BitTorrent Paper

In light of the coming legal actions of the MPAA against P2P networks, amongst which BitTorrent, a short paper on BitTorrent by Johan Pouwelse, speaker at the upcoming US Federal Trade Commission's P2P workshop.
Here is the abstract:

Of the many P2P file-sharing prototypes in existence, BitTorrent is one of the few that has managed to attract millions of users. BitTorrent relies on other (global) components for file search, employs a moderator system to ensure the integrity of file data, and uses a bartering technique for downloading in order to prevent users from freeriding. In this paper we present a measurement study of BitTorrent in which we focus on four issues, viz. availability, integrity, flashcrowd handling, and download performance. The purpose of this paper is to aid in the understanding of a real P2P system that apparently has the right mechanisms to attract a large user community, to provide measurement data that may be useful in modeling P2P systems, and to identify design issues in such systems.

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Thru and at P2Pnet
Also: The MPAA press release on the legal actions [PDF]
The Register reports: Finnish police raid BitTorrent site, arrest 34