Downloading Popular Movies through BitTorrent? You're Probably Being Tracked.

Being an arthouse snob, though, pays off

Score one for highbrow tastes: If you've ever downloaded a popular movie, TV show or music album from a site like Pirate Bay, there's a strong chance your IP address is sitting on a database somewhere. But anyone who's used Torrent sites to obtain some obscure French art-house from the 1970s is likely flying under the radar.

That's according to a report published today by a team of computer scientists based out of the University of Birmingham, England. The project, the first of its kind, took three years to complete, and offers a tremendous amount of new information about the extent to which various organizations are monitoring file sharing via BitTorrent.