Pirate Party in Norway Can Spy on File-Sharers

Despite new anti-piracy law in Norway, no website has been blocked nor a single file-sharer fined. The only result of this law was a hive of activity, with over a dozen entities being officially registered to spy on file-sharing networks. Aside from the usual anti-piracy groups there were very interesting applications – for example, the Pirate Party or a hip hop artist who was going to track down pirates and buy them coffee.

Back in summer 2013, a new legislation was passed in Norway to allow file-sharing websites to be blocked by local Internet service providers at the domain level. It also allows any copyright owner or group to spy on file-sharers if they inform the local data inspectorate. Thus far a number of outfits have been signing up with their agenda for monitoring the web.

The local MPAA, for instance, has their own pirate-hunting law firm scouring BitTorrent and other networks to find people downloading and sharing Hollywood movies without permission. The movie companies are not going to use the data to sue individuals, but rather to justify website blockades, with The Pirate Bay front and center. Hopefully, the lawsuits against ISPs won’t be necessary. The authorities of Norway confirm that they are looking for the illegal services, not for their own audience.

In the meantime, a surprise addition to the list of Internet snoopers is the Pirate Party, which put in their notification to the authorities with an interesting agenda: they claimed they want to monitor the IP addresses associated with the Prime Minister’s office to find out whether the Pirate Party’s program is copied.

Other outfits are mostly anti-piracy groups, but there is another interesting entry – Aslak Borgersrud, a former member of hip-hop group. He claimed he would like to know who is downloading their records and invite them for coffee and cakes.

Security experts point out that for the purposes of general data collection, tracker scraping may be enough, but if the anti-piracy outfits wanted to track down individuals the technique is flawed. There are many methods to inject fake IP addresses into tracker reports and consequently cause all kinds of difficulties, including defenses for those accused.

Source: TorrentFreak.com