FOX, NBC UNIVERSAL AND SONY EMPLOYEES CAUGHT DOWNLOADING ILLEGAL TORRENTS

Considering all of the concerns major music and movie studios have over piracy and file sharing, one would think the studios could at least manage to keep their own employees from stealing content. That is apparently not the case, however. TorrentFreak has a new tool that reveals what a specific IP address has downloaded from BitTorrent, and used it to snoop around a few popular studios. The site found that employees at Fox, Sony and NBC Universal were downloading illegal content from BitTorrent. A Sony employee, for example, downloaded Conan the Barbarian, an album from The Black Keys, and a Beavis and Butthead video. An NBC Universal Employee downloaded HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, Cowboys and Aliens and a trance album. Fox typically contacts the FBI when a movie has been leaked, but TorrentFreak found an employee downloading a 1080p HD version of the movie Super 8. “By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble, and for that reason we masked out the end of the IP addresses to avoid a witch hunt,” TorrentFreak said. “An IP address is not a person, IP addresses can be shared among many people, and anyone can be behind a keyboard at any given time.” A Google employee was also caught downloading Windows 7, and the Church of God was busted for downloading two popular TV shows.

uTORRENT PLUS LAUNCHING THIS FALL

BitTorrent has seen a lot of success with its free-to-use and tiny client going by the name of uTorrent. It’s many people’s software of choice for handling torrent downloads, and with the recent release of version 3.0 the development team added remote access, video streaming, chat, and a ratings system to name but a few of the new features.

The next big rollout for uTorrent is not another bunch of new features, though. Instead, a premium version of the client is planned. BitTorrent has decided alongside the free client there’s room for a paid-for version which will be called uTorrent Plus.

The incentive for paying, according to BitTorrent, is a “single solution to find, get and play content anywhere.” The idea behind uTorrent Plus is to allow you to manage, convert, and copy your content for playback on any device you want after downloading. So video downloaded in one format can be converted and transferred to a specific device all within the uTorrent Plus client. For example, you could convert and upload video to an iPod touch, an Android tablet, or a Sony PSP without need for another software tool.

BitTorrent is keen to point out that the premium client will not mean features being removed or held back from the free version of uTorrent. Development will continue on both versions with uTorrent Plus just offering more after the file downloading is done in return for you cash.

As to how much it will cost, that has yet to be announced. The plan is to open up access to the premium client in a limited beta before a rollout in the fall. If you’re interested in getting on that beta you can sign-up for an invite now.

NETFLIX THE LARGEST SOURCE OF INTERNET TRAFFIC IN US

Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Internet traffic in the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall.

That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent), and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic during peak times in North America. (BitTorrent still accounts for half of all upstream traffic). As whole, “real-time entertainment” (which is mostly video streaming, but also includes streaming music) accounted for 49 percent of downstream traffic in March, 2011, versus 19 percent for P2P file sharing, and 17 percent for Web browsing.

Video files are so big that it does not take much usage for it to take over in terms of bandwidth consumed. But these numbers definitely point to a future where video accounts for more and more of the traffic on the Internet. As recently as last November, Web video alone accounted for an estimated 37 percent of Internet traffic.

But as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings points out, bandwidth to the home keeps increasing along with demand—he expects a gigabit to the home to be commonplace within ten years. As he told me earlier this month, “streaming is the core of our business,” but he also points out in the video below that most of the video to the home is cached on the edge of the network rather than going through the backbone.