The Future of Online File Sharing

One of the biggest stories in the online world so far in 2012 has concerned the shutdown of Megaupload, the file sharing and online storage service. This popular website was founded by Kim Dotcom and was accused of fostering copyright piracy and closed very suddenly.

Image courtesy Egnyte.com

Megaupload worked around a simple concept: users could upload files and store them on the site's servers. These files could then be accessed by anyone registered to the service and subsequently downloaded. While this kind of free file sharing model allows for the exchange of ideas between professionals, it also opens up the way for copyright material to be accessed by users without the permission of the owners of the content. The site's closure does go a way to stop internet piracy, but the impact of the loss of Megaupload will be felt in many areas of the web, especially for those who legitimately used the service, for file backups.

Companies that offer or use cloud computing services will need to have a rethink their business model as 2012 progresses. Businesses will want to consider cloud computing services that operate differently to Megaupload to avoid unwanted legal implications.

Just how legitimate users view online storage services is set to change, too. The major concern for legitimate users, is that this case high lights how files stored online could easily be lost if something similar occurs again. Such users may reconsider whether they trust storing their files online.

Other websites are undertaking substantial changes to the way in which they operate in light of the case. Both Filesonic and Fileserve are examples of file sharing services that have altered how they work. Both of these services now require that a user be the original uploader in order to download any specific file, meaning that both websites are more about online storage than online file sharing going forward.

CNET Infringement Case Dropped

A major copyright infringement case against CBS Interactive, CNET’s publisher and owner of CNET’s Download.com site, has been dropped. The lawsuit originally filled back in May in Los Angeles by a handful of musicians and filmmaker Alkiviades David accused the company of illicitly profiting from piracy by distributing 220 million copies of LimeWire over the Download.com site since 2008.

According to previous reports the case had been on shaky grounds for months following U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer's request that the plaintiffs specify the content pirated on LimeWire. At the time the plaintiffs submitted just six copyrights as being infringed and could not directly link them to CNET, Download.com or CBS Interactive.

Wired.com has reported that David’s attorney, Adam Wolfson, has threatened to open further proceeding stating in his filing that the case would be re-filed to represent more plaintiffs and “many thousands of songs and other copyrighted works.” (.pdf)

It would appear as though Mr David and the other plaintiffs were barking up the wrong tree on this one. CNET might have helped distribute the already freely distributed LimeWire application. However the company didn't host files, nor did they advocate or facilitate the downloading of illegal or copyrighted content the way LimeWire had.

An Unofficial Version Of LimeWire Returns As 'LimeWire Pirate Edition'

Last month a court order injunction forced Lime Company, the parent company of the very popular P2P sharing application LimeWire, to shut down and halt any further development of the the LimeWire software. Not wanting to let the service slip quietly into the night "secret dev team" of programmers has resurrected the software and furthered it's development.

This "secret dev team" of unknown programmers has released a new version of the software to torrent websites. The software dubbed 'LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE)' is based off the last LimeWire 5.6 beta and comes with all the features of LimeWire PRO unlocked.

According to a posting on their website the folks at LimeWire are not endorsing the new software, in fact they sound none to happy that it has been released.

We have very recently become aware of applications on the internet purporting to use the LimeWire name, such as the LimeWire Pirate Edition. We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so. We further remind you that the unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works is illegal.

As we reported last month Lime Company had lost their years long battle against the RIAA and MPAA and had been forced under court-ordered injunction to disable the file-sharing and music-searching features of its P2P software. Years of costly battle had astronomical fines had finally taken its toll.

So Long LimeWire, RIAA Claims Another Victim

Today marks the official death of popular peer-to-peer music sharing service LimeWire, as the service has given up in its fight against the RIAA. The site joins Napster, Kazaa, and all the rest on the mantel as victims claimed by the RIAA's lawyers.

