U.K. to Become the Second Country to Launch Legal P2P Service

June 30, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry 

We previously announced you that legal broadband subscription services that would allow file sharing are likely to emerge on the market by the end of the year. Now the prospects seem within reach.

U.K. will see its first licensed peer-to-peer music file-sharing service by early next year, as a market effect of government demands and the threat of legislation that would compel Internet service providers and the music industry to collaborate.

There are some issues still to be clarified though: for instance, how will the royalties be distributed, and what will be the procedure regarding music that has never been given license for digital distribution (and thus the question rises – will the music service providers disregard it, or try to close a deal with the owners?)

This project would establish the U.K. as the second country (after South Korea), where music industry have decided to license songs to a subscription-based file-sharing service that would operate based on consumers’ fees per month for high-speed Internet.In what concerns price, the ISPs will be the ones to set it.

What would distinguish the next generation of broadband-backed subscription schemes (at this time being analyzed), and the one currently in use is that the first are designed to allow and support exchanges of music between subscribers. Subscription services like eMusic and Napster although make available music for download they don’t let users share it. Others include different strategies – you can share playlists using Omnifone’s licensed mobile service Music Station for example – (the receiving device being populated with tracks centrally over the network); QTrax has become a legal P2P service using ad-supported milieu instead of the subscription method.

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BitTorrent Administrator Convicted by Federal Jury

June 30, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Hard times for p2p site administrators: 26-year-old Clintwood, Virginia based Daniel Dove was convicted of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement by a federal jury in Big Stone Gap, Va. on Friday.

Dove owes his conviction to being an administrator of EliteTorrents.org, a Web site that offered unauthorized copyright content. As DOJ (Department of Justice) reported, the site, which was shut down three years ago, used BitTorrent p2p technology to make available pirated copies of movies, MP3s, applications and video games.

According to the same source this is the first time in the U.S. that a file sharing site uploader user has been convicted by a jury of copyright infringement.

Prosecutors said that, apart from maintaining a high-speed server of his own, Dove was also constantly taking on new members (with very high-speed Internet connections) in his crew – Uploaders – to contribute with content and servers.

In the main, prosecutors involved in piracy pursuit usually go for the major players, namely, the release groups that spread the pirated material, or the leakers who are the first link in this chain being those who provide the content to start with. Reportedly, UK is planning comparable criminal measures (here Interpol has taken down music BitTorrent tracker OiNK and made significant arrests among site’s most important uploaders, the “trophy” being administrator Alan Ellis).

We may have the first jury trial now with Dove but this is actually the last remaining conviction in this case as some of his colleagues have already served time. Scott McCausland was sentenced to five months in jail and another five months of house arrest back in 2006 after pleading guilty to two copyright-infringement accusations connected to the distribution of Star Wars: Episode III.

Dove could be given for his offenses up to 10 years in jail. The sentence is due on Sept 9, 2008 (We can only wish him the best of luck).

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Tyler G. Newby of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu for the Eastern District of Virginia, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia.

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Filesharers Threatened with Disconnection

June 27, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

In UK things are getting serious. BT, the largest broadband provider considered it was time for some action and so it has reportedly started to threaten customers with disconnection from the Internet if it receives information that they are sharing copyright files through p2p networks.

One of the company’s subscribers has been given an email alleging that she had used a p2p client to download a Girls Aloud song – Biology, The Register informs. The email was based on data collected by (of course) the BPI. It claims she used the open source file sharing application Ares in May this year to infringe sound recording copyright.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor made a statement to The Register saying that: “Establishing partnerships with ISPs is the number one issue for the BPI, and we are beginning to form positive working relationships with BT, Virgin Media and most of the other major ISPs”.

However, is not yet certain how exactly does BT stand with regard to implementing the record industry’s favored “three strikes” policy which basically includes two warnings for users accused of infringing music copyright followed by disconnection from the Internet.

Taylor further emphasized the importance of the role ISPs should assume:
“Music has huge value, and ISPs can play a positive role in its future, by working with us to develop new services, helping with consumer education, and tackling the illegal filesharing on their networks. Everyone agrees on where we need to be, and we are working closely with our colleagues across the music community, the more progressive ISPs, and government to get us there.”

On the other hand there are reports indicating great chances for UK legal broadband subscription services that will allow filesharing to be launched by the end of 2008.

