Category: Music Download
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…
Microsoft Won’t..Oh, Wait…Will Fix DRM Flaw
Last week Aunty told you about Internet baddies who are loading spyware, adware, and viruses (oh my!) into media files, using a loophole in Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) process, and causing the nasties to be installed on the computers of unaware users who think that they are downloading media…
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…
Spyware Hiding in Online Media Files
As if online downloaders don’t have enough to worry about (rightly or wrongly), now they have to worry about spyware being buried within the media files they download. I don’t think this is what Marshall McLuhan had in mind. According to a report in InformationWeek, hackers are taking advantage of…
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…
Newsflash! Federal Court to RIAA: No, You CAN’T Have that Peer-to-Peer User’s Information!
The United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, dealt the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a blow today when it reversed a lower court ruling which ordered internet service provider Charter to comply with an RIAA demand that Charter turn over the information of Charter customers who were using…
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…