A visit to the LimeWire site shows a legal notice notifying users that the parent company, Lime Company, will abide by a court-ordered injunction and begin to disable the file-sharing and music-searching features of its P2P software. Years of legal battles and the prospects of paying astronomical fines finally did the service in.

A full response posted from LimeWire's CEO George Searle on the Lime Company website:

As of today, we are required to stop distribution and support of LimeWire’s P2P file-sharing service as a result of a court-ordered injunction.

Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events. We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders. However, at this time, we have no option but to cease further distribution and support of our software.

It’s a sad occasion for our team, and for you – the hundreds of millions of people who have used LimeWire to discover new things.

While we have enabled open sharing and discovery for the past decade, LimeWire is mostly the product of the people who used it. You made LimeWire. Thank you for letting us being part of that. Your support and enthusiasm has fueled everything that we do.

During this challenging time, we are excited about the future. The injunction applies only to the LimeWire product. Our company remains open for business.

We remain deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone – including artists, songwriters, publishers, labels, and of course music fans.

Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts are creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.

We’ll be sharing more details about our new service and look forward to bringing it to you in the future.

This is just one of the latest blows dealt to the file-sharing community. This is one of the first cases in which a company's software has been a major target and the first I know of in which a judge has order an injunction against the software used. For more details on the case you can view our previous coverage from back in May.

File-Sharing Dealt A Major Blow In LimeWire Infringement Case

Earlier this week a US District Court judge leaved a major blow against file-sharing when she found LimeWire and it's software makers liable for inducing copyright infringement and engaging in unfair competition.

The ongoing case, Arista Records LLC et al v. Lime Group et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 06-05936, was originally filed in August 2006 but it wasn't until earlier this week that U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood agreed with the record companies that LimeWire's parent Lime Wire LLC and its founder Mark Gorton were liable.

"The evidence demonstrates that Lime Wire optimized LimeWire's features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright, and that Lime Wire assisted users in committing infringement," Wood wrote in her 59-page ruling.

Wood has granted a summary judgment against LimeWire which could amount to millions of dollars. The RIAA along with their partners: Arista, Atlantic, BMG Music, Capital, Elektra, Interscope, LaFace, Motown, Priority, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin and Warner Brothers are the 13 record companies that sued Lime Group were seeking $150,000 per copyright violation, though the final damages in the lawsuit have not yet been determined. The lawsuit claimed at least 93 percent of LimeWire’s file sharing traffic was unauthorized copyright material. For a site that claims 50 million unique monthly users that could amount to a very hefty fine!

Judge Wood scheduled a June 1 hearing to determine how to proceed.

View the full summary (pdf) and more details via Wired.com and for further reading checkout Ars Technica "LimeWire sliced by RIAA, liable for massive infringement"

RapidShare Posts Rare Win For File-sharers

RapidShare has announced a rare victory for the file-sharing community. The site is reporting that a German court of appeals has overturned a previous courts ruling demanding that the service take more steps to control online infringement. According to the new ruling, because RapidShare does not make uploaded files publicly available (those who upload them can control access) the site can not be held liable for distribution and that running filename filters on all uploads would produce too many false positives.

Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare: "We are very happy about the judgment. The court has confirmed that RapidShare is not responsible for the contents of files uploaded by its users. The judgment shows that attempts to denounce our business model as illegal will not be successful in the long run. With its 1-click-filehosting model, RapidShare responds to legitimate interests of its users and will continue to do so in the future."

More reading:
NewTeeVee - RapidShare Wins in Court
Ars Technica - Court: RapidShare doesn't need to filter user uploads

Isohunt Becomes MPAA's Next Victim

Popular file-sharing search site isoHunt may be the next inline, behind sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay, to fall to legal actions brought forth by the MPAA.

isoHunt has been in a long standing legal battle, one that the MPAA has won on many fronts. A federal court sided last year with the MPAA, ruling that Isohunt was liable for secondary copyright infringement. Gary Fung, the 27-year-old Canadian who runs isoHunt, said he and the MPAA are now battling over how to comply with the March 23 injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles.

