Abstract
Sharing copyright protected content without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal in many countries. Regardless, the number of illegal file sharing using BitTorrent continues to grow and most of file sharers and downloader are unconcerned legal action to transfer copywrite-protected files. However, it is difficult to gather enough probative evidence to prosecute illegal file sharers in criminal court and/or sued for damages in civil court. Further, there is a lack of research on investigation techniques to reveal illegal BitTorrent sharers. This is because the role of the server in BitTorrent networks has been changed compared to servers in conventional P2P networks. As a result, it is difficult to apply previous investigation processes for investigation of conventional P2P networks to the investigation of suspected illegal file sharing using BitTorrent. This paper proposes a methodology for the investigation of illegal file sharers using BitTorrent networks through the use of a P2P digital investigation process.
Highlights
Intellectual Property (IP) is a legal concept that refers to creations of the mind for which exclusive rights are recognized [6]
When the torrent file is executed with a BitTorrent client program, information about peers sharing the file is automatically obtained from a tracker or Distributed Hash Table (DHT)
Because BitTorrent is different from conventional P2P, applying a conventional investigation methodology in BitTorrent investigations is unsuitable
Summary
Intellectual Property (IP) is a legal concept that refers to creations of the mind for which exclusive rights are recognized [6]. Where a central server manages and links each client by indexing all of the current users and searching their computers for shared data. BitTorrent links each client without a central server, and shares fixed size data pieces of a shared file to make sharing fast and fault tolerant. A client on a BitTorrent network can connect to multiple peers without a central server, and download small pieces of a file from multiple peers at the same time. Since a BitTorrent service is not based on central server, a BitTorrent client can directly connect to other clients and share files using a torrent file or magnet link. A tool – Identifier and Classifier of Illegal sharers using BitTorrent (ICIB) – to demonstrate the practicality of the suggested investigation methodology. The prototype ICIB tool is described for detecting file sharers using BitTorrent
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