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It's long been an open secret that many major telecommunications companies, including Internet service providers (ISPs) and cellular data providers, impose specific limits on the volume and type of bandwidth consumed by their customers.

"Open" in the sense that these companies almost universally reserve the right to impose such limits, and occasionally make public statements defending their right to do so. "Secret" because the companies rarely reveal their specific limits, and because it seems like these limits are constantly being rediscovered by people who ought to know better.

It reminds me of people who claim … Read more

The blogosphere is abuzz over an Associated Press investigative article this past Friday on the subject of Comcast's BitTorrent filtering. Briefly, there were a number of articles in early September which alleged that Comcast was using some fairly sneaky techniques to throttle BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast, of course, denied any such behavior. It took a month and a half, but both a mainstream media news organization as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tested and confirmed the previously reported claims. It turns out that Comcast is not only throttling BitTorrent, but Gnutella and, strangely, Lotus Notes … Read more

Peer-to-peer company BitTorrent is set to announce on Tuesday morning the availability of a new enterprise content delivery product, BitTorrent DNA. Designed for companies that use streaming video, large downloads or games over the Web, the launch of BitTorrent DNA marks yet another conscious move by the San Francisco-based software brand to move beyond its roots as the creator of file-sharing protocol that became nearly synonymous with digital piracy over the past few years.

BitTorrent described the new BitTorrent DNA product in a statement as "the ideal solution for publishers seeking ways to overcome the obstacles associated with centralized … Read more

If you use torrents frequently, then you'll remember December 7, 2006, as a day that will live on in infamy, a day that teh Interwebs broke in half--just a little. That was the day that BitTorrent, Bram Cohen's torrent progenitor, announced it had bought ?Torrent, the free-but-closed-source torrent client that showcased innovative features in a surprisingly lightweight app.

Now, two years since their last upgrade, BitTorrent has released its first version that combines ?Torrent code with its own open-source base, and ?Torrent has also come out with a minor-point upgrade. Confused? Read on.

… Read more

The battle for net neutrality might be in its infancy, and already we're seeing casualties. There have been murmurs that Comcast has been capping bandwidth usage on its all-you-can eat high-speed subscribers that have simply used more of their connection than Comcast is comfortable with, along with evidence the ISP has been monkeying with people's BitTorrent usage. Last week GameDaily BIZ got in touch with Charlie Douglas, a spokesperson for Comcast Corporation who confirmed that the company was indeed capping monthly downloads of its "excessive" users.

The actual ballpark figure Douglas gave GameDaily BIZ was "… Read more

NBC's recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of users of Apple iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC's content. Could this be the push that brings easy-to-use 'piracy' to the masses? This article discusses the issues, and then provides step-by-step instructions to setup a computer to automatically download any of hundreds of TV shows as soon as they are broadcast and put online.

With Apple's recent lovers's spat with NBC making the headlines, it seems like a good opportunity to examine the state of the online TV downloads, be they … Read more

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I'm a cybersecurity Ph.D. student and take classes in the Indiana