“It is axiomatic that the availability of free infringing copies of plaintiffs’ works through defendants’ websites irreparably undermines the growing legitimate market (.pdf) for consumers to purchase access to the same works,” Wilson wrote in support of his injunction. The judge added that “upwards of 95 percent of all dot-torrent files downloaded from defendants’ websites” return infringing material or works “at least highly likely to be infringing.”

Wilson ordered Fung to comply within his order within 14 days of the MPAA providing Fung a list of content to be removed giving the parties until April 12 to hammer out an agreement.

In order for Fung and isoHunt to comply with the judge's ruling the site would effectively have to investigate every single file and or link returned by the site's search engine to see whether it's legal or not. Unfortunately this type of hands on verification would be nearly impossible to implement. Therefore it looks like Fung will have little to no choice but to shutter the site for good.

“Filtering against keywords. It amounts to nothing less than taking down our search engine,” Fung said in a telephone interview with Wired.com. His position is that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requires Hollywood and the MPAA to provide links to infringed files to be removed, nit just a simple keyword filter.

Keyword searches, he said, could scoop up non-infringing works adding such keyword filtering is nearly impossible to implement if it's to have any sort of precision, nor can it avoid conflict with fair use cases, free commerce, or extra-territorial law.

isoHunt is not the only site affected by the judge’s ruling. Torrent sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis may to be affected.

Read More:
ARS Technica - IsoHunt told to pull .torrent files offline, likely to close
Wired.com - Isohunt Ordered to Remove Infringing Content

Mininova Hit With Court Order To Remove Copyrighted Content

Popular torrent sharing site Mininova has been stuck a blow today when a Dutch court ordered the site to remove all links to copyrighted content.

Today's decision was handed down by the Utrecht District Court in regards to a lawsuit against Mininova by Stichting Brein, a Dutch copyright group. The court ordered Mininova to remove links to all copyrighted content from its site—or pay up to €5 million in penalties.

Much like The Pirate Bay case, Mininova and its operators weren't actually accused of copyright infringement. Since in a peer-to-peer system, the actual files being transferred reside on millions of users computers around the globe, the site itself could not be held for direct infringement. The direct infringement would be the responsibility of those users. The Netherlands however recognizes "contributory copyright infringement," which means that the site contributes the infringement by collecting and displaying links for users to download. This was the charge in this case.

In a blog post Mininova has said it is considering an appeal to the Brein ruling. Erik Dubbelboer, co-founder of Mininova said, “We are obviously not satisfied with this ruling. The result of this ruling for Mininova is that we have to reevaluate our business operations. At this time, we cannot determine what this will actually entail or imply. We will have to examine the verdict thoroughly first. We are considering to appeal this judgment.”

My Opinion:
Should this case stand it would be the second major blow to torrent sites this year. The loss of The Pirate Bay trial and now the Mininova decision might mark the end of several major sites. Of course it won't kill off file sharing, in fact I think it will do little more than shut down a few sites or cause them to shift gears.

Despite the fact that its founders were hit with millions in fines The Pirate Bay hasn't closed, in fact it was sold off and remains up and running today. The site will undergo some changes and is trying to go legit, much like Napster did back in the day. But that had little impact on file-sharing itself. The medium is such that you can never really kill it off. You might cut off one or two sites and force some change but you can never totally kill it.

The Pirate Bay Trial Day Two

The trial against popular torrent site The Pirate Bay is in full swing with day two holding some interesting changes. The charges of production of copyrighted material have been dropped to focus solely on "making available".

Pirate's founders arrived in court on Monday amidst a huge spectacle which included the pirate bus, Pirate Bay supports totting mega phones and a flood of Tweeting from the court room. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström are all charged with facilitating illegal downloads of copyrighted material, charges which they plead not guilty to. That was day one of the long standing fight between The Pirate Bay and the Swedish government.

