Deconstructing Code

University's software kicks off downloaders

University's software kicks off downloaders
ICARUS, or Integrated Control Application for Restricting User Services scans the network to ensure students are not pulling down music or video using peer-to-peer software. For a first violation, transgressors lose Internet access for 30 minutes and must watch a 10-minute interactive Web program on copyright law. A second violation bars students from the Internet for five days.

Posted by rshah on November 24, 2003| Comments (0)

BigChampagne is Watching You

BigChampagne is Watching You
In fact, they're tracking every download and selling the data to the music industry. How one company is turning file-sharing networks into the world's biggest focus group.

Posted by rshah on September 17, 2003| Comments (0)

File-Sharing Program Slips Out of AOL Offices

File-Sharing Program Slips Out of AOL Offices
AOL Time Warner is trying to stop the spread of new software released by its Nullsoft division, whose founder and lead programmer, Justin Frankel, is known for leaking his work onto the Internet and causing headaches for his employer.

Posted by rshah on June 02, 2003| Comments (0)

File swapping shifts up a gear

File swapping shifts up a gear
A new generation of peer-to-peer tools is finding its groove on the Internet, spelling tougher times ahead for movie studios' attempts to quell online piracy.

Posted by rshah on May 27, 2003| Comments (0)

Chat Network Nixes File Sharing

Chat Network Nixes File Sharing
DALnet, one of the largest Internet relay chat networks and a forefather of Napster and Kazaa, announced it would ban channels whose primary purpose is to distribute files beginning March 1.

Posted by rshah on February 04, 2003| Comments (0)

ISP download caps to slow swapping?

ISP download caps to slow swapping?
High-speed Internet service providers are considering adopting new pricing plans that if widely adopted could take a bite out of file swapping.

Posted by rshah on December 05, 2002| Comments (0)

Music industry swamps swap networks with phony files

Music industry swamps swap networks with phony files
Sources at three major labels admit they're deluging popular services like Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster with thousands of decoy music files that look identical to a sought-after song, but are filled with long minutes of silence -- or 30-second loops of a song's chorus.

Posted by rshah on November 13, 2002| Comments (0)

Music Industry in Global Fight on Web Copies

Music Industry in Global Fight on Web Copies
Having vanquished the music swapping service Napster in court, the entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing its major successor, KaZaA: geography. Sharman Networks, the distributor of the program, is incorporated in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from Australia. Its computer servers are in Denmark and the source code for its software was last seen in Estonia.

Posted by rshah on October 07, 2002| Comments (0)

Another file-swapping site to fall silent

Another file-swapping site to fall silent
An Illinois federal judge said Wednesday that he would order the Madster file-trading system, formerly known as Aimster, to halt song-swapping in the next few days.

Posted by rshah on September 12, 2002| Comments (0)

Click Here! A New Tactic in the Download War

Click Here! A New Tactic in the Download War
Record labels are reluctant to discuss spoofing, but their trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, has called it a legitimate way to combat piracy. And at least one company acknowledges that it has been hired to distribute spoofs, although it won't say by whom.

Posted by rshah on September 11, 2002| Comments (0)

Using deceptive MP3 titles

Using deceptive MP3 titles
Are the fake MP3s popping up on file-sharing networks part of the recording industry's war on piracy, or just the latest in music marketing?

Posted by rshah on June 28, 2002| Comments (0)

Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing

Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing
A legal fight that has pitted file-swapping software companies Kazaa BV and StreamCast Networks against big record labels and movie studios is collapsing as the small companies run out of funds.

Posted by rshah on May 23, 2002| Comments (0)

New Internet file-sharing system Altnet designed to give artists greater control

New Internet file-sharing system Altnet designed to give artists greater control
The Altnet file-sharing system launches Monday to give MaddWest and other artists a greater role in the otherwise free-for-all world of peer-to-peer networking. Users could trade music, video and other files among themselves just as they do with KaZaA, LimeWire and others. But with Alnet, songs will be coded with digital rights management technology so artists can limit distribution, or even collect fees before a song will play.

Posted by rshah on May 21, 2002| Comments (0)

The brains behind Kazaa

The brains behind Kazaa
Hemming, 35, is CEO of Sharman Networks. In late January, her little-known company bought the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD), a popular post-Napster file-swapping program that is used by tens of millions of people worldwide. Even by the ordinarily eventful standards of the peer-to-peer world, the months since have been punctuated by controversy

Posted by rshah on April 24, 2002| Comments (0)

Music Services Aren't Napster, but the Industry Still Cries Foul

Music Services Aren't Napster, but the Industry Still Cries Foul
The record industry's legal victory over Napster last year has neither stopped the trading of free music online nor halted a slide in music sales.

