The UK's Guardian has this report on the methods being used to make illegal trading of pirated BitTorrent files more annoying. As we've discussed, copyright holders employ the services of companies whose only job is to disrupt trading of certain content. That's done by distributing fake files, generating bogus search request results and even sucking up the bandwidth of file providers to slow distribution. Another tactic is "stuck Torrents":

"Another counter-piracy technique is when only 97% of a large file is uploaded. The remaining file parts are never released, meaning that people spend hours downloading most of the file, only to have it pause, endlessly and infuriatingly, just before the end. (These are sometimes called "stuck torrents".) However, the technique's effectiveness is limited, according to torrent tracking and indexing sites. "If people upload something like that, the community will find out and comment on it. It's just a stupid obstacle," says Peter.

The article also explores how such companies had their investigators join many now private trading groups before the doors were closed to new membership. "Many groups didn’t start off as private. They became private because they felt threatened, so we were able to get in when they were open," says an investigator for Covington and Burling in the piece.

That said, all of the effort doesn't seem to be harming illegal BitTorrent trading one bit. The groups claim that stopping piracy isn't their goal -- they simply want to hinder distribution just enough to "make sharing difficult for a month or two in order to give the legitimate product more traction," according to Media Defender. Take a look at the recent film release list of any of the major trackers and judge the job they're doing for yourself.