On day two prosecutor Hakan Roswall arrived in court and amended the original charges. According to the Swedish newspaper The Local Roswall asked the courts to dismiss "complicity in the production of copyrighted material" from the charges. The remaining charge against the four defendants is "complicity to make (copyrighted material) available."

Roswall has confirmed that he now plans to limit the charges to the production of the actual torrent file and not the resultant hard or soft copy. The new charges will be amended to read "complicity to make (copyrighted material) available".

Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies in the case, said the change would simplify the charges against The Pirate Bay.

“It’s a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. In fact it simplifies the prosecutor’s case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works,” he said in a statement.

For more coverage on The Pirate Bay Trial checkout:

• TechCrunch: Half The Charges Against The Pirate Bay Dropped, But The Circus Ain’t Over Yet
• Ars Technica: Charges Dropped-"making available" now focus of Pirate Bay trial
• CNet News: Some Charges Dropped Against The Pirate Bay
• Torrent Freak: Follow The Pirate Bay Trial On Twitter

LimeWire 5 Adds Private Sharing

The LimeWire 5 Alpha was released earlier this week, improvements include a simpler interface and powerful private sharing feature. The new private sharing feature allows users to set up friends lists and can import contacts from sources like GMail, Jabber or LiveJournal. Once you and your group of friends have Limewire installed, users can decide which files they would like to share and with which friends. User can then access files between their collective group of friends privately.

Of course you can still use it just like the old traditional version as a bittorrent client, to share and download from strangers via the Gnutella P2P network, but the socially networked sharing feature adds another level which could become the main way many people use the program.

By restricting friends lists to people whom you know and trust rather than permitting the addition of large groups of strangers, the new LimeWire private sharing feature could make life harder for the RIAA and MPAA. Friends and family sharing files privately within a group of known individuals should be safe from prying eyes. Making the new feature a great way to share things like family photos, videos documents or just about any other types of files.

As mentioned LimeWire 5 is still in the Alpha stages but it was made public for Windows, Mac and Linux on Wednesday. LimeWire does make it very clear this is an Alpha and it might be buggy:

"This is the Alpha version of LimeWire 5. We encourage you to give it a try. However, because there are still a number of bugs, we do not recommend that you use the Alpha as your primary file-sharing program, to download the current stable version of LimeWire click here."

The program installs fairly easily so just about anyone in the family can use it. Grandma might need a little coaxing but its really not that bad. Once the installation unpacks and gets under way you get the standard LimeWire warning about copyrighted content and there are a few extra clicks here an there. Importing files from your library can be done either automatically or manually, most users would want to use the automatic feature, but oddly enough that feature didn't list any files for me so I had to manually add folders and files.

Sharing with friends is only a few clicks away. Clicking the "share with friends link" gives you the option of logging into GMail, Jabber or LiveJournal. Facebook contacts is apparently also in the works. Your friends show up in a list to the left and is sorted just like any other buddies list. Friends who are online appear in a chat window so you can ask them to download and install the LimeWire application. Once they do, you'll be able to decide which files to share with them and view the files they're sharing with you.

Personally I wanted the ability to add more friends that aren't using any of the above mentioned services. But it looks like the company intentionally left out that option. Correction Wired's Eliot Buskirk writes: "That way people really have to know those they're sharing with. Not only does this discourage RIAA snoops, but it should also result in a more personal experience when using the software, because people will actually have to know their friends."

For a more in depth view as well as a great setup guide head over to Wired.com.

AT&T Wireless Bans P2P Users

AT&T told an FCC official on Friday that it plans to ban wireless phone subscribers from using file-sharing applications and threatens to terminate service of anyone caught doing so.

"AT&T's terms of service for mobile wireless broadband customers prohibit all uses that may cause extreme network capacity issues, and explicitly identify P2P file sharing applications as such a use," said Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs.

