Cable Ops Didn't Fund Research Into BitTorrent Tracker

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications secretly funded a university research project to be able to better identify BitTorrent users who are swapping copyrighted files.

Trouble is, it’s not true.

According to a post by an anonymous user on tech site Slashdot, PolyCipher — a joint venture of those three MSOs — partly funded a University of Colorado research project called BitStalker to actively monitor peer-to-peer “swarms” using low-cost cloud computing services and determine which users are sharing a particular file.

“Could this be evidence of ISP support for ACTA” — the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which purportedly would require Internet providers to turn over information on copyright infringers to officials — “and a global three-strikes law?” the anonymous Slashdotter wrote.

Well, no.

For starters, PolyCipher no longer exists beyond its status as a legal entity. The JV has no staff, and shut down its Denver office in June 2009. It’s essentially dormant. PolyCipher’s Downloadable Conditional Access System, envisioned as a less-expensive alternative to CableCards, was transferred to CableLabs last summer.

Now, PolyCipher did in fact fund a previous paper by the University of Colorado computer science students. That one, “The Challenges of Stopping Illegal Peer-to-Peer File Sharing,” was presented at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s 2009 Cable Show.

The BitStalker paper, on the other hand, was presented in December 2009, at the IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security in London. The note in the paper that the research “was funded in part through gifts from PolyCipher” is a reference to the funding for the prior research paper.

Dirk Grunwald, associate professor in the University of Colorado’s Department of Computer Science, confirmed in an e-mail to me that the funds from PolyCipher weren’t directed toward the BitStalker project. He said the department’s practice is “to cite all concurrent funding to avoid the hint of a conflict of interest.”

Long story short, the MSOs aren’t involved in the BitStalker project at all. Indeed, according to a cable-industry source familiar with PolyCipher, the MSOs were “completely surprised by the fact that the work even exists.”