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 »
BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen demonstrated his P2P live sreaming protocol at the SF MusicTech Summit on Monday, arguing that it would be much better suited to stream large sports events that existing CDN-based solutions. “My goal here is to kill off television,” he joked. Read More »
China’s online video service PPTV struck a strategic partnership deal with local cable TV provider WASU last week that could hold the key to finally bring online video to the living room in China. Android TVs and set-top boxes could also play a big role. Read More »
While cable operators and networks continue to downplay the effect of cord cutting, in Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy survey, the firm reports that 9 percent of respondents have already canceled their cable subscriptions, with another 11 percent saying they are considering doing so. Read More »
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 »
BitTorrent Inc. is starting to stream a live DJ set out of its office every Friday afternoon to stress-test its new live streaming platform. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen and his team have been developing the live streaming platform for close to three years. 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 »
BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen and his company are moving forward with its P2P live streaming project, expanding field trials and courting indie bands to stress test Cohen’s algorithms. However, it could still take months before BitTorrent Live is ready for prime time. 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 »
File sharers can download a spy thriller with a cast including Six Feet Under actor James Cromwell this Friday, thanks to a collaboration between the film makers and P2P distribution platform VODO. The site is asking for donations to bring the movie to theaters. Read More »
Have you ever watched a TV show episode or Hollywood blockbuster on a website that didn’t have the proper licenses? Then you could be in trouble, at least if the example of Kino.to catches on. Rights holders are threatening to sue users of the now-defunct site. Read More »
Movies often show up on torrent sites as soon as they see the day of light. In the case of the new horror flick The Tunnel, this was done on purpose: The film makers are using BitTorrent as a way to raise money and awareness. Read More »
More Must Reads
BitTorrent’s new Project Chrysalis client now makes it possible to share files of unlimited size with your friends even when you’re not online. The company is caching files and using a revamped UI to make the facilitation of BitTorrent downloads much easier than before. Read More »
Akamai could begin leveraging P2P technology to stream live or on-demand videos. While it has been experimenting off and on with P2P ever since its acquisition of Red Swoosh in 2007, the introduction of video streaming through its NetSession client-side technology might be close to release. Read More »
Today on the Net: YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are thinking about doing another project together, Amazon is planing to launch a cloud media locker and Piers Morgan has fallen in love with Twitter. Read More »
You may think you’re downloading a movie or a TV show via BitTorrent — but you’re really taking part in a massive distributed denial of service attack against a major corporation. Sounds like Sci-Fi? Well, it’s possible today, thanks to a security vulnerability in BitTorrent’s protocol. Read More »
File sharing and downloading from sites like Rapidshare and services like Usenet is shifting towards video and e-books, with MP3s quickly going out of fashion. That’s the gist of new data from a media search engine, which also shows that free MP3s are still widely available. Read More »
Bram Cohen has been working two years on a new P2P live streaming solution. He started from scratch instead of building upon and optimizing BitTorrent code. One of the reasons: The BitTorrent protocol is based on TCP, and that introduces too much of a delay. Read More »
How about this for day-and-date: The Dutch documentary California Dreaming will be available legally, for free, via BitTorrent today while it airs on TV. The movie is released by VODO.net and licensed under a Creative Commons license that even allows viewers and downloaders to remix it. Read More »
The Wikipedia’s Wikimedia foundation doesn’t want to be a slave to high video bandwidth costs. Instead, it is using BitTorrent-based P2P technology to distribute the growing amount of video on Wikipedia.org. Users can simply install a Firefox plug-in to help with the distribution of Wikipedia videos. Read More »
Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash Media Server today, with new features aimed at making it the streaming server of choice for enterprise webcasts. The addition of IP multicast and P2P functionality will open up a whole new market for Adobe in the enterprise. Read More »
Boxee users can now download torrents to a remote server and then stream the video files right within the application, thanks to a new Boxee app by Put.io. The remote file sharing service could even be used to set up a cloud-based DVR for Boxee. Read More »
It’s only been four days since the Yes Men released their latest feature film The Yes Men Change The World on file sharing networks, but viewers have already donated over $11,000 and counting. This early success is making the duo rethink TV and theater distribution models. Read More »
The Yes Men have made fun of everyone from Haliburton to Dow Chemical, but they’re taking BitTorrent serious. The prankster duo is using file sharing and the P2P distribution platform VODO.net to release their latest movie for free, hoping that donations will enable future pranks. Read More »
Palo Alto-based live streaming start-up Veetle will broadcast all four soccer matches of the Barclays New York Challenge for free in HD – and it promises content owners that they can do the same, without paying a dime. Veetle’s money saving secret is its P2P technlogy. Read More »
The release of Apple’s iPhone 4 upped the ante with the launch of its FaceTime app for mobile video chatting. And while Andoid phones don’t have a competing app yet, that could soon change, as Adobe Flash Platform evangelist Mark Doherty shows in a video demo. Read More »
BitTorrent is embracing the web with a new SDK that makes it possible to develop web apps for its popular uTorrent client. Users will be able to install these apps within the client, and the company promises that the app ecosystem will be “completely open.” Read More »
uTorrent, known as one of the most popular and P2P file sharing clients for Windows, is coming to the Mac: A first 1.0 stable version is available now for download, and uTorrent maker BitTorrent Inc. is planing to soon offer feature parity between the two versions. Read More »
On Wednesday, the first episode of Pioneer One debuted as a free torrent, and the sci-fi pilot, distributed by the VODO platform and promoted by a conglomerate of P2P services, is proving there may be a market for independently-produced and P2P-distributed content. Read More »
Watch out, Justin.tv and Ustream: BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is working on a new P2P protocol, and it’s all about live streaming. BitTorrent Inc. announced the new protocol for the first time this week, and it could release a first implementation as early as this summer. Read More »
A New York court found LimeWire guilty of copyright infringement. Among the evidence used to convict LimeWire were Google Adsense ads that touted LimeWire as a replacement for Napster as well as testimony from the company’s former COO. Read More »
Cord-cutting sports fans that get their soccer fix through Chinese P2P apps are the new pet peeve of the U.S. Trade Representative, whose office publishes an annual report about countries with lax copyright enforcement called the Special 301 Report. This year’s edition, which … Read More »
Entertainment industry insiders are increasingly seeking alternatives to lawsuits and legal threats, realizing it’s time to finally work with, instead of against, P2P network operators and their users. Here’s a look at three approaches . Read More »
CW to Double Ad Load in Its Web Shows; the CW Network plans to put as many ads in Web versions of its shows as it airs on TV. (The Wall Street Journal) Bitbop: Is This the Hulu of Mobile?; Fox Mobile unveiled Bitbop this week … Read More »
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 »
The UK government is backing away from a proposal in the Digital Economy Bill that would cut off broadband access for consumers that were found to illegally share media files online. With the latest comment on a petition from the government, it appears … 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 »
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 »
Viacom Lawyer Compares Suing File Sharers to Terrorism; general counsel Michael Fricklas admits that suing end users for online copyright infringement is “expensive, and it’s painful, and it feels like bullying.” (Ars Technica) Kyte Opens New Offices in UK, Germany; white-label video management … Read More »
Forget multitouch: By far the most disruptive — and overlooked — feature of the Flash Player 10.1 beta that Adobe launched this week is the ability to transmit video via P2P multicast. In fact, Adobe built some enhanced P2P capabilities into both the new Flash … 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 »
Streaming video and audio from the likes of YouTube and Hulu now account for roughly 27 percent of global Internet traffic, according to a new study from network management company Sandvine (hat tip to Multichannel News), which surveyed the top 20 ISPs worldwide. This stat … Read More »
Comcast has filed its appeal of an FCC decision issued last August that censured the cable company for blocking P2P files, arguing that the commission doesn’t have the authority to impose the broadband principles that define network neutrality in the U.S. absent a federal … Read More »
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