Princeton senior Suahard Sahi recently posted the results of a study into the legality of content shared through torrent sites.

Sahi's findings are not what we'd call surprising. Out of a random sample of 1,021 torrents, 99 percent were illegal. Some 46 percent were movies and TV shows, 14 percent of the files were porn and another 14 percent were dedicated to games and software. It turns out 10 percent of torrents were music, while just one percent was dedicated to books. Sahi could not classify another 14 percent of the sampled torrents.

Sahi concluded 100 percent of movies and TV shows featured in the sample were illegal and the same goes for music torrents. Thanks to Linux, some of the software was actually legal and thanks to amateur porn, some smut was too.

So much for fair P2P use.

More here.