Bowes then harvested the details and published them on the Pirate Bay website for people to download and use as they saw fit. Details published included URLs, names, IDs and profile information of Facebook members.

The security consultant has claimed that he undertook the project as part of his ongoing work on developing a security tool, called ‘Ncrack’.

“I’m a developer for the Nmap Security Scanner and one of our recent tools is called Ncrack. It is designed to test password policies of organisations by using brute force attacks; in other words, guessing every username and password combination. The original plan was to collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests. Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did.”

“If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook’s directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public. All I’ve done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis. I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too.”

“For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there’s minimal potential for anybody to get hurt. Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it. However, it also highlights a new trend that is emerging in the digital age. With traditional paper media, it wasn’t possible to compile 170 million records in a searchable format and distribute it, but now we can. Having the name of one person means nothing, and having the name of a hundred people means nothing; it isn’t statistically significant. But when you start scaling to 170 million, statistical data emerges that we have never seen in the past.”

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Not only do pirates reduce profit for the music industry, the attempts to sue for illegal piracy is damaging the reputation of the music industry. Very few companies win litigation against prates, and it appears that a new approach to illegal downloading will be needed if the current situation is to see an improvement for the industry.

Digital materials are simple to copy, and simple to distribute. This makes piracy incredibly difficult to monitor and prevent, as millions of people are able to pick up the latest songs immediately. Despite massive campaigns on television, radio and online, piracy is as big a problem as ever before. File sharing, it seems, is here to stay. No matter how many pirate sites are shut down, more will spring up unbidden, as the drive to source free music is greater and more persistent than the resources the music industry have to prevent it.

Industry experts are calling for the music industry to reconsider their take on illegal fire sharing, and contemplate the efficacy of providing free downloads. Streaming is becoming a popular way of sharing files, and piracy is driven by a well-connected, fast paced network of technological experts.

The music industry could recoup profits in a number of ways – through concerts and live performances, publicity and merchandising products, DVDs of concerts, exploiting the personas of celebrities, and cinema. Regardless of what choices the music industry chooses to make when it comes to illegal file sharing and loss of profit, it seems that piracy is very much here to stay.

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The USCG has made a promise to apprehend 150,000 people who download files illegally over the next few months. However, the way the group has been operating has caused uproar amongst civil liberties campaigners, who claim that the processes used by USCG are unfair and irrational.

USCG has a mission statement to support people in the film industry including copyright owners and producers by recovering losses incurred by illicit downloads. However, many people are questioning the motives of the group, suggesting that its principal aim is to generate cash for themselves.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group, has flagged their concerns in a statement: “The USCG attorneys bringing these suits are not affiliated with any major entertainment companies, but are instead intent on building a lucrative business model from collecting settlements from the largest possible set of individual defendants. We’ve long been concerned that some attorneys would attempt to create a business by cutting corners in mass copyright lawsuits against fans, shaking settlements out of people who aren’t in a position to raise legitimate defences,” it stated.

USCG are bringing a number of people to task for illegal downloads, and it appears that the cases filed in Washington all follow a similar pattern, with thousands of alleged pirates being cited in each case. The issue is, only a handful of the people live in Colombia, meaning they have to pay travel costs and legal expenses. It is alleged that USCG have taken this step in the hope that many alleged pirates will choose not to fight the cases, due to a lack of financial resources.
There have been calls for USCG to drop the cases, and judges have requested that the firm explain the rationale behind bringing so many people together in one lawsuit.

So far USCG has obtained the IP addresses of some 20,000 users and has pledged to target around 130,000 more, the BBC reports.

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