AT&T made the statement last week in response to a question posed by FCC Republican Robert McDowell. McDowell asked AT&T about its policy on P2P traffic over its wireless network at an FCC forum in July.

AT&T tries to justify its actions of banning P2P applications stating "A small number of users of P2P file sharing applications served by a particular cell site could severely degrade the service quality enjoyed by all customers ... " Quinn said.

Quinn noted that AT&T has not terminated anyone because "the vast majority of our customers abide by their contractual commitments."

Source: Multichannel News

RIAA Walks Out On P2P Case

After two years the RIAA has voluntarily dismissed the case Warner v. Cassin, or more commonly know as the "making available" case.

Cassin was originally sued by the RIAA in April 2006 for copyright infringement. The complaint used by the RIAA at the time doesn't provide many details, but the exhibits attached to the filing show that MediaSentry detected a user with the handle omc@KaZaA sharing 406 files on KaZaA, including tracks from Madonna, Bob Seger, Dixie Chicks, and Sade.

Instead of filing an answer, Cassin's attorney filed a motion to dismiss in early 2007. One of the issues raised in the motion was the now-well-known argument that merely making a file available over a P2P network constitutes distribution. Indeed, Warner v. Cassin looked as though it would be one of the first cases where the issue would be argued in court.

Subsequent rulings against the RIAA may be behind their sudden change of heart. In April Geek-News.Net reported on federal court judge Judge Nancy Gertner dismissal of an RIAA subpoena. Judge Gertner stated that "Merely because the defendant has 'completed all the steps necessary for distribution' does not necessarily mean that a distribution has actually occurred." She also noted that " merely exposing music files to the Internet is not copyright infringement."

More on this story:
DailyTech - RIAA Suddenly Walks Away from Longstanding P2P Case
ARS Technica - RIAA suddenly walks away from old, contested P2P case

Fake Grand Theft Auto IV Torrents Contain Viruses

According to DriveSentry hundreds of users have been infected when trying to download Grand Theft Auto IV via P2P.

Hackers having been planting Trojans and other viruses in bogus game files, masking them as torrents that contain the files for GTA 4. The torrents are then being downloaded from P2P networks by those trying to illegally experience the game without purchasing it.

John Safa, chief technical officer of DriveSentry, said: "People are exploiting the popularity of GTA IV in a way which could bring mayhem to the internet."

Former hacker Safa highlighted that within two minutes of logging on to P2P network Limewire he found evidence of Trojan viruses disguised at GTA IV files.

We all know the huge risk involved in using P2P, and Geek-News.Net does not condone the action of illegally downloading files. But a few words of caution here:

Tread very carefully around these files, if you are going to download them do so from a good source. If you are hit with a link to a site that says it has a download chances are its a fake. Always check the main sites first. Invest in a good anti-virus Avast and AVG are great products that are free. Make sure you have the latest updates, viruses definitions are updated constantly and it does little to no good to use an outdated AV program.

TorrentSpy Lawyer Says "We Won't Pay $111 Million Court Order"

Just a day after a U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered TorrentSpy to pay $111 million, one of the largest fines in copyright history, Ira Rothken the lawyer for the torrent-tracking search engine said the $111 million judgment won't get paid.

Nevis-based Valence Media, the owner of TorrentSpy, filed for bankruptcy protection in England last week "and has no appreciable assets," attorney Ira Rothken said. "This was a Hollywood publicity stunt."

TorrentSpy and the Motion Picture Association of America have been in an ongoing legal battle since last year when the MPAA sued the search engine in Los Angeles federal court. The suit accused the site of facilitating copyright infringement of Hollywood movies. The MPAA won a default judgment last year after TorrentSpy refused to turn over internal documents, and on Wednesday a federal judge levied the $111 million penalty and ordered the site never to return online.

"It certainly is not a lesson for other search engines to look at what the rules are as they relate to dot-torrent files," Rothken said. "There was no analysis of the copyright."

