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Investigating the Effect of Anti-Piracy on the Popularity of P 2 P Applications

During the past decade, the growing popularity of Peer-toPeer (P2P) applications has led to their significant impact on the Internet. The popularity of major P2P applications is primarily due to the availability of copyright-infringing content that is published by a small number of users (often for financial gain) and attracts a large number of consumers. This in turn has resulted in legal actions by copyright holders against P2P applications as well as new legislations and enforcement of anti-piracy laws. Despite the importance of these social and legal factors on the popularity of P2P applications, little is known about them. This paper presents a measurement-based study that focuses on two problems: (i) Characterizing trends in the population of publishers and consumers along with their level of activity in the BitTorrent ecosystem, (ii) Investigating the effect of anti-piracy laws and their enforcement on the observed trends. In particular, our findings demonstrate that both country-specific laws and global events affect the behavior of participating users in illegal P2P applications. Wellpublicized anti-piracy laws motivate consumers to reduce their level of activity even when the law does not directly target them. In contrast, major publishers adapt their operations to decrease the likelihood of any legal implication but continue their copyright infringement.