BitTorrent wants more artists to give away stuff to file sharers – which is why they just gave those artists an option to also sell stuff to file sharers. Read more at paidContent »
Novell, a staid brand in enterprise software, is adding its first totally new product — Filr — since Attachmate closed on its acquisition of the company in 2011. Read more »
File sharing is exploding, and the studios are barely keeping up fighting the pirates: That’s the gist of a WSJ story detailing NBC’s anti-piracy work. But is it really that simple? Read more at paidContent »
Facebook users will now be able to more easily share files within Facebook groups by linking to their Dropbox accounts. The integration between the two companies marks a big win for Dropbox, will will now have access to millions of potential new users. Read more »
Here’s a novel idea for Hollywood: Instead of forcing other countries to adopt ever tougher copyright laws, help services like Netflix and Hulu to launch operations overseas. And forcing U.S. consumers to authenticate before they can watch TV online might not be the smartest idea either. Read more »
Peter Sunde, co-founder and former spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, doesn’t want to go to jail. In a plea for clemency filed this week, he argued that the case against him was full of irregularities. Sunde also shared a few more details about The Video Bay. Read more »
In a victory for Comcast, a federal judge in Chicago quashed four subpoenas that would have let a porn studio identify hundreds of subscribers accused of using torrent technology to share videos. Read more at paidContent »
After some serious beta testing, Facebook file transfer app Pipe is now ready for action. It allows users to send each other files to each other through the social network — and we have 5,000 invitations to get in early. Read more »
Crowdsourcing, crowd-financing and… file sharing lawsuits? The science fiction comedy Iron Sky has gotten lots of help from its fans, and its filmmakers have in the past relied on BitTorrent to distribute their works. Now, a German distributor is threatening to sue file sharers. Read more »
Storage giant EMC has acquired cloud-storage startup Syncplicity in an attempt to compete with consumer-focused offerings such as Dropbox and for storing business users’ files. Cloud-based storage has become the primary villain in the move toward BYOD , but is also an area of strong growth. Read more »
Content owners have been hoping that France’s controversial HADOPI scheme for disconnecting file-sharers might provide a model for the rest of the world. Now, the fate of the plan is in confusion after last week’s election that brought Socialist Francois Hollande to power. Read more at paidContent »
Silicon Valley veteran and former Formspring COO Ro Choy has been hired by BitTorrent Inc. as VP of Biz Dev and Marketing. One of his first tasks on the job: Dealing with rumors that the company is going to rebrand itself as Gyre Corp. Read more »
The stereotype of Russia as a haven of copyright infringement could be a thing of the past, after officials in Moscow said they were considering holding internet providers liable for illegal filesharing that takes place on their networks. Read more »
More businesses are putting at least some data in the cloud and a growing pack of vendors is fighting for that business. The latest entry is Egnyte’s updated hybrid cloud offering which supports up to 10B files and 10,000 concurrent users per account. Read more »
The audio file is no longer the product when it comes to digital music. Instead, the experiences built around it are, and services like Spotify, Facebook, Topspin and others are leading the way into this new era of dynamic, interactive and social music. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Much of today’s business communication activity still happens in email, but that presents a problem for the current on-the-go workforce. This report, based on a recent survey of business managers, highlights some of the problematic areas around business content collaboration and provides options for working through them. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
One of the world’s most popular BitTorrent search engines has closed down voluntarily, as the domino effect brought on by recent moves against Megaupload and the Pirate Bay starts to hit other filesharing sites. Read more »
Neil Young put a lot of the media industry’s hysteria about file-sharing into perspective when he said in a recent interview that “piracy is the new radio — that’s how music gets around.” In fact, a certain amount of “piracy” can be good for business. Read more »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
One of the key accusations against MegaUpload is that the site knowingly paid users who uploaded infringing content. MegaUpload did pioneer affiliate programs for cloud hosters, and others quickly copied the strategy, leading to a pirate cottage industry. But these days are now over. Read more »
