A Russian company has developed software it says can disrupt and prevent people from downloading pirated content.

Pirate Pay has been backed by Microsoft and has so far worked with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures to stop "thousands" of downloads.

The tool poses as real bit torrent users but then "confuses" peer-to-peer networks, causing disconnections.

Critics argue that the method will be ineffective in the long term.

The entertainment industry claims that the downloading of pirated material costs copyright holders billions of pounds in lost revenue every year.

Last month, the British Phonographic Industry won a court battle to force UK internet service providers to block its customers from accessing high-profile piracy site The Pirate Bay.

However, the true extent of the financial impact is strongly questioned by internet rights campaigners.
Swamping

Bit torrent blog Torrent Freak reported that Pirate Pay began life as traffic management software for internet service providers.

From here they discovered it could be used to swamp peer-to-peer networks - which are used to share the files - with false information.

"After creating the prototype, we realised we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content," said Andrei Klimenko, the company's chief executive, in an interview with Russia Beyond the Headlines.

The technology has received high-profile praise from the president of Microsoft Russia - Pirate Pay was awarded one million rubles (£62,000, $100,000) from a seed investment fund set up by the company behind Windows.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18056727