Everybody pirates: RIAA, Homeland Security caught downloading torrents

Earlier this week, it was found that employees of major copyright holders Sony, Universal, and Fox were all found to have illegally downloaded content through the BitTorrent network.

Today, two prominent figures in the online piracy fight were also found to be seemingly undoing all of their employers' hard work in the fight against online piracy

Perhaps it just goes to prove that everybody pirates?

(Source: ZDNet)

The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Hollywood, working on behalf of the record industry. It's also one of the main proponents behind SOPA, the controversial anti-piracy act currently working its way through Congress.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does what it says on the tin. Part of its remit is to seize domain names controlled or managed by the U.S. government or U.S.-based firms to crack down on online piracy.

It would therefore be highly ironic should one find that employees of both the RIAA and the Dept. of Homeland Security should be found to be illegally downloading copyrighted material through peer-to-peer networks.

But the RIAA in particular will be feeling the heat when its workers arrive at the office on Monday morning.

According to TorrentFreak, entire series episodes have been downloaded from BitTorrent sites, as well as software, and even gangster-rap music by the music industry representative body.

Last week, one Russian website, YouHaveDownloaded, opened its doors as it claimed to track around 20 percent of all public torrent downloads. You can check your IP address -- as well as others -- against the database to see if you or prominent others are found illegally downloading copyrighted material.

From an search-engine optimisation (SEO) perspective, Stephen Chapman discussed how users who wish to remain anonymous -- and potentially out of the public eye of this site -- can do so when downloading content from the web.

Considering it's the RIAA who wants to disconnect pirates from the web, I suppose it shows that almost everyone is at risk from SOPA should the bill go through -- even one of the key outfits pushing for the bill.

Though over 200,000 people work for the Dept. for Homeland Security, it is no surprise that at least someone within the government department is downloading content illegally.

But one person alone can shame the collective entity, and any 'breach' like this would be vital ammunition for anti-SOPA advocates.

Related:

• Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Internet BitTorrent Spies
• Stephen Chapman: Torrific: Helping you to avoid the Internet BitTorrent spies
• Violet Blue: Sex Tech Weekly: SOPA Porn, Kindle Fire, WordPress.xxx, Facebook

Also read:

• SOPA: Why the 'broken web' should stay broken
• ISPs versus SOPA: Anti-piracy bill could force severe privacy-invading measures
• London Calling: European Court of Justice rejects ‘SOPA-like’ online piracy filter
• European Parliament ‘opposes’ SOPA copyright law in new resolution