Items tagged with P2P
Several months ago, BitTorrent posed the question, "What if more of the web worked the web BitTorrent does?" To answer that question, the BitTorrent team created Project Maelstrom, a specialized web browser that fetches content from a distributed web rather than centralized servers. It started off as an invite-only affair, but is now available to test run in beta form. What BitTorrent's trying to do here is fundamentally change the web for the sake of openness. Rather than host websites and online content on centralized servers, BitTorrent envisions a web where websites are chopped up into chunks and held on computers of home users -- a distributed web, in other words. In this way, you can think...
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The leak of Windows 10 build 10036 over the weekend (the current Technical Preview is build 9926) revealed a new settings feature indicating a move by Microsoft towards delivering OS system updates via P2P technology. With build 10036 users can now opt to receive OS updates from multiple locations. They can also select from where they want to download the updates, whether strictly from PCs on their own local network or from PCs across the Internet in addition to local PCs (all in conjunction with Microsoft provisions too, of course).The shift to a distribution model offers strong advantages for both sides of the Windows 10 transaction. Users will potentially benefit...
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Companies that monitor BitTorrent traffic are a dime a dozen, but AT&T marks the first time that an ISP itself is going to be getting in on the action. The company has just been awarded a patent that will allow it to deeply monitor BitTorrent traffic, though its ultimate use seems to be up-in-the-air. The company could simply want to monitor network congestion before it happens, or figure out which pirated content is being shared the most. Both of these cases seem likely, as AT&T is one ISP that's part of the Six Strikes program, where an Internet subscriber has up to six chances to stop downloading pirated content. It's worth noting that there, it's third-parties that monitor the traffic,...
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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has long sought to demonize file sharers who download, trade, and share songs illegally, noting that the cumulative impact of their deeds -- obtaining millions of songs illegally -- is nothing short of devastating. But is it really? A new study throws a wrinkle in the RIAA's argument. Before we go any further, let us be clear -- we're not condoning piracy of any kind, nor do we encourage anyone to seek out copyrighted content of any kind by illegal means. That said, we find the results of a study conducted by the American Assembly, a national non-partisan public affairs forum related to Columbia University, to be rather fascinating. AA,...
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Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is under lock and key in Cambodia after local police, acting on an international warrant issued in Sweden, arrested the young man. Warg is one of four Pirate Bay founders who all found themselves in hot water for running one of the most popular illegal torrent tracking sites on the planet. "His arrest was made the request of the Swedish government for a crime related to information technology," a spokeswoman for the Cambodia's police told the AFP news agency. The spokesperson added that Cambodia doesn't have an extradition treaty with Sweden, though authorities are looking into how to proceed. Along with Warg, the other three Pirate Bay founders --...
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Just saying the word "BitTorrent" makes those at record labels and movie studios cringe, but honestly, it's not always used for nefarious purposes. The Internet Archive, which is a non-profit digital library built to enable "universal access to all knowledge," is making over one million pieces of archived content available to the world via the BitTorrent protocol. That's right -- 1,000,000 files freely available on P2P networks. The Internet Archive offers permanent storage of and free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and over 2 million public-domain books. Today all of the archives' live music concerts, the Prelinger movie collection,...
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The impact of piracy on the music business has been studied in detail, but the relationship between illegal downloads and film revenue hasn't been explored to nearly the same degree. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan and Wellesely College has examined the impact of BitTorrent on domestic and foreign ticket sales and come back with some interesting conclusions. The results of the study are being somewhat erroneously reported as "Piracy doesn't hurt the movie industry" but the truth is rather more nuanced. What the researchers found was that in the US, the drop-off in movie revenue from week to week for the period 2003-2006 remained consistent. In theory, the widespread...
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Net neutrality. Throttling. Shaping. Data discrimination. Lots of weird terms, and plenty of headaches for Internet users. ISPs are looking to all sorts of methods in order to curb usage and abuse where possible, but Bell Canada is taking a rather unusual approach. But now, according to a letter to Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, the ISP has decided to "withdraw the shaping of P2P traffic" on their networks starting March 1st. Here's the reasoning: With the increasing popularity of streamed video and other traffic, P2P file-sharing, as a proportion of total traffic, has been diminishing. This is not to say that it no longer has an impact on network congestion. Nevertheless,...
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Is peer-to-peer file sharing wrong? Is it illegal? Is it a crime to engage in it? If you're just casually reading that, you may say: "Of course!" But read it once again. We didn't specifically say which kind of file sharing; just file sharing in general. Different story! Thankfully, we're still not living in a world where P2P is outright forbidden from top to bottom, but one nation is taking a serious stand against the illegal kind. New Zealand just passed a law against online piracy, which "outlaws file-sharing and threatens repeat offenders with having their Internet access cut off." The new law allows for penalties of up to NZ$15,000 to be paid back to the copyright owner, and if this isn't...
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Limewire users are going to have to find another way to pirate music and movies download and share legal copies of software, such as Linux distributions and game demos, as well as freely available indie music, because the peer-to-peer service is going belly up by the end of the year. "As a result of our current legal situation, we have no choice but to wind down Limewere Store operations," Limewire said in a statement. "Despite our dedication and efforts, December 31, 2010, will mark the day when Limewire Store shuts its virtual stores." And thus will end the end of an era for Limewire, the popular P2P service founded by Mark Gorton a decade ago. Limewire recently found itself on the losing end...
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Many are concerned about the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA, S.3804), which could potentially make it possible for the Justice Department to have sites removed from the DNS system for doing something as small as linking to a BitTorrent site such as The Pirate Bay, even in the context of an article. It appears that the bill is dead, at least for this session of Congress, but the RIAA has already given us an example what might happen if it were to become law. PCMag.com, a respected tech journal, wrote about its experience. They described how, after writing an article about the demise of LimeWire (it has since been resurrected), they received a letter from the RIAA...
