Vatican City users accused of illegally downloading porn

GlobalPost

A blog called TorrentFreak has compiled a report alleging that computers within Vatican City have been illegally downloading porn.

The blog that breaks news about BitTorrent and copyright had the help of ScanEye, a website that tracks and analyzes online activity. The site's data found that computers inside Vatican City had files with names of adult film stars in its download queue, including some with bondage, domination, sadism and masochism (BDSM).

One Vatican resident's download was a film starring transsexual porn actress Tiffany Starr. Others included movies from porn stars Sheena Shaw, Lea Lexis and Krissy Lynn.

But while the recent downloads were linked to Vatican City, that doesn't mean church officials were the ones to watch the pornographic films. Others working for the Vatican, including the Papal Swiss Guard, also have daily access to Vatican City.

More from GlobalPost: Vatican apartments in Rome are neighbors to gay sauna

Holy See computer users also seem to enjoy downloading American TV shows, like NBC's Chicago Fire, ABC's The Neighbors and FX's The Americans.

TorrentFreak started investigating the Vatican's possible piracy after a report from the Limerick Leader said DVD rental store owner Paul Flynn claimed local priests were illegally downloading Oscar screening copies of films before they had been released.

Flynn described one of his regulars to the Limerick:

"A lovely man who loves his old films. Back in January, he mentioned he had watched Lincoln the night before. Maybe I'm naive and I asked had they shown it early in the cinema or something and he said, 'No, we have a film club once a week and we watched it up at the monastery.' I said that's only opening in the cinema today."

The priest also reportedly told Flynn that the monastery film club had seen Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty before their official releases. "They don't see it as stealing," Flynn said.

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