P2P — GigaOM

P2P

Adobe Flash 10.1 for Android isn’t even out yet, but there are already plenty of videos out there teasing us with all the great things a Nexus One will be able to do once you can get the latest version of Flash for it. The most … Read More »

Ten years ago this week, online music pioneer Justin Frankel released a little application dubbed Gnutella that enabled file sharing through a distributed P2P network. Frankel, whose also wrote the then hugely-popular Winamp MP3 player software, supposedly named the client after his favorite hazelnut cream spread. Read More »

 
 

Which movie is gonna take home the prestigious Best Picture price: Avatar or The Hurt Locker? That’s the big question of tonight’s Academy Awards, if we can believe Hollywood pundits. Both movies have been nominated for nine awards, and anything seems possible. Of course, … Read More »

NBC’s decision to restrict live streaming of the Vancouver Winter Olympics to subscribers of cable, satellite or IPTV services is making many cord cutters scramble. We’ve heard anecdotes from former cable customers flocking to gyms or stop by friends for surprise visits while figure … Read More »

Norway’s largest ISP prevailed in court once again this week, with the country’s High Court court ruling that Telenor won’t have to block access to The Pirate Bay’s website, according to a report from Norway’s Computerworld. The decision comes after record labels and … Read More »

People tend to equate BitTorrent with piracy, and we’re not going to pretend that there isn’t a lot of loot out there on torrent sites. However, there’s also plenty of opportunity to download lots of legal goodies, from free documentaries to Creative Commons-licensed music to … Read More »

Both BitTorrent Inc. and Vuze released significant updates to their clients this week that include features to remotely control the applications from devices like the iPad or smartphones. BitTorrent Inc. also included a new protocol dubbed uTP into its … Read More »

British ISP TalkTalk, who has four million customers after having gobbled up AOL U.K. and Tiscali U.K. in recent years, has vowed to not divulge any customer information to rights holders in pursuit of alleged P2P infringers, according to a report from Torrentfreak. … Read More »

Record labels and other rights holders will have to shoulder much of the financial burden of the UK’s upcoming graduate response program to curb illegal file sharing, also known as “three strikes.” Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms said this week that rights holders will have to … Read More »

Okay, let’s admit it. We all have our own ideas of what a movie pirate looks like. Maybe we think of him as a sun-depraved teenager, spending his nights scouring torrent sites. Or we remember the guy who tried to sell us bootleg DVDs downtown the … Read More »

A new study released by a German consumer advocacy group is estimating that entertainment and software companies sent roughly 450,000 cease-and-desist letters to local file sharers alone in 2010 2009, yielding some $370 million in damages. That’s a steep jump from 2008, when … Read More »

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the groundbreaking election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States, the first decade of the 21st century had its fair share of memorable moments. However, what really set these years apart from decades before is … Read More »

More Must Reads

Gleeks, you can be proud of yourself: Glee has not only been the show that dominated Twitter week after week after week ever since the beginning of the fall season, its most recent episode before the holiday break also caused more Tweets than … Read More »

Nine Inch Nails (NIN) fans have released a free download of a concert video titled The Gift that is based on three shows of one of the band’s last and possibly final tours. The video can be downloaded via BitTorrent in various … Read More »

One of the big downsides of BitTorrent is that you have to be patient. Streams from Hulu start after a few seconds of buffering. Download a file from a torrent site, on the other hand, and you’ll often have to wait hours before you can start … Read More »

A group of Hollywood studios, including Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and others in September 2006 brought a case against Canada-based torrent search site isoHunt and its owner, Gary Fung, alleging that they enabled and encouraged wide-scale copyright infringement. Well, earlier this week, a … Read More »

Comcast yesterday settled a long-running class action lawsuit brought against it for throttling BitTorrent file transfers. The cable giant has agreed to pay a total of up to $16 million to users that claim to have been affected — which on a … Read More »

The EU-funded P2P Next project has started to stream BBC content in true 1080p HD via BitTorrent. The project posted an episode of the BBC’s R&D TV on its technical trial web site this week, with the option to stream it either … Read More »

The popular torrent-indexing site Mininova.org late yesterday took the drastic step of removing all but a few torrents in response to a copyright infringement lawsuit. Dutch rights group BREIN went to court against Mininova in June, and later that summer, the site was … Read More »

The Pirate Bay made headlines earlier this week with yet another dramatic announcement, this time that the notorious BitTorrent site’s tracker has been officially shut down. But the move won’t impact downloading, site admins explained on a blog. Trackers are no longer … Read More »

When BitTorrent co-founder Bram Cohen was introduced at NewTeeVee’s Video Rights Roundtable this morning, interviewer Schlomo Rabinowitz asked the crowd, “How many people in the audience hate this man?” — and a few people actually raised their hands. Despite being largely … Read More »

UK-based P2P video platform VODO published its second feature film on dozens of file-sharing sites Thursday, hoping that worldwide exposure will bring in donations, subscriptions and traditional distribution deals. David Miller’s documentary In Guantanamo, which is the result of a press … Read More »

