Funded by Village Roadshow. [ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Village_Roadshow ]
Okay, No surprise there given the result.

First credit is held by a PhD student, Robert Layton and backed by Associate Professor Paul A. Watters,
Research Director of of the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (ICSL) and an Associate Professor
in Information Security with the university. This is a typical arrangement, showing the the student did the
work and the prof signed off on the result. It is unlikely that Dr. Watters participated in the work or that
he wrote any portion of the report but it is indisputable that the student had no choice but to deliver results
and data that met with his approval because otherwise it would not be published. Failure is not an option.

Layton was elected by the students to the Council last year, served in a typically limited role as a student
member and was given special leave for partial attendance, not unusual for a student with academic duties
of his own. This year, in pursuing a doctorate, he’s bringing in research dollars. A good, company man.

Dr Watters is into security in several Big Brother style technologies such as online censorship, covert
messaging and steganography (hiding data in pictures, audio and video files), biometric authentication
(using fingerprints and the like to digitally identify people), “Trustworthy Computing” (the locking down
of computers), and in cybercrime, like phishing and all that goes with that. Along the way, so he claims,
he has researched P2P before, so It will be interesting to see that past work.

The ICSL, as you may have already guessed, is focused on security of commerce in all of it’s research
so one can see that their mindset and all of their work leans toward business interests and in giving both
business and government greater or total control over technology with little awareness or sensitivity to
human rights and freedoms except as potential objections and obstacles to security goals.

If one were shopping for one-sided pro-business opinions and research this is likely the best place in
Australia to spend your dollars for small jobs with a quick turnaround. The intellectual momentum and
polarized security culture ensures a favourable result for business interests with little to no risk of
confounding statements about concerns over personal rights and freedoms catching a reader’s eye
and causing the actual research to pull any attention from the PR campaign which paid for it.

Given the sharply limited scope of the data and the shortness of the final report it is clear to me that the
resources and time allotted were carefully measured to ensure a one-sided report with no danger of
unwanted balance in analysis or of unexpected data in appendixes weakening the intended message.

In summary, this report is a well-planned and executed public relations laundry with just enough
legitimacy to keep the press from looking too closely at any part of it’s substance as they obediently
parrot the sound bites. Layton is not entirely to blame because he was not free to do otherwise and
unaware of that, and probably knew little to nothing about the other issues in play. The prof is partly
covered because the kid did all the work and his name on the report is a formality of this position as
Director. AFACT did pick the most likely place to get what they wanted but can assert that they did
not dictate the results. Village Roadshow guaranteed the result by controlling exactly how much time
and effort was spent but since their contact with Layton was behind two or three intermediaries they
are well protected no matter what may happen. Though the buck is passed between all four the only
effective risk is to Layton’s reputation for not getting enough facts together to back his conclusions
and even then he is “just” a student so his reputation is disposable in the short term and his college
career is still secure.

As productions go Village Roadshow got a good, low-risk deal for bottom dollar and nobody gets hurt.
All they have to worry about is getting yet another negative review but they are used to those. ;]

The second critical thing is to get an appropriately sized sample of torrents. Since it’s impossible to figure out how many torrents are out there, this step is also impossible.

Grabbing information from “top 19″ trackers is not an appropriate way of gathering data given the existence of specialty trackers as well as the possibility of more hidden trackers ala private trackers) So any result from a study like this has to be thrown out since it’s clearly not scientific.

The study is junk science at best and fraudulent at worst.