Posted by rshah on April 17, 2002| Comments (0)

Stealth P2P network hides inside Kazaa

Stealth P2P network hides inside Kazaa
A California company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn on" people's PCs, welding them into a new network of its own.

Posted by rshah on April 02, 2002| Comments (0)

Kazaa Gets the Green Light

Kazaa Gets the Green Light
In a setback for efforts to halt copyright abuse, a Dutch appeals court on Thursday told an Internet software company it could distribute a software program that is designed to let users share music and films on the Internet.

Posted by rshah on March 31, 2002| Comments (0)

Schools declare file-swapping truce

Schools declare file-swapping truce
After an initial shock, U.S. universities are learning to live with file swapping among students on campus, despite legal risks and the heavy demands such activities place on computer networks.

Posted by rshah on March 14, 2002| Comments (0)

Shazaam! Kazaa Shuts Down

Shazaam! Kazaa Shuts Down
Niklas Zennstrom is the next Shawn Fanning of peer-to-peer file sharing. Like Fanning and the Napster saga that dragged on for all of last year, the Dutch businessman on Thursday stopped distribution of the popular Kazaa file-trading application while he contends with copyright infringement lawsuits. 31."

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2002| Comments (0)

Future Boy: Bill Joy's New Passion: Industrial-Strength P2P

Future Boy: Bill Joy's New Passion: Industrial-Strength P2P
So what, exactly, is Jxta? It could be the equivalent of Microsoft's Windows for the world of peer-to-peer computing. Jxta provides ground rules that all peer-to-peer networks and applications can adhere to. And it's an open-source system, meaning that it's free and anyone can add to it or improve upon it. Sun is broadly defining a "peer" as any computing device connected to a network, from a cell phone to a supercomputer.

Posted by rshah on December 10, 2001| Comments (0)

NetPD Besieges Colleges With Notices About Copyright Violations

NetPD Besieges Colleges With Notices About Copyright Violations
Ms. Klimanis was caught by NetPD, a London-based company that has begun using sophisticated technology to sniff out people who share copyrighted files and to send out letters of complaint to university and other officials, asking them to take file sharers off their networks.

Posted by rshah on December 01, 2001| Comments (0)

EMI Has No Fears of Peers

EMI Has No Fears of Peers
That continued growth in popularity of peer-to-peer technology has prompted EMI Recorded Music to offer a limited selection of videos from its Priority Records label through the Gnutella network. This marks the second initiative for EMI, which promoted the new Radiohead album though the Aimster and Angry Coffee file-trading networks.

Posted by rshah on November 06, 2001| Comments (0)

File Trading Instantly Is Easier

File Trading Instantly Is Easier
Instant-messaging services that allow users to trade music, movie and television files over the Internet appear to be safe from the legal woes that have plagued other digital music and movie companies. Microsoft, America Online and Yahoo now have added file-sharing enhancements to their instant-messenger applications that allow users to swap any digital files over centralized networks.

Posted by rshah on November 03, 2001| Comments (0)

Peer-to-Peer for Academia

Peer-to-Peer for Academia
Internet2 features the use of high-bandwidth media such as the videoconference through which this meeting was held. Several members organized a P2P session to build interest in the potential efficiency and new applications offered by P2P. Many in the academic community, however, still associate the term P2P with file sharing and the problems universities have had with bandwidth exhaustion and legal copyright challenge.

Posted by rshah on October 31, 2001| Comments (0)

University obstructs all file-sharing programs

University obstructs all file-sharing programs
Free music will no longer be heard echoing through the rooms of residence halls since the university implemented a program to block all music sharing programs, including Napster, Imesh and Hotline. The program, called Packeteer, was implemented in late September after the university received several complaints from the Sony corporation because students were illegally downloading the new Michael Jackson song, "You Rock My World."

Posted by rshah on October 24, 2001| Comments (0)

Another method to slow file sharing

Another method to slow file sharing
As described by sources at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), one method uses software to masquerade as a file-swapper online. Once the software has found a computer offering a certain song, it attempts to block other potential traders from downloading the song.

Posted by rshah on October 16, 2001| Comments (0)

Suit targets biggest post-Napster network

Suit targets biggest post-Napster network
Adding a new challenge to their list of legal attacks, the record industry and Hollywood studios have joined forces to sue Music City, Kazaa and Grokster, which together form one of the most popular file-trading networks to spring up in Napster's wake.

Posted by rshah on October 03, 2001| Comments (0)

Rocky financial road awaits file swappers

Rocky financial road awaits file swappers
Droves of Napster clones are proving that it's still cheap and easy to create file-swapping services under the nose of the entertainment industry--but such ventures promise mostly high risks and little pay for the people behind them.

Posted by rshah on September 25, 2001| Comments (0)

University Blames Swamped Network On Swapped Videos

University Blames Swamped Network On Swapped Videos
A little more than a year ago, universities ranging from Yale to the University of Indiana, from the University of Chicago to the University of Southern California all reported huge problems with clogged computer networks. And all blamed Napster. Today, it's deja vu all over again.

Posted by rshah on September 11, 2001| Comments (0)

Napster Eclipsed by Newcomers

Napster Eclipsed by Newcomers
Months after shutting down its file-trading service, Napster has finally been displaced by four new applications that allow users to trade music, movies and software, a new study concludes. Four new file-sharing systems -- FastTrack, Audiogalaxy, iMesh and Gnutella -- were used to download 3.05 billion files during August, according to research firm Webnoize. That's more copyrighted material than was ever shared using Napster.

Posted by rshah on September 10, 2001| Comments (0)

Campus Music Trades Continue

Campus Music Trades Continue
College students intent on sharing music and movie files over the Internet are in for a surprise when they return to school -- they'll have fewer restrictions on their swapping.

Posted by rshah on August 27, 2001| Comments (0)

Legal Issues for P2P Developers

Legal Issues for P2P Developers
As a result, if you are interested in peer-to-peer file sharing, whether as a developer, investor, or provider of ancillary services (such as search services or security), it's time to bone up on some copyright law basics.

Posted by rshah on August 13, 2001| Comments (0)

Legal Issues in P2P for Users

Posted by rshah on August 13, 2001| Comments (0)

File-trading pressure mounts on ISPs

File-trading pressure mounts on ISPs
Record companies have joined the movie industry in trying to root out post-Napster file trading, putting new pressure on ISPs to clamp down on subscribers' actions.

Posted by rshah on July 25, 2001| Comments (0)

Hotline

Hotline
Before Napster: It was invented by a teenager. It's simple to use. And it can turn anyone's computer into a server of legal or illegal files.

Posted by rshah on July 23, 2001| Comments (0)

Looking for the next Napster

Looking for the next Napster
As Napster collapses slowly into a musical black hole, millions of people who once searched painlessly for free music on the Web are hunting for the next online file-swapping utopia.

Posted by rshah on July 06, 2001| Comments (0)

Networks promise unfettered file swapping

Networks promise unfettered file swapping
While the first generation of file-trading technologies fights over Napster's leavings, more radical Net programmers are still committed to building a wholly anonymous, virtually untraceable way of communicating and trading files online. Chief among these is Freenet, an open-source project viewed by many as the ultimate inheritor to Napster's original promise of free online file swapping.

Posted by rshah on June 19, 2001| Comments (0)

RealNetworks unveils Napster-like service

RealNetworks unveils Napster-like service
RealNetworks MusicNet subscription service with features that resemble Napster's file-swapping

Posted by rshah on May 18, 2001| Comments (0)

Spyware

Spyware
To locate revenues from their free services, companies that create popular programs, including BearShare, Audio Galaxy Satellite and iMesh, are adding outside pieces of software dubbed "adware," or "spyware" by their critics, these software programs run in the background even when the original file-swapping software isn't operating, popping up advertisements while people surf online, and sometimes quietly uploading information about a Web surfer's habits.

Posted by rshah on May 15, 2001| Comments (0)

Peer-to-Peer Search Engine Wants You To Help Grub

Peer-to-Peer Search Engine Wants You To Help Grub
Grub.org has finally finished writing their internet crawler. For those of you who don't know, grub is a distributed internet crawler that is indexing the internet and working towards an almost realtime index of all the pages combined with a search engine. Think about it, a search with no dead links and no out-of-date pages!

Posted by rshah on May 14, 2001| Comments (0)

File traders pick up sidekick

File traders pick up sidekick
A new tool piggybacking on popular file-sharing services such as Napster aims to help music fans ignore bogus files by letting them rate and review downloads. The software, being tested by FileFreedom.com, addresses one of the biggest problems apart from filters for people using file-sharing services: faulty or poor-quality files. It lets people avoid such files by reading reviews or ratings for downloads such as they might for a book or CD bought at Amazon.com.

Posted by rshah on May 04, 2001| Comments (0)

Infoanarchy

Infoanarchy
a site devoted to the latest in P2P or file sharing

Posted by rshah on April 05, 2001| Comments (0)

China cracks down on file-swapping sites

China cracks down on file-swapping sites
Chinese officials told Netease.com and other Web sites that let people download copyrighted music to start paying royalties or end such services.

Posted by rshah on March 27, 2001| Comments (0)

Who is spying on your downloads?

Who is spying on your downloads?
The recording industry is watching you. Or so the most recent media reports would have you believe. As the Napster wars keep escalating, the recording industry is redoubling its efforts in the hunt for new and improved ways to keep its music out of your shared databases. The newest tactic is surveillance.

Posted by rshah on March 27, 2001| Comments (0)

Emusic Loves Napster's Sad Song

Emusic Loves Napster's Sad Song
The cash-strapped independent digital music retailer Emusic.com is hoping its fortunes will improve by joining the recording industry's legal crusade against Napster.

Posted by rshah on March 08, 2001| Comments (0)

P2P Will Lead To Higher ISP Charges?

P2P Will Lead To Higher ISP Charges?
This Interactive Week article suggests ISPs' business models are broken, to the extent they may raise their monthly rates, or at least offer two-tier plans that will charge some users more. If true, ISPs might be seeing cost increases from two directions: more dialup ports (because users are staying on longer, so peak usage increases), and fatter pipes to their upstream or peer ISPs.

Posted by rshah on February 28, 2001| Comments (0)

Other young file-swapping services

Other young file-swapping services
are struggling to determine whether they have a place in the Net's future

Posted by rshah on February 14, 2001| Comments (0)

In Defense of the Free Ride

In Defense of the Free Ride
How the Best Price for Napster Downloads Might Actually Be Free

Posted by rshah on February 09, 2001| Comments (0)

The Napster parasites

The Napster parasites
Online marketers are snooping around in your hard drive, taking notes on every MP3 file you download.

Posted by rshah on February 09, 2001| Comments (0)

File swapping for wireless devices?

File swapping for wireless devices?
Endeavors Technology announced Friday it has successfully tested its custom-built file-swapping software on a wireless, Web-enabled device.

Posted by rshah on January 23, 2001| Comments (0)

Big Music Fights Back

Big Music Fights Back
Prodded into action by Napster and other online upstarts, the Big Five music labels are finally muscling in on digital distribution. Here's how they rank.

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2001| Comments (0)

RIAA FORMS ONLINE ROYALTY PROGRAM

RIAA FORMS ONLINE ROYALTY PROGRAM
The RIAA has launched project SoundExchange to collect royalties for streamed music online. The group will be responsible for collecting royalties from Internet broadcasters and distributing them directly to the music artists. Critics, however, are concerned that SoundExchange will give the RIAA too much control over royalty payments for webcasting.

Posted by rshah on November 29, 2000| Comments (0)

All-You-Can-Play Buffet

All-You-Can-Play Buffet
Despite a history of failed online subscription services, some Web companies think rich content and killer services will entice consumers to pay upfront.

Posted by rshah on November 21, 2000| Comments (0)

Intro to P2P from Wired

Posted by rshah on November 16, 2000| Comments (0)

Scour.com to end file-swapping service

Scour.com to end file-swapping service
Online file-sharing company Scour.com said Tuesday it will shut down its exchange service within two days in an effort to resolve pending litigation and expedite the sale of its assets in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Posted by rshah on November 15, 2000| Comments (0)

USC bucks growing MP3 ban

USC bucks growing MP3 ban
See also ZDNET

Posted by rshah on November 14, 2000| Comments (0)

Bandwidth may dash hopes of a peer-to-peer utopia

Bandwidth may dash hopes of a peer-to-peer utopia
The technological movement behind today's most bitter digital music controversies is often cast as the closest thing to online socialism since the Internet became a mainstream medium.

Posted by rshah on November 03, 2000| Comments (0)

Rumor

Rumor
A p2p program that helps to spread the updates to virus protections programs by having each client on an intranet act as p2p node, reducing the load on servers and speeding the distrubtion of the update, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on October 24, 2000| Comments (0)

Peer to peer pressure

Peer to peer pressure
How content management companies are stepping up to protect data

Posted by rshah on September 13, 2000| Comments (0)

Scour, Even a good business plan doesn't help

Posted by rshah on September 08, 2000| Comments (0)

Pew study finds 13 million freeload music on the Internet

Posted by rshah on August 23, 2000| Comments (0)

CuteMX pulled

CuteMX pulled
A filesharing program was pulled by after prelimary ruling on Napster

Posted by rshah on July 30, 2000| Comments (0)