Microsoft invests in startup BitTorrent piracy-killer company

A new Russian based startup company, Pirate Pay, claims to offer the entertainment industry a technology to kill BitTorrent based file sharing by attacking BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible to share files through the targeted swarms. The developers, which have received an investment from Microsoft claims to have already stopped about 50,000 downloads of the movie "Vysotsky: Thanks go God I’m Alive" in the month after its release, in its proof-of-concept test.

Over the past three years, the developers have already developed a traffic management solution for ISPs that worked well to block BitTorrent traffic, but have now gone on to develop a way to attack actual BitTorrent swarms. The company does not reveal how its technology works, but based on this TorrentFreak report, it appears to work by using a number of servers to flood BitTorrent clients with specific fake information to confuse them, while pretending to be legitimate peers. According to Pirate Pay, it is designed to confuse peers of the swarm about the real IP addresses of other peers, causing them to disconnect from each other.

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Pirate Pay doesn't give exact rates for their services, but say they charge between $12,000 and $50,000 depending on the project. While their technology is very unique, they are not the first to attack BitTorrent file sharing, as Peer Media (formerly MediaDefender) previously tackled piracy by going after BitTorrent trackers and uploading fake files.

It now remains to be seen how Pirate Pay performs in the long term, but even if successful, it is practically impossible to stop all BitTorrent sources of copyright content, especially those shared through private trackers. Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures are so far the first customers of Pirate Pay's services.

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