Tag: p2p
Napster closes as Rhapsody merger is completed
Napster, the digital music download service that rocked the industry and changed the way we consume tunes forever, has closed following the completion of a merger with Rhapsody. Though beginning life as an illegal P2P service, in the past few…
LimeWire get $105 million bill from record labels
The long-running court case between P2P file-sharing service LimeWire and a handful of record labels has concluded, resulting in a bill of $105 million worth of damages to be paid by LimeWire. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing…
File-sharing Brits come under fire from Ministry of Sound
UK dance music label Ministry of Sound have issued letters to thousands of UK based file-sharers, demanding compensation for copyright theft, or else have the accused face further legal action. As many as 2,000 people are thought to have been…
Pirate Bay to be given a lifeline through Swedish law loophole?
Pirate Bay, one of the world's largest and most controversial torrent/file-sharing websites could soon be given an unlikely lifeline through a loophole in Swedish law. The Pirate Party, a political group advocating file-sharing in Pirate Bay's native Sweden, are planning…
Illegal File-sharers spend more on music
The figures suggest that file-sharers "try-before-they-buy", and are happy to support bands and artists whose downloaded music they enjoy.
Conficker Watch: The worm awakens
The worm has turned. Conficker has awoken. It’s updating peer-to-peer and dropping in a mysterious load thought to be a keystroke logger. For the 3 to 12 million users thought to be infected, it would seem like a good time to stop using your bank accounts and start re-installing Windows.
The worm will contact sites like MySpace.com, MSN.com, eBay.com, CNN.com and AOL.com in order to check internet connectivity, drop the key logger.sys file behind a rootkit such that your anti-virus won’t be able to pick it up and then disappear with no further replication by 3rd May.
The .sys file will, of course, still be there and will still report back from the host computer to the rest of the botnet. All very pleasant stuff.
You can visit one of these two sites to see if your machine is infected.
(via CNET)
EU rejects 'three strikes' approach to filesharing
The EU has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a report that heavily criticises the ‘three-strikes’ law implemented in Frace that would kick filesharers off the internet after being caught downloading copyrighted content three times.
It’s been massively unpopular with everyone except the content industries, with ISPs in particular fighting against having to cut off their own customers. Greek MEP Stavros Lambrinidis fought back against the idea too, with his report being overwhelming voted in – 481 votes in favor, 25 against and 21 abstentions.
Whether or not this will force France to back down is yet to be seen. Sarkozy doesn’t have a great track record of obeying the EU parliament. Still, it should lessen the pressure on Irish ISPs who are being forced by their content industries to enact similar rules.
(via TorrentFreak)
Virgin's P2P music service scrapped amidst labels' anti-piracy concerns
A new legal peer-to-peer music sharing service due to be launched by Virgin Media within the next couple of months has been put on hold indefinitely due to last minute whining by a few well-known record labels, according to a report in The Register.
“Virgin Music Unlimited” would have allowed Virgin Media’s broadband subscribers to share music and keep tracks while the company aimed to make money from these P2P users and presumably pass some of that revenue back to the record labels…
Isle of Man gets free, legal, P2P downloads
Residents of the Isle of Man, take note. You may soon be able to download all the music you like, from wherever you want, but you’re going to have to pay a little extra on top of your broadband bill for it. The Manx government wants to enforce a blanket music consumption license, tied to broadband bills.
“At the end of the day, we are not going to stop piracy, so let’s embrace it,” says the remarkably sensible Inward Investment Minister, Ron Berry. Surprisingly, the BPI endorses the move as well, with head honcho Geoff Taylor saying: “If ISPs take the position advocated in the Isle of Man, we’d be in an enormously better position.”
95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal, says IFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, is basically an international version of the RIAA and BPI, who claim to act as a trade body for record labels, but seem to only exist in reality to head up the music industry’s anti-piracy campaign. True to that role, last night it released a statement claiming that 95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal.
However, there’s some bright news for the labels hidden in there too – download sales are up 25% on last year, and now make up a fifth of all recorded music sales. The IFPI reckons that it’s worth £2.5 billion.