Want to download a car? Now you can, kind of anyway: The Pirate Bay has started to offer users a way to exchange 3-D designs for physical objects that can be reproduced with 3-D printers. This kind of sharing only complicates the copyright debate. Read more »
Not only were the authorities able to shut down MegaUpload and arrest its founders without either SOPA or PIPA, but the facts of the case raise even more red flags about what the government would be able to do to similar services under those proposed laws. Read more »
MegaUpload, the file-sharing community, has had its physical offices raided by the FBI and its site shut down because the U.S. government says it has violated copyright. I asked a few companies that track web traffic to see how it affected the Internet. Read more »
A new report on social networking traffic patterns in organizations across the globe reveals that while use of social networks at work is way up, it still accounts for only a miniscule percentage of bandwidth. Threats to data security may be the bigger issue. Read more »
The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has drawn the ire of many tech industry leaders for its potential to squash innovation. GigaOM talked to O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly about why SOPA is wrong and what the tech industry can do to stop it. Read more »
BitTorrent’s new Share app offers users a way to privately share files of unlimited file size with others without paying for a cloud storage service. The company is currently using S3 to cache files, but wants to eventually move to its own P2P cloud service. Read more »
Everyone likes to share their predictions for what the future will bring in technology as a new year dawns. But some things seem to manage to stay the same, despite anticipation to the contrary. Here’s where I think the boat won’t rock in 2012. Read more »
Ask Box.net CEO Aaron Levie about his company’s cloud storage business, and you’ll hear a long, excited answer that probably won’t include the word “storage” at all. He’ll talk about sharing, collaboration and universal access — anything but the core storage infrastructure that makes Box’s service possible. Read more »
KaZaA, Napster, LimeWire & Co. all have been sued out of existence in the U.S., but Spain’s Blubster and Piolet music swapping apps prevailed in court today. Pablo Soto, who developed both file sharing applications, can’t be held liable for copyright infringement, a local court found. Read more »
Megaupload sued Universal Music in federal court today, alleging that the music label is trying to censor a promotional video for the file hoster through bogus take-down notices. However, Universal said that some of the artists depicted in the video never consented to it. Read more »
Consumers in Europe may be feeling the smarting bite of the economic winter settling in around us, but when it comes to internet and mobile… Read more at paidContent »
Belgian music rights holders want local ISPs to pay 3.4 percent of their subscriber revenue to compensate for music piracy committed by their customers. Those customers, however, could still be sued for file sharing, even after their ISPs paid for it. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Publishing house John Wiley has joined the anti-piracy fray by filing a lawsuit against people who downloaded illicit copies of its popular… Read more at paidContent »
How do you convince people that the future of music is all about access, and not ownership? LimeWire thought it had a solution to this problem with its never-launched Grapevine music subscription service. What did Grapevine have to offer? Take a look for yourself. Read more »
µTorrent users will soon be able to transcode their downloads and sync them with mobile and connected devices, thanks to a new µTorrent Plus client now going into limited alpha testing. Want to check it out yourself? We have some invite codes inside. Read more »
It’s been close to a year since LimeWire was forced to shut down its file sharing platform. LimeWire’s website has since been reduced to a single splash page – but it’s still attracting more than a million people a month looking for free music every month. Read more »
Warner Bros. systematically abused an automated takedown system provided by Hotfile, the file host claims in a countersuit against the studio. The claims made by Hotfile include information on the behind-the-scenes actions taken by Hollywood to enforce its rights against file sharing on cloud file hosts. Read more »
This guest post was written by Alex Swartsel, who is a member of the MPAA’s communications team, and originated on the MPAA Blog. It was written in response to Janko Roettgers’ piece “Sorry, Hollywood: Piracy may make a comeback,” which we published Thursday. Read more »
Android owners using Dropbox should take a look at Dropsync, a third-party client that offers more features than the native Dropbox software. Offering true, two-way sync, the app can be configured to sync at certain times, on Wi-Fi only or depending on the phone’s battery level. Read more »
