Employees of major Hollywood studios caught pirating on BitTorrent

Hollywood is known as one of the biggest sources of criticism against BitTorrent. According to Torrent Freak, data has been revealed that employees at studios such as Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox are openly pirating movies, games and other forms of entertainment while at work.

Static IP addresses that were registered to Paramount have been associated with the downloading of a wide variety of content. Among the things downloaded through these IP addresses were Happy Feet 2, an episode of Sons of Anarchy and The Hunger Games.

The trend can be seen in IP addresses registered to Warner Bros. too, with downloads including The Expendables 2, BlackMesa and episodes of NCIS.

Sony Picture employees are also pirating content, including episodes of Top Chef, Despicable Me and Ice Age: Continental Drift.

Pirating movies from the movie studio's IP-address

Disney also has employees pirating content, which include episodes of Downtown Abbey, Fast and the Furious 6, Step Up Revolution and episodes of Survivor.

Earlier this month, BitTorrent had launched a website that attempts to answer the question of whether or not BitTorrent equals piracy. The company did this in an attempt to distance the technology from the act of piracy.

"We hear this question all the time,” BitTorrent Inc. CEO Eric Klinker explains. “We hear we’ve killed film, the radio star, and the content industry. We hear we’re the web’s dark matter, and the Internet’s seedy underbelly. We are not.”

BitTorrent had originally started the technology in an attempt to make sharing files over the Internet easier. According to the company, the technology itself is neutral and is good for content creators.

“We are scientists, engineers, developers and designers committed to building a better Internet. We are photographers, musicians, writers and gamers. We came to work here because we wanted to change the way the Internet works for us. How it works for all of us. We do not endorse piracy. We do not encourage it. We don’t point to piracy sites. We don’t host any infringing content,” the CEO says.

Blaming BitTorrent itself for the concept of piracy seems like a logical fallacy, as it is a lot like blaming a knife for the work of a knife-wielding psychopath. Calls to shut down the company and its technology, in this analogy, would be like banning knives.

While some things can be used maliciously, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have other more practical uses. BitTorrent is helpful for getting large files, and is one of the major ways things like Linux distributions are distributed. BitTorrent has also proven useful for indie artists and film makers to get more exposure.

Back in September, BitTorrent had released the beta version of the uTorrent app for Android devices. This was the first official uTorrent app for mobile devices released by the uTorrent team. You can find, download, subscribe to RSS feeds and play videos directly from your Android device through the app. The uTorrent Beta release is available on Google Play completely free of charge.