RIAA, DHS IP addresses found illegally downloading

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is at the forefront of those organizations that want to bring pirates to justice. All we have to say, however, is "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." TorrentFreak has noticed a few illegal downloaders using RIAA IP addresses, via the site YouHaveDownloaded.

YouHaveDownloaded opened its doors last week, and claims to track about 20 percent of all public BitTorrent downloads. The site is based in Russia, and says it's intention to bring the public nature of torrent downloads, and the Internet in general to the attention of end users.

Visit the site, and it will check your IP address against its database of about 55 million IP addresses. In the past week, TorrentFreak has found BitTorrent downloading via IP addresses at Sony, Universal and Fox, as well as at the palace of French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

The latest embarrassing discovery: the RIAA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the piracy taking place at the RIAA were the first five seasons of Dexter, an episode of Law and Order SVU, and a pirated audio converter and MP3 tagger. It should be noted that while the RIAA takes a certain stance against piracy, that doesn't mean that its employees feel the same way.

Honestly, it seems to be common sense that downloading from your place of work is safer than downloading via your own home network.

As far as the DHS goes, while TF didn't detail the piracy taking place, it noted that over 900 unique IP addresses at the DHS were used. The YouHaveDownloaded site only recorded six unique IP addresses, which is a small measure of comfort for the RIAA.

It just goes to show that pirates are everywhere. What else will be found at YouHaveDownloaded is unknown. Perhaps the MPAA?