Chinese P2P startup Xunlei has sued its competitor Sohu for copyright infringement, according to the Shenzen Daily. Xunlei is alleging that Sohu’s search engine, Sogou, is infringing on copyrights related to Xunlei’s P2P software as well as its … Read More »

Tomorrow is the big launch for NBC’s 2010 Olympics coverage. With 100 days till the opening ceremonies in Vancouver, NBC Sports is flipping the switch on a new site powered by Microsoft Silverlight with help from partners such as Vertigo (which built the … Read More »

Network security vendor Arbor Networks has been drumming up publicity for its upcoming Internet Observatory Report this week. One of the widely reported tidbits is that P2P has “declined dramatically in the last two years,” and that it has been replaced by … Read More »

Bandwidth-conscious broadcasters have a new way to distribute their live video streams. A group of Uruguay-based P2P researchers recently released the first English-language version of their open-source P2P streaming application, GoalBit. The application, which is based on a BitTorrent-like architecture, aims to compete … Read More »

The House Energy & Commerce Committee is scheduled to mark up tomorrow a bill dubbed the Informed P2P User Act (H.R. 1319) that aims to prevent accidental file-sharing by mandating the display of clear warnings during the installation and usage of P2P software. Critics, … Read More »

Many people in the online video space are trying to make sense of the lawsuit Joost filed against former chairman and CEO Mike Volpi earlier today. The lawsuit has something to do with the supposed revelation of trade secrets in connection to the sale of … Read More »

The sale of The Pirate Bay hit another serious roadblock this week when shares of its prospective buyer, Global Gaming Factory X, were delisted from the Swedish stock exchange for allegedly misleading investors about the proposed transaction. AktieTorget claims that GGF misrepresented facts about … Read More »

LimeWire just announced that it’s been forced to disable its Facebook integration. The feature, which was introduced with the launch of LimeWire 5.2 at the end of July, enabled users to privately share files with their contacts after logging … Read More »

It’s been a rough year for file-sharing sites, legally speaking. Today a Dutch court ordered Mininova to remove all torrents of copyrighted works in the next three months or pay up to $7.16 million in fines. Copyright holder group Stichting Brein had sued Mininova … Read More »

TVU Networks this week introduced PVR-like functionality for its P2P TV platform, letting subscribers record 300 or so live TV channels from around the world, including Cartoon Network, BBC World News and Telemundo. Users can record shows in real time or … Read More »

People all over the world are downloading movies via BitTorrent, according to new research (PDF) presented at last week’s P2P Research Group convening at the 75th IETF Meetings in Stockholm. And we’re literally talking all over the world: A popular movie torrent analyzed … Read More »

Stop slowing down our torrents! That’s the message BitTorrent Inc. has been sending to Canadian ISPs this week with a last-minute submission (PDF) to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Bell, Rogers and other Canadian ISPs have been throttling their … Read More »

Wayne Rosso, the long-time outspoken P2P exec, pulled out of efforts to reformulate The Pirate Bay earlier this week, as first reported by CNET. Swedish public company Global Gaming Factory had announced yet-to-be-executed plans to acquire the enormous legally troubled file sharing site … Read More »

Dutch rights holders were able to obtain a preliminary injunction against the Pirate Bay today, with the court demanding the site be shut down in the Netherlands within 10 days and instituting stiff penalties in the case of non-compliance. Pirate Bay administrators named in … Read More »

The Pirate Bay has been front and center of the blog and mainstream tech news cycle over the last month, ever since the site’s founders announced they had found a buyer. Hardly a day goes by without new and oftentimes conflicting reports about the impending … Read More »

Much has been written in recent weeks about the future of The Pirate Bay, as well as about BitTorrent piracy in general. The sale of the site spooked some, while others are hoping to transform the new Pirate Bay into a legitimate, multimillion-dollar … Read More »

The Pirate Bay’s impending sale has been worrying BitTorrent users around the world. One reason for these worries is that the Swedish pirate platform has been the backbone of many of the web’s BitTorrent sites and communities. Take the Pirate Bay’s tracker servers away, … Read More »

Microsoft Meeting with Netflix; in light of partnerships and close ties, would the Redmond giant be a better buyer than Amazon? (All Things D) Generate Adds $2M to Series A; video production and talent management firm has now raised $8 million in round from Fuse … Read More »

Oh, Canada: Your health care is universal, your forests are green, and your creative industries are against BitTorrent throttling. The Canadian Film & Television Production Association (CFTPA) and two other trade groups representing filmmakers and TV producers testified in support of net neutrality in … Read More »

News of The Pirate Bay’s impending sale has worried file sharers around the world. Many rights holders, on the other hand, seem to be somewhat optimistic, hoping that the deal will put an end to the world’s largest file-swapping platform. But history has shown again … Read More »

You’d think before you announce a sale that alienates many of your most passionate users you’d figure out what your next steps were first. But no, that wouldn’t be The Pirate Bay way. Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) said yesterday it’s … Read More »

The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today. Global Gaming Factory X announced that … Read More »

In what sounds like an elaborate April Fool’s prank, the Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it’s in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, for 60 million Swedish kronor ($7.8 million), 30 million Swedish kronor … Read More »

loading external resource
Click to log in with: Not you?
Comment as guest:
By continuing you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Submitting comment...
results