Elizabeth Kaltman, an MPAA spokeswoman, said "We will pursue enforcement of the judgment."

The legality of torrent-tracking services has never been litigated on the merits in the United States, said Charles Baker, a Houston IP lawyer who defended Grokster and is Limewire's attorney in a case accusing the peer-to-peer software maker of facilitating copyright infringement.

The MPAA, he said, wants "other torrent owners and operators to look at the $111 million figure and say, 'I'm getting out of the business.'"

The TorrentSpy case, Baker said, "is another example of the studios eating these guys to death. They haven't tried the merits of the case."

While the MPAA may be claiming victory it isn't the clear cut win they'd really like to see. Since the case was a default judgment it doesn't set much precedence for future cases. Had the case actually been heard and an actual ruling been made then they'd have further grounds for more cases.

TorrentSpy Ordered To Pay $111 Million

U.S. District Judge Florence -Marie Cooper in Los Angeles, ruling in a case brought by the Motion Picture Association of America, said site operator Justin Bunnell and associates must pay the maximum $30,000 for "each of the 3,699 infringements shown."

From the Copyright Act:

"...the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just."

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said the judgment sends a strong message to copyright violators. “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

The TorrentSpy site shut down in March, after it lost its case against the MPAA, saying the legal climate was too hostile to continue. TorrentSpy did not lose on the merits, but defaulted after it failed to produce internal records.

TorrentSpy's lawyers filed a document in court Monday saying Valence Media and its owners Justin Bunnell and Wes Park had sought bankruptcy protection in a United Kingdom court and requesting that the judgment be stayed.

No U.S. case has squarely addressed the legalities of BitTorrent tracking services, although this case and the case against Isohunt founder Gary Fung, which is nearing a resolution, will likely have strong impacts on future rulings.

Are We Ready For A Nationwide P2P Monitoring System

If Senator Joe Biden, a democrat from Delaware, has his way we might have to be. His new plan for combating kiddie porn on the internet would seek to do just that.

It’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation,” said Biden, because all you have to do is look at the filenames. He cites a piece of software, known as “Operation Fairplay,” which currently sees use around the world and at regional Internet Crimes Against Children task forces in the U.S.

Operation Fairplay is a “comprehensive computer infrastructure” that gives law enforcement officers a view of the “big picture” of child pornography transfers around the country. Biden says Special Agent Flint Waters of the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office developed the program, and describes him as an expert in the field.

Based on Waters' statements to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, the system appears to work like this: Investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download the files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. They're able to use the Fairplay software to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. "It's not necessarily the suspect but it tells us the physical location to start," Waters said. (He didn't say whether any wiretaps were conducted to monitor ongoing file swapping.)

Fairplay is also capable of tracking the files themselves, monitoring where a file goes by its hashcode – often generated by the P2P client itself as a means of identifying identical files with different filenames.

According to Biden, the FBI’s “Innocent Images” unit only has 32 investigators working on the case – allowing the agency to tackle less than 2 percent of what he calls “known” cases of child pornography tracking on the internet. As a result, Biden is pushing the “Combating Child Exploitation Act,” which would authorize over $1 billion, spent over the next eight years, to hire an additional 250 agents for the child pornography unit and increase child pornography enforcement worldwide. “We can get our arms around it, the worst aspect of it,” said Biden, “if we provide the resources.”

Biden’s stance is unique in that he isn’t directly opposed to P2P as a whole, recognizing the technology’s use in legal situations. “Blaming this problem on peer-to-peer innovation,” he said, “is like blaming the interstate highway system when someone uses it to transport drugs.”

Senator Biden has pushed for passage of a bill known as the Combating Child Exploitation Act. It would authorize more than $1 billion over the next eight years to hire 250 new federal agents devoted to Internet crimes against children, provide additional funding to regional computer forensics labs, and give out more federal grants to the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The House of Representatives passed a companion bill in October.

