Posted April 25, 2013, 4:30 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in Industry News, The Web
A recent patent published by McAfee describes what amounts to an anti-piracy system. Titled "Detect and prevent illegal consumption of content on the internet", McAfee's approach would employ a centralized blocklist-style system to issue warnings for -- or entirely block…
Posted March 27, 2013, 5:00 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web, Industry News
As we noted earlier this month, Bram Cohen hopes his BitTorrent Live protocol will prove to be a major disruptor for the streaming media business. Today, Cohen shared that BitTorrent Live -- despite its possible patent encumbrance -- will be…
Posted March 12, 2013, 10:39 AM by Jose Vilches | Filed in The Web, Industry News
BitTorrent has officially taken the wraps off a new broadcasting service that draws its main strength from its namesake peer-to-peer protocol, so the video stream becomes more and more stable as more people tune in -- instead of the other…
Posted February 26, 2013, 3:30 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
The Pirate Bay has vacated its Swedish homeland in hopes of dodging legal troubles brewing for Piratpartiet, otherwise known as the Pirate Party of Sweden. A local anti-piracy group, Rights Alliance, threatened to sue Piratpartiet for providing bandwidth to The…
Posted February 4, 2013, 2:00 PM by Shawn Knight | Filed in Industry News
Members of the House of Representatives appear to have some quiet days ahead as officials have banned the use of streaming music service Spotify while on the job. Despite the fact that Spotify isn’t a peer-to-peer file sharing program like…
Posted January 4, 2013, 2:00 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
Four members of prolific illegal file sharing group iMAGiNE have been ordered to serve prison terms after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. The group's leader Jeramiah Perkins, 40, managed to receive the longest sentence ever handed to a…
Posted November 13, 2012, 6:00 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
Prominent semi-private torrent tracker Demonoid is once again showing signs of life, although the website itself remains a lifeless cadaver. What this means for Demonoid is anyone's guess, but during the site's 2009 sabbatical, the website returned just weeks after its…
Posted November 12, 2012, 12:30 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
After Kim Dotcom was denied the possibility of resurrecting MegaUpload as Me.ga, the controversial figure blasted the U.S. and Vivendi for their opposing views and global reach. Dotcom added that Mega was well-prepared for this contingency however, with a number of…
Posted November 2, 2012, 4:30 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
A Virginia man, Kywan Fisher, who was accused of sharing 10 adult movies via BitTorrent is being asked by an Illinois Federal court to pony up a whopping $1,500,000 in damages. The stiff judgment is the largest amount ever awarded…
Posted October 15, 2012, 5:00 PM by Matthew DeCarlo | Filed in Industry News, The Web
Despite being condemned as thieves by the recording industry, peer-to-peer users spend more money on music than non-filesharers, according to a new study by The American Assembly. Examining the music collection habits of respondents across the US and Germany, the…
Posted October 15, 2012, 4:00 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web, Industry News
Leaked internal training documents indicate AT&T is gearing up to launch a six-strike anti-piracy initiative on November 28. This may not prove to be much of a surprise for readers who caught headlines earlier this year regarding an impending graduated response supposedly…
Posted September 12, 2012, 5:00 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
Yes, Jammie Thomas-Rasset is still embroiled in a legal battle against the Record Industry Association of America -- and yes, the infamous P2P file-sharer from Minnesota is still on the losing side. It appears the most recent verdict totaling $220,000…
Popular torrent client uTorrent has gone through significant changes since it was acquired by BitTorrent in 2006. Launched in September 2005 as a minimalist, resource-friendly and free application for downloading torrents, is has evolved over the years to do far…
Posted June 15, 2012, 7:30 AM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
Comcast may be complicating the lives of copyright holders everywhere by rejecting recent requests made to link subscriber information to IP addresses. In an ongoing legal kerfuffle with AF Holdings, adult film publisher and plaintiff, Comcast requested an Illinois district…
Posted May 4, 2012, 2:30 PM by Rick Burgess | Filed in The Web
Judge Gary Brown, a federally-appointed magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York, recently ruled that an IP address is no more able to identify wrong-doers than a telephone number can be used to…
A year and a half after implementing its controversial graduated response program, France's anti-piracy authority claims to have drastically dented illegal filesharing. The report contains peer-to-peer usage data from multiple researchers, with each producing different figures.
According to Opswat, a software development company based in San Francisco, Avast continues to be the world's preferred antivirus. Avast was found on more than 16 percent of computers worldwide. For the past few years, Avast has topped the survey (pdf),…
Posted March 8, 2012, 9:13 AM by Lee Kaelin | Filed in Industry News
Space Monkey has announced a new hosted cloud storage service that puts the cloud in your house. The company says the new product is a hybrid of Dropbox, Pogoplug and BitTorrent and will be available for considerably less money than…
Posted February 29, 2012, 12:30 PM by Lee Kaelin | Filed in Industry News, The Web
After announcing more than two years ago that they intended to stop supporting .torrent links, The Pirate Bay has made the switch to "trackerless" magnet links official yesterday. In a post on their official blog, the team said the switch…
Posted January 13, 2012, 10:07 AM by Jose Vilches | Filed in The Web
Following a decision to shut down its tracker in November 2009, file-sharing titan The Pirate Bay now says it is completely abandoning .torrent downloads a month from now and instead will only provide so-called magnet links. Although little will change…
BitTorrent announced a 50 percent increase in the number of individuals using its mainline client and uTorrent. This ongoing surge led to a new milestone for the company as well, hitting 150 million active users per month. That figure is…
Posted January 6, 2012, 11:30 AM by Jose Vilches | Filed in Software, The Web
BitTorrent just released a new cloud storage and file-sharing service that's set to rival YouSendIt, MegaUpload and the like. Simply called "Share", the new service combines BitTorrent peer-to-peer technology with Amazon's EC2 and S3 to store any type of file…
Posted December 27, 2011, 10:37 AM by Steven Parker | Filed in Software, The Web
Torrenting is perhaps one of the favorite ways for internet users to download copyrighted material for free. It involves downloading a .torrent file and loading it into a torrent program, which then finds users around the internet (thanks to "trackers") who…
Posted September 2, 2011, 3:30 PM by Jose Vilches | Filed in The Web
Turkish HDTV manufacturer Vestel has announced the world's first Bittorrent certified HDTV, which will allow users to download, share and playback media files directly from their Internet connected television set. Not much is known about the device itself, except that…
TechSpot on: