BT and TalkTalk Place Their Hopes in Appeal against Digital Piracy Decision

May 29, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

After failing in their joint attempt to challenge the Digital Economy Act (DEA), British ISPs BT and TalkTalk return with a statement that confirms their determination in continuing the fight against what are considered erroneous anti-piracy methods (as implemented by the DEA).

“Quite apart from the potential impact on their businesses, BT and TalkTalk believe the DEA could harm the basic rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens,” the two companies pointed out several times.

According to the statement made on Friday, the two ISPs plan to appeal against a High Court ruling in April that threw out their complaints against the Digital Economy Act almost entirely.

The Department for Media, Culture and Sport said it noted the two companies’ decision to apply to the Court of Appeal against the judicial review ruling.

On the other hand, copyright holders are more than happy with the law as it is – protective of them – and have the support of The Department for Media, Culture and Sport which recently said: “The Government remains confident that the ruling delivered by the High Court was the correct one and is continuing work to implement the Act accordingly.”

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File-Sharing Labeled Threat for Mobile Streaming Audio Sector

May 27, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Arguments are being brought lately to support the belief that streaming audio sector may be seriously affected by illegal file sharing on mobiles.

According to Daniel Ashdown, a research analyst at Juniper Research, due to mobile users currently sharing copyrighted material through their handsets, streaming audio suppliers will find it increasingly hard to sell their content.

“It is indicative of the fact that people do share content illegally on torrents and it certainly facilitates the illegal filesharing through the mobile network,” said Ashdown.

It’s probably a matter of time until copyright holders will start to complain about huge losses in this sector and launch an aggressive crusade against mobile file-sharers especially since researchers like Ashdown signal the phenomenon as a great threat that asks for a prompt, firm anti-piracy response.

Juniper Research has published a study recently showing that P2P filesharing has begun a slow migration to the mobile sector, owing a great deal to BitTorrent clients becoming available on Android Market.

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Firefox 5.0 Android Beta Brings “Do Not Track” Feature

May 27, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads 

The recent release of Mozilla’s Firefox 5.0 Android Beta has been welcomed by many mobile enthusiasts. The browser comes with lots of features focused especially on increasing speed and privacy for users.

From Mozilla’s blog:

“Firefox for Android is the first mobile Web browser to offer the Do Not Track privacy feature. Mozilla introduced Do Not Track to give users more control over the way their browsing behavior is tracked and used online. It enables users to tell websites if they prefer to opt-out of online behavioral tracking.”

One of the best things about this addition is that users can configure the Do Not Track feature with no effort; moreover, the options available in preferences resemble those on a Do Not Track-enabled desktop browser.

“The web on your phone should be the same web as on your desktop, so to provide this consistency we’ve put the exact same Do Not Track feature in both the desktop and mobile versions of Firefox.”

Additionally, Firefox 5.0 Android Beta speeds up page load for 3G network connections.

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Cloud Services Get RIAA’s Attention

May 27, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The recording industry has found its next target in its fight against piracy in cloud storage, even while the days of file sharing may be winding down.

RIAA’s appetite for new targets seems insatiable. The most recent name to come into its crosshair is the cloud-based computing service Box.net, about which we reported a few times here at P2PON. The service offers users storage space on its servers for files which include, of course, music and films.

As reported, RIAA has not actually filed a lawsuit against Box.net, but asked the company to remove infringing content from its cloud. Apparently, Box.net entered the trade group’s scope due to a user who violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, by uploading music before its official release.

Although Box.net keeps the identity of its users anonymous, it has assured the authorities of its collaboration.

“We take the confidentiality of our customers’ information very seriously, but just like all other businesses, we are legally required to comply with court orders,” Box.net said in a statement.”

“Our compliance will be limited to the information the court requires we produce.”

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Unlimited Twitter File Sharing from Fyles

May 26, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Fyels, the service we told you about in a recent post, and which managed to draw 80,000 registered users one month after its launch, has come up with a new feature. Twitter users are now offered unlimited storage space via personal drives, a feature the service wants to use to promote its own offering.

How it works

If you are a Twitter user you can use this address http://theirtwitterusername.fyels.com to claim your personal drive, then authenticate your accounts using Twitter’s OAuth implementation. As the service also offers embedded audio and video players for different media file types, sharing video footage through Twitter becomes quite an easy task.

“We do have monetization strategies in mind, but they are absolutely not being a key focus for us at this stage,” says Dominic Holland director of Omnissient, the company that developed Fyles.

It remains to be seen how long they can ‘ignore’ monetization plans (and we don’t want to think of other similar services that dropped their offerings rather quickly).

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