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The music industry dealt what appeared to be a fatal blow to LimeWire by winning a court injunction against the peer-to-peer file sharing service. Desperate to keep the ship afloat, however, LimeWire CEO George Searle confirmed that the company recently laid off 29 of it's 100-person workforce, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. "Following the court-ordered injunction, we reduced our workforce to extend our runway for bringing our new music service to market," Searle said in a statement. "Letting go of colleagues is never easy. If we could have brought about another solution, we would have." Laying off nearly 30 percent of its workforce should free LimeWire up to make a run at...
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Want to prosecute people who are downloading files illegally? Well, if you fine them, you might be taking money out of the hands of your best customers, a new survey shows. It's not the first such survey to come to this conclusion. However, it is the latest. The study, published on Sunday by U.K. think tank Demos, surveyed 1,008 people aged between 18 and 50 last month. It found that those who admit to illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music, which is £33 more than those who claim that they never do so. The British Phonographic Industry estimates that seven million U.K. users download files illegally annually, which will cost the industry £200 million...
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The U.K. has joined France in trying to crack down on illegal downloading by instituting a policy whereby consumers found to repeatedly illegally download copyrighted material would have their Internet access suspended. This has commonly been called a "three strikes" policy, as usually the proposal is to give the offender three chances before suspending their access. Earlier, the U.K. had planned to restrict broadband speed, not total access. While that provision remains under the new proposal, it has been joined by a new provision which includes the possibility of blocking access completely. The measure will come up for a vote in Parliament in November. If passed, the U.K. would join France...
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Qtrax - the legal, ad-supported free music download site - will begin its worldwide launch in October, starting with the Asia-Pacific region.For starters, it will operate in China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The official date is Oct. 29, a Thursday. By year's end, it will officially launch in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, though it already has been available as a 1.0 "preview" download in the U.S.It appears to be available only for Windows users who have Windows Media Player 11, Microsoft .Net 2.0 and DRM security update.Qtrax was announced last year and has deals with all the major music companies...
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Although it's still having trouble getting people to move from Office 2003 to Office 2007, Microsoft said a week ago at the TechEd conference that it would launch an invitation-only Technical Preview Program of the new Office in July. Never let that sort of thing stop BitTorrent downloaders, apparently. Leaked copies of the Technical Preview have reached P2P networks. Although the first information I received on this were from one site and one set of torrent links (remember that Office 2010 will come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors), its hit more reputable (we know, we know, the RIAA would laugh over this nomenclature) sites such as Mininova as well. Of course, any downloading of this software is...
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It only took a month after the fiasco that prevented the HADOPI legislation from passing for the French Assembly and Senate to regroup, and on Wednesday HADOPI, the "three strikes" anti-piracy legislation passed the French Senate. It had passed the French National Assembly on Tuesday.The fiasco we reference above occurred when overconfidence set in, and only a few MPs showed up for the April vote on the same legislation. It was defeated in the Assembly then 21 - 15, though it passed on Tuesday 296 - 233. Yes, just a few people missed that April vote, you can obviously see.In Wednesday's vote, the French Senate passed the bill by an overwhelming majority of 189 - 14 in the upper...
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Judges are expected to recuse themselves in the event of a conflict of interest, and this is the basis of attorney Peter Althin's filing for a new trial. Althin represents one of The Pirate Bay founders, Peter Sunde. Althin told the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter: "In my appeal, I will urge that the verdict of the district court will be obviated due to conflict of interest."What's up in the case? It turns out that Tomas Norstrom, the Stockholm District Court Judge who found the popular BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay guilty of facilitating copyright infringement, is a member of not one, but two different copyright organizations, the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish...
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Citing a new (?), voluntary Code of Practice, mobile broadband providers in the U.K. are blocking access to The Pirate Bay. But the Code of Practice has been around since 2004 (according to the date on the PDF file), so why start blocking now? Answer: the verdict against The Pirate Bay from last Friday, obviously. Why block period? It seems related to the large (ahem) amount of porn available via torrents hosted on the site. Using BT as an example, users see the following when trying to surf to The Pirate Bay: "This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have 'over 18' status," the warning states. It goes on to list a series...
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No time wasted here. The Pirate Bay has announced on their website that only days after a guilty verdict in their copyright infringement case, they have filed an appeal. Last Friday, the founders of The Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, as well as Carl Lundstrom, who provided financing, were each sentenced to a year in prison. The four was also ordered to pay $3.6 million each in damages to entertainment companies such as Warner Bros., MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, and Activision. Big media was pleased, but protests were held in Sweden over the weekend. Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay remains defiant, saying that no matter what the site will...
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Hundreds of protesters demonstrated on Saturday following Friday's conviction by a Swedish court of key members of the BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay. The founders of The Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, as well as Carl Lundstrom, who provided financing, were each sentenced to a year in prison and were also each ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to leading entertainment companies such as Warner Bros., MGM , Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision. The protests, organized by The Pirate Party, were held in in Stockholm, Goteborg, Karlstad and Lund and were organized...
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Last December, the RIAA announced it was giving up on file-sharing lawsuits, and would be working with ISPs in a three-strikes policy program which would eventually result in broadband being cut off for repeat offenders of illegal file-sharing. At a digital music conference in Nashville this week, AT&T's Jim Cicconi stated that the company has begun testing a such takedown notification system. An industry insider told C|Net: Cicconi told attendees of the Leadership Music Digital Summit that the notices are part of a "trial." AT&T wants to test customer reaction, he said. Whether AT&T included any warnings that repeat offenders would see their service suspended or terminated is still...
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