitation of having to use a third-party node also helps prevention from illegal use of the BitTorrent download protocol: just closing the tracker, or blacklisting its IPs on a national scale, prevents illegal file-sharing of copyrighted content.

According to such principle, during the last judiciary “ThePirateBay” case in Italy, one of the measures adopted by the judges was the blacklisting not only of the famous search engine for illegal torrents, but also of the IPs where its dedicated trackers operated. Both activities, as per ruling n.49437/2009 of the Italian Supreme Court, are, in fact, illegal and therefore liable in Court, since they help users finding and illegally accessing/spreading copyrighted contents online.

Once again, the “myth” of a secure Peer2Peer network has to face the harsh truth of a system that can easily record and twist every step taken by digital pirates against them.”

More than a year ago, in an official post on Google Inc’s official blog (http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/12/making-copyright-work-better-online.html), Kent Walker, General Counsel of the most famous online search engine, published a list of 4 main objectives Google planned to pursue during 2011, to better ensure copyright protection.
Here’s a brief recap:
1. Decreasing takedown times for unauthorized copyrighted material published online on any Google product (starting with the Blogger platform and, of course, search results), to 24 hours from a detailed and reliable Dmca complaint, realizing appropriate tools to make both notice and counter-notice processes easy for users.
2. Actions to prevent piracy-related terms and websites from the search engine’s “autocomplete” function.
3. Improvement of anti-piracy controls in the Ad-Sense program, so to avoid presence of google-powered banners on piracy websites and illegal applications on Google Market.
4. Removal of authorised-preview function for piracy websites on search engine results and promotion of websites containing legal contents.
A few days ago, on december 19th 2011, Ifpi and Riaa, the main international and american associations promoting protection and enforcement of copyright for art and music, redacted a document to comment Google’s progress in such scoreboard (full document here: http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/Google_update_111219.pdf).
The document contains mainly negative remarks, on all four objectives:

1. Dmca specific tools to help copyright owners fight piracy are still too unorganized and unreliable. As for the effective takedown times, they are way too slow: a removal procedure can take up to weeks;
2. Autocomplete in Google search engine still shows terms often related to piracy (“free mp3”, “dvdrip”, etc.);
3. Anti-piracy controls to bar access to Ad-Sense program have been intensified, but the system still can’t guarantee proactive removal of “Google-powered” banners: both associations report, in particular, that even if piracy-related applications have been expelled from “Google Market”, they are still distributed on unofficial channels, gaining financial support from Ad-Sense banners;
4. As for authorised-preview functionalities on search results, Ifpi and Riaa report a substancial inertia of Google, against all requests, made from notorious websites in the copyrighted music industry, to have priority boost on search results’order, so to promote legal access to media contents.

The document goes on providing a list of suggestions for Google to adopt, to actively and effectively pursue the above cited objectives, concluding with a funny “Stop the Self-Serving Alarmist Rhetoric and Engage in Constructive Dialogue” remark: we will see if the company based in Mountain View will pick up even this last suggestion, or keep going on its own road.

Enzo Mazza, Chairman of Fimi, so quoted to us on Google’s intents: “Many pledges, few serious facts”