Sony, Universal, Fox Caught Pirating via BitTorrent

By using the BitTorrent download tracking website YouHaveDownloaded, Sony Pictures and other Hollywood studios have been discovered to be acquiring pirated content.

TorrentFreak has discovered that BitTorrent pirates reside within the likes of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fox Entertainment and NBC Universal despite their extreme legal efforts to stamp out BitTorrent-related pirated content. TorrentFreak stumbled across this revelation after pumping a special BitTorrent detection website, the Russian-based YouHaveDownloaded, full of Hollywood's IP addresses.

According to the tracker website, Culver City-based Sony Pictures Entertainment has downloaded the new Conan the Barbarian movie (2011), "Lonely Boy" by the Black Eyed Peas and a handful of other pirated files. TorrentFreak points out that YouHaveDownloaded only tracks a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads, so there's a good chance Sony employees are leeching even more illegal content from the BitTorrent highways.

The Russian tracking site also reveals that NBC Universal employees residing in Fort Lauderdale have downloaded a DVD rip of Cowboys and Aliens, the entire first season of "Game of Thrones," some trance music and much, much more. Valley Village, California-based Fox Entertainment only shows one downloaded file: Super 8 (2011).

In addition to Hollywood, TorrentFreak also investigated other institutions including Google's own Corporate office in New York which produced a long list of warez -- even a pirated copy of Windows 7. The Church of God was also investigated, but was discovered to have only downloaded TV shows whereas music royalty collecting agency Buma/Stemra reportedly downloaded an episode of Entourage and a copy of Battlefield 3.

Buma/Stemra later claimed that its IP address was "spoofed." Sure it was.