More reading

• DailyTech


• CNet New

My thoughts

I'm not against tracking and catching internet predators, nor do I condone child porn, I think its relatively sick and twisted, however tracking someone down and accusing them of being involved in these activities based solely on a filename is something I won't agree on. My long standing opposition to any type of net censorship, tracking ect aside, focusing law enforcement time and resources to track someone just for having a file with a "sensitive" name really borders on civil infringements.

Judge Rules Against RIAA Subponea

Federal court judge Judge Nancy Gertner has dealt a blow to the Recording Industry Association of America, finding that merely exposing music files to the Internet is not copyright infringement.

"Merely because the defendant has 'completed all the steps necessary for distribution' does not necessarily mean that a distribution has actually occurred," wrote Gertner in her order. "As noted above, merely exposing music files to the Internet is not copyright infringement."

The judge did note that an "offer to distribute" is sufficient basis for a copyright infringement claim, which means that the RIAA can continue to make that allegation in its lawsuits. There is, however, a big difference between having evidence for a copyright infringement claim and showing by a preponderance of evidence that infringement actually took place.

More information

The full story from Ars Technica

The EFF's press release

PDF copy of judge Gertner's decision

Virgin Media Sends File-Sharers Mixed Messages

UK broadband provider Virgin Media says they'll be the first UK ISP to voluntarily track their users' pirated file-sharing transfers, and will terminate the accounts of repeat "three strike" offenders.

The UK broadband firm has agreed to a test project that will scan for illegal copies of music and other media across the service. The monitoring will follow a three-strike rule that will see users receive a letter for a first violation; a second violation will result in a temporary suspension of Internet access, while a third will force the customer to cancel their service altogether.

However in a complete 180 of tracking file-sharing Virgina announced it will offer an enhanced service which will provide customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the ISP, music industry or nay other snoops out there.

According to Reuters a Virgin spokesman said: “We’re delighted to be working with Highwinds to build out our newsgroup service. Our expanded access to newsgroups will give our customers a free news feed to newsgroups with exceptional retention, providing one of the best free newsgroup services in the UK.”

The British government has been pushing for legislation requiring ISPs to take action against users using their networks for illegal file-sharing. Virgin media would simply be taking a preemptive stance by teaming up with the UK's version of the RIAA, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

According to The Telegraph, "the BPI has teams of technicians to trace illegal music downloading to individual accounts. It will hand these account numbers over to Virgin Media, which will match them to names and addresses."

News like this saddening, it means a break down in the nature of the internet. While I don't condone nor do I participate in illegal file-sharing I whole heartedly disagree with content filtering, internet censorship or any other infringement on the free and open use of the web.

TorrentSpy Says Its Goodbyes

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Comcast Decides To Work With BitTorrent And P2P Users

In a shocking announcement, Comcast and BitTorrent have said they will partner to address issues of network management and architecture, as well as content distribution.

According to the Wall Street Journal Comcast and BitTorrent are negotiating to allow BitTorrent's peer-to-peer software to run more effectively on Comcast's network.

The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network, and allow Comcast to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer.

The announcement might come to as a major shock to many users, especially given Comcast's previous stance of blocking P2P content. Several lawsuits have been filled over the past few years over Comcast's alleged blocking of P2P applications and protocols.

The FCC has been looking into issues with Comcast and its content filtering practices. The ongoing inquiry looks into what constitutes "reasonable" network management practices--and, specifically, whether it should find fault with Comcast's special treatment of file-sharing traffic

"This deal is the direct result of public pressure -- and the threat of FCC action -- against Comcast," Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, said in his statement. "But with Comcast's history of broken promises and record of deception, we can't just take their word that the Internet is now in safe hands. The issue of net neutrality is bigger than Comcast and BitTorrent."

The agreement doesn't protect other P-to-P companies or other "innovative" applications and services, and it doesn't prevent other ISPs from blocking or slowing Internet traffic, Ammori said.