Sony Picture Entertainment who are a major funder of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) the organisation that has taken local ISP iiNet to the High Court accusing them of allowing its customers’ to infringe copyright by sharing via BitTorrent services, has itself been caught out using BitTorrent servies to download their competitors movies.
According to TorrentFreak Sony Pictures Entertainment has regulary used BitTorrent services to download content.
Among the movies they have downloaded is the new Conan the Barbarian movie (2011), “Lonely Boy” by the Black Eyed Peas and a handful of other pirated files.
TorrentFreak points out that YouHaveDownloaded only tracks a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads, so there’s a good chance Sony employees are leeching even more illegal content from the BitTorrent highways.
By using the BitTorrent download tracking website YouHaveDownloaded, Sony Pictures and other Hollywood studios have been discovered to be acquiring pirated content.
TorrentFreak came across the revalation after loading up the Russian-based YouHaveDownloaded,with Hollywood’s IP addresses. Within minutes they discovered that Sony had been using BitTorrent software to pirate movies.
TorrentFreak claims that YouHaveDownloaded only tracks a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads, so there’s a good chance Sony employees are leeching even more illegal content from the BitTorrent highways.
Back in November 2008, Sony Pictures was one of 34 film studios who took internet service provider (ISP) iiNet to court alleging it had authorised its customers’ to infringe copyright by allowing them to use BitTorrent services to download content.
Sony Picture Entertainment Australia was not available to comment.
Both iiNet and AFACT said that they could not comment because of the current Court case before the Australian High Court.