Entertainment industry waging losing copyright battle against internet pirates, suggests McAfee

According to internet security services provider McAfee, attempt to shut down The Pirate Bay only made internet pirates more audacious and helped in prompting the growth of similar file-sharing sites by 300 percent.

In August, authorities in Sweden, where The Pirate Bay is hosted, took legal action against the site by blocking all its traffic but they were waging a lost battle as the site within hours migrated to another internet service provider and was up and running the same day.

Action against The Pirate Bay also united torrent users who, in defiance, quickly set up sites similar to The Pirate Bay to support The Pirate Bay's community even as The Pirate Bay itself aided the spread of its 2 million+ link-strong database by making its code open for anyone to use.

"This was a true 'cloud computing' effort," McAfee said in its Threats Report for the third quarter. "The masses stepped up to make this database of torrents available to others."

"The Pirate Bay example shows how difficult it is to 'stop' data once it is on the web," the report said. "A website can be shut down, but anyone who has accessed the content may still be able to redistribute it."

Speaking to PC Pro, Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, said trying to shut down The Pirate Bay only boomeranged as it was "just a redirect site to lead people to sources where they can get media and other files."

"Once it was temporarily shut down, those people still wanted the torrents so they went elsewhere, and that meant lots of other sites popped up to take advantage – we saw a 300 percent increase in sites hosting and distributing movies and software," Day said.

Meanwhile, McAfee also warned that the sudden growth of file-sharing sites have also prompted cyber criminals to prey on people. "As users develop more sites to share content, malware writers are creating sites to trick users looking to download copyrighted material into downloading malicious programs," the company warned, adding that the number of these malicious sites "will increase during the fall and holiday blockbuster film seasons."

The internet security company also warned that web-based attacks, including phishing and spamming have also surged to record-high level.