DtecNet study shows Pirate Bay shutdown significantly disrupted world’s file trading

DtecNet study shows Pirate Bay shutdown significantly disrupted world’s file trading “Secondary shutdowns” as traders overwhelmed other servers

BEVERLY HILLS – The shutdown of the notorious BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay significantly, if temporarily, disrupted illegal trading worldwide of pirated digital media files, according to a white paper released today by DtecNet, the world’s leading provider of digital piracy detection services.

“Pirate Bay’s closure rippled across the worldwide traffic in illegal digital media, cutting traffic for several days, then causing temporary secondary outages on other trackers which traders started to use to obtain pirated media,” said Pam Allison, DtecNet vice president, business intelligence & strategy, and head of DtecNet’s business intelligence division. The DtecNet white paper “With Pirate Bay foundering, where have file traders gone?” can be found online at www.dtecnet.com.

The white paper is the first in a planned series of studies of trends and other information gleaned from DtecNet’s monitoring of the worldwide traffic in pirated digital media. DtecNet works with most of the major U.S. and European content creators and their trade associations to fight illegal use of copyrighted movies, TV shows, videogames, computer software and more.

Pirate Bay was the world’s busiest and best-known site for trading illegal files on the BitTorrent network. On Aug. 24, after months of legal maneuvering, Swedish authorities forced Pirate Bay’s Internet service provider to cut off its web connection, effectively closing down the service.

The shutdown cut popular media piracy on BitTorrent by around 65 percent for several days. File traders then moved to a handful of other prominent sites, some of which shut down for at least another day, perhaps because of overwhelming volumes. Traffic on BitTorrent has since slowly recovered to near previous levels, the study shows.  “The Pirate Bay experience shows this kind of enforcement can have an impact,” said Allison. “At the same time, pirates continue to evolve their technologies, and enforcement tactics will have to evolve too.”

About DtecNet Inc.

DtecNet is headquartered in Beverly Hills, Calif., with offices in Denmark, London, Paris, and Lithuania. DtecNet provides content-rights holders with market-leading solutions that track and prevent piracy of their digital media content, while generating actionable, highly granular business intelligence about worldwide demand for those assets.

By monitoring the file-sharing habits of hundreds of millions of Internet users, DtecNet tracks and identifies file-sharing trends, helping rights holders understand how their content is traded on the Internet and how to make better decisions on distribution, business models, marketing and more.

For more information, go to http://www.dtecnet.com. DtecNet’s Business Intelligence unit may be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dtecnetbi.

Media Contact

Pam Allison

DtecNet Inc.

310-600-3978

pja@dtecnet.com