Technical report : An Estimate of Infringing Use of the Internet

Abstract

Envisional was commissioned by NBC Universal to analyse bandwidth usage across the internet with the specific aim of assessing how much of that usage infringed upon copyright. This report provides the results of that analysis and is in three main parts. 1) Part A examines the internet arenas most often used for online piracy – peer-to-peer networks (with a specific focus on bittorrent), cyberlockers (file hosting sites such as Rapidshare), and other web-based piracy venues (such as streaming video) – and estimates the proportion of infringing content found on each. 2) Part B is a critical analysis of recent studies from four network equipment and monitoring companies. These companies measured network traffic at multiple (and different) sites worldwide to characterize overall internet usage. 3) Part C combines the data and analysis from Part A and Part B in an attempt to show what proportion of internet traffic represents unauthorised distribution of copyrighted material. 2