Report: Nearly Quarter of Broadband Used for Illegal Content

7 Feb, 2011 By: Chris Tribbey

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An estimated 23.76% of worldwide traffic is being used for content that infringes copyrights, according to a new report.

BitTorrent leads the charge, accounting for nearly 18% of traffic.

NBC/Universal commissioned the report, which analyzed bandwidth usage across the Internet, to U.K.-based research firm Envisional.

In the United States that number is 17.53%, according to the report. In the U.S., peer-to-peer networks accounted for 20% of all Internet traffic, with BitTorrent responsible for 14.3%, according to the report.

Video streaming makes up 27% to 30% of American Internet traffic, though only 1.52% is believed to be infringing.

The data excludes pornography.

“Given the enormous, ever-growing and constantly changing size, shape and consistency of the Internet and the use that is made of it means that methodological issues abound when attempting to produce measurements of traffic and content,” the report reads. “Yet even given the limitations of the data available, Envisional believes that the estimates produced in this report are more accurate than any that have been published before.”

Of the 2.72 million torrents Envisional examined for the report, two-thirds were illegal, and of the 10,000 most popular, 35.2% were copyrighted films, 14.5% was TV content and nearly 7% were games.
 

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