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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