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Top of the Most Popular Free Software

June 26, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Firefox software1. Firefox browser

Any PC user needs a good web browser. The one offered by Firefox is open source, highly customizable and includes many free useful plugins.

Avira software2. Avira Antivir

With so many threats out there a proper virusscanner is just a must-have on any PC. There are some antivirus software you can purchase like Norton Antivirus and McAfee but the price might be high. Among the free alternatives to be considered is Avirantivirus – freeware for personal use.

Go to Avira Antivir website

3. LimeWire

Useless to say how popular p2p applications have become and the percentage of those enjoying file-sharing. LimeWire remains one of the most used such p2p clients as our top shows. It’s a free file sharing Gnutella client supporting Windows, Mac, OSX, Linux; impressive graphics, high performance, and user-friendliness make LimeWire the first popular file sharing program in our list.

Go to Limewire website

OpenOffice.org software3. OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is an exhaustive suite which comes free for personal as well as commercial use. Actually is the most complete alternative for Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor, graphics editor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database tool.

Go to OpenOffice.org website

Bittorrent software4. Bittorrent

BitTorrent was the first free software which allowed users to share “Torrent-files”. It remains a high appreciated p2p application due to its fast and easy downloading, uploading and sharing.

Go to Bittorrent website

VLC software5. VLC mediaplayer

It’s almost impossible never to have come across this problem – sometimes you just can’t play some media files like video or music or something (like colors or sounds) is not working properly. That’s because Windows Media Player doesn’t recognize all media codecs. VLC mediaplayer supports allmost all audio and video codecs.

Go to VLC website

6. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.1

AVG Free offers users the bare necessities such as a real-time shield to prevent infections, anti-virus and anti-malware within one engine, and a link scanner for Web surfing with care.

Go to grisoft.com

Picasa software7. Picasa

Picasa is the free foto manager software courtesy of Google Inc. The program allows you to handle basic photo editing and organizing functions such as red eye reduction, resizing or turning a picture.

Go to Picasa website

7.ICQ 6

ICQ 6 provides a complete suite of digital and mobile communication tools available today, all wrapped up perfectly in a single message window.

Go here to download ICQ 6

SiteAdvisor software8. SiteAdvisor

SiteAdvisor is the best security application after antivirus and firewall software. SiteAdvisor displays colored icons (red, yellow or green) next to the search results of the Google, Microsoft Live or Yahoo search engine depending on how safe is a site to visit. A red mark indicates an unsafe website.

Go to SiteAdvisor website

9. WinZip

WinZip is really a veteran tool whose utility remains constant. You can use it to quickly and easily compress and decompress files, folders, and entire folder trees to save storage space and decrease e-mail-transmission time, as well as encrypt and decrypt your confidential documents.

Go to Winzip website

10. WinRar

WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager. WinRAR offers a wide range of features among which we mention solid general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, support for long filenames, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), restore affected archives, authenticity checking, embedded file comments, and encryption.

Go to Winrar website

The list we presented here was put together after our team studied what were lately the most looked for free software. What you have here includes the most user friendly and useful freeware and open source software. The list will be extended in a short while.

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NTT Communications: Uploads Will Be Limited to 30GB per Day

June 26, 2008 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Facing so many critics (and possible lawsuits) with regard to the way they control traffic over the Internet, ISPs have resorted to another method of interfering with peer-to-peer traffic, namely, data caps.

Following in the footsteps of Time Warner, the notorious Comcast seems to be working on consumption-based billing strategy. The offer comes in packages that range from $29.95 p/month for a 768kbps connection and a 5GB monthly cap to $54.90 p/month for a 15mbps connection and a 40GB cap according to Zeropaid. Customers will pay an extra $1 for each GB that exceeds their limit.

Even more determined seems to be NTT Communications, one of the main ISPs in Japan largest ISPs which plans to restrict uploads to 30GB from August 1st. It will allow downloads to be unlimited. If you think that an XVID film takes up an average of 700MB it results in a maximum upload of about 42 films per day on p2p sites!

Japan initiated a plan to install fiber optic network connections that enable NTT and other ISPs to provide DL and UL speeds at an incredible 100Mbps for which they charge only $46 USD per month.

This new data cap policy from NTT is clearly comes to meet the boldness of the file-sharers to really use purchased bandwidth; however having connection speeds reaching 100Mbps (!) things do tend to appear different.

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