{"id":1587,"date":"2015-10-25T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T10:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2015-10-25T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T10:36:09","slug":"ouch-piracy-tracking-outfit-fails-embarrassingly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=1587","title":{"rendered":"Ouch! Piracy Tracking Outfit Fails Embarrassingly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/muso.png\" alt=\"muso\" width=\"221\" height=\"109\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-112594\">The anti-piracy business is booming, with thousands of companies making a decent living by helping rightsholders to protect their work.<\/p>\n<p>London-based <a href=\"http:\/\/muso.com\">MUSO<\/a> is one of these outfits. The company has been around for a long time and has evolved into one of the most active senders of DMCA notices to Google.<\/p>\n<p>Just two years ago MUSO <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/uk-government-funds-anti-piracy-outfit-with-taxpayer-money-131031\/\">received a \u00a3250,000 &#8220;Smart Award&#8221;<\/a> grant from the UK Government\u2019s Technology Strategy Board, to improve and expand its piracy tracking technologies.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this cash injection MUSO&#8217;s data gathering technique is far from optimal. A few weeks ago, for example, we pointed out that many of the takedown notices it sends <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/anti-piracy-outfits-boost-numbers-with-bogus-takedown-notices-150628\/\">are bogus<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>In addition to sending takedown requests the company also collects file-sharing statistics, which they offer to copyright holders as business intelligence. Unfortunately, these systems are not without mistakes either. <\/p>\n<p>A few days ago the following <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MUSOdotcom\/status\/654988986813952000\">tweet<\/a> from MUSO&#8217;s official Twitter account caught our eye, announcing &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt3488710\/\">The Walk<\/a>&#8221; as the most uploaded film that week.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/musotweet.png\" alt=\"musotweet\" width=\"571\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-112596\"><\/p>\n<p>To us this was quite a surprising result, because there are only a few low quality copies of The Walk on torrent sites. With just a <a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/ytIdGO7.png\">few hundred<\/a> people sharing, those are not popular at all compared to other pirated films. <\/p>\n<p>So what happened here?<\/p>\n<p>Well, after giving it some thought we realized that MUSO&#8217;s data gathering tool has omitted a crucial element. Instead of looking at entire filenames it appears to have checked the total uploads of all files with the words &#8220;The Walk&#8221; in there, while forgetting to filter out &#8220;-ing Dead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This means that in addition to the few thousand &#8220;The Walk&#8221; uploads last week, it also counted the millions of uploads of &#8220;The Walk\/ing Dead.&#8221; This makes sense, since The Walking Dead was the most shared TV episode by far that week. <\/p>\n<p>Ouch. <\/p>\n<p>Of course mistakes can happen everywhere, especially with companies that have to rely on filters to sift through massive amounts of data. What&#8217;s most troubling though, is the fact that the result was proudly shared with the rest of the world, without a proper check. <\/p>\n<p>Apparently nobody at MUSO noticed the error, and neither did any of their followers, as the tweet is still online after more than a week. <\/p>\n<p>Whether anyone will walk the plank as a result of this embarrassing error is doubtful. However, we would argue that the Government&#8217;s &#8220;Smart Award&#8221; might not have been the best investment of UK tax payers&#8217; money.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\">TorrentFreak<\/a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104\/\">torrent sites<\/a> and  <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228\/\">ANONYMOUS VPN services<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?a=tPSZtFQzSKo:HLQqjHIGPQ4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?a=tPSZtFQzSKo:HLQqjHIGPQ4:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Torrentfreak?i=tPSZtFQzSKo:HLQqjHIGPQ4:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Torrentfreak\/~4\/tPSZtFQzSKo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nSource: TorrentFreak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The anti-piracy business is booming, with thousands of companies making a decent living by helping rightsholders to protect their work. London-based MUSO is one of these outfits. The company has been around for a long time and has evolved into one of the most active senders of DMCA notices to Google. Just two years ago &#8230; <a title=\"Ouch! Piracy Tracking Outfit Fails Embarrassingly\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/?p=1587\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldnumber7.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}