A new Russian website continues to prove a source of embarrassment for high-level opponents of music and movie downloading. The site, YouHaveDownloaded.com, shows users their downloading history based on their IP address. It also allows users to put in IPs other than their own and see the download history for those addresses as well. Today French tech site Nikopik is reporting that it has used the site to identify six separate instance of piracy in the Élysée Palace, official residence of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife. That total is double the amount necessary to cut off the average person’s internet access under France’s three-strikes law. Sarkozy himself has been a vocal proponent of harsh legislation to prevent filesharing.
This is the second time recently that YouHaveDownloaded.com has been used this way. On Tuesday we brought you news that TorrentFreak had used the site to uncover what appears to be rampant downloading at some of the entertainment industry’s biggest companies – which also happen to be the most vehement critics of filesharing, and the most ferocious proponents of SOPA. TorrentFreak found that people in the offices of Sony, Fox, and NBC Universal had downloaded a wide variety of content, including material to which other companies owned the copyright (for example, somebody at Fox downloaded Paramount’s Super 8).
Among the files downloaded in the French president’s residence are a Beach Boys greatest hits album, a few movies, and The Miracle of Self-Discipline, a self-help audio program.
[Hat Tip: TorrentFreak]