Category: File Sharing & P2P
Napster and Sony Ericsson Partner to Bring Downloadable Music to Your Cell Phone
Flexible Digital Music Platform Designed For All Mobile Carriers, Handsets from Multiple Manufacturers and PC Interoperability LOS ANGELES, CA, and STOCKHOLM, Sweden – (June 15, 2005) – Napster, the biggest brand in digital music, and Ericsson, the world’s leading telecommunications supplier, announced today a global partnership to offer the first…
Federal Law Enforcement Announces Operation D-Elite, Takes Down Elite Torrents (News Release)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI’s Cyber Division today announced the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on…
Even Kazaa Employees Don’t Like Running Kazaa!
For those of you not aware, there is a trial ongoing down under in Australia, pitting record labels, among others, against Sharman Networks, the current owners of Kazaa. The trial is about the usual beefs between the record companies and peer-to-peer networks, which we are not going to rehash here,…
Feds Score First Criminal Conviction in Peer-to-Peer
William R. Trowbridge, of New York, and Michael Chicoine, of Texas, will be going from file sharing to cell sharing following their guilty pleas to Federal charges of using a peer-to-peer network. Oops, Aunty means of violating copyrights on peer-to-peer networks. Because of course just using a peer-to-peer network is…
Double Whammy for Peer-to-Peer Creators and First Uploaders
Two bits of news this week should cause consternation in the peer-to-peer development and initiation worlds. First, California now has a bill wending its way through the law-making process which would require the developers of peer-to-peer and other file-swapping software to take “reasonable care” to ensure that their software cannot…
BitTorrent’s Bram Cohen: Diabolical PlotMeister, or Sweet Little Autistic Nerd Boy?
This month’s issue of Wired Magazine has an absolutely brilliantly done piece by Clive Thompson in which he interviews and dissects Bram Cohen, the inventor and founder of BitTorrent. Thompson expertly brings Cohen to life on the pages for his readers, painting a picture of someone who is at once…
MPAA Contractor Infects Downloader’s Machines with Adware, Spyware
Overpeer, a division of Loudeye, Inc., has been caught putting infected files on peer-to-peer filesharing networks, and putting attractive and likely sounding names on the files in order to induce users to download the files. Thinking that they are downloading their favourite songs or other media files, the users only…
MPAA Lawsuit Target LokiTorrent Fights Back
LokiTorrent, one of the latest targets of the Motion Picture Association of America’s legal crackdown on filesharing sites using the BitTorrent technology to allow users to download copyrighted movies, has vowed to fight the lawsuit, and is asking for donations to a legal fund to help defray an estimated $30,000…
Bit Torrent Takes Legal Hits on Two Fronts
Popular file-sharing service BitTorrent today took a double hit as a large BitTorrent server site was raided by police in Finland, while in the United States hundreds of peer-to-peer system operators were sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The Finnish raid lead to the arrest of 34…
Bit Torrent Gets Bit by a Torrent of DDos
There are people who don’t agree with peer-to-peer and other file-sharing networks, and then there are people who really don’t agree with peer-to-peer and other file-sharing networks. It would seem that someone in the latter category has taken umbrage with BitTorrent, and has taken it upon themselves to take BitTorrent…
Audio Interview: File Sharing? The Justice Department Says That They Want to Know Who You Are
Phil Leigh’s “Inside Digital Media” is a place where, according to their site, “you can see and hear interviews with thought leaders in the Digital Media industries.”
And indeed that is just what they offer.
Kazaa Has “High Clot Factor”, and is Spyware According to Computer Associates International
Computer Associates International has named Kazaa one of the top “spyware” programs, and in fact is saying that it poses a greater risk than any of the other top five programs on CAI’s spyware list, due to how popular it is. Kazaa claims that it has been downloaded 214 million…
If You Have Ever Downloaded Even Just One Movie…
As they promised that they would, the Motion Picture Assocation of America (MPAA) and their members have filed hundreds of lawsuits this week against people who have downloaded, traded, or otherwise pirated commercial movies. Like their brethern in the Recording Industry Assocation of America (RIAA), who filed hundreds of lawsuits…
Is BitTorrent Traffic Going to Bring Down the Internet?
A British web statistics analysis firm has said that file sharing program BitTorrent is responsible for an astonishing 35% of all traffic on the Internet right now. Leaving aside the question of how much of that massive activity involves the illegal swapping of files (BitTorrent, like Napster and Kazaa before…
Download a Movie, Go to Jail – Motion Picture Association Gets Tough on Piracy
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s true, then the Recording Industry Association of America should be very flattered, as the Motion Picture Assocation is following suit (pun intended). And certainly this will make a criminal lawyer or two happy. Undaunted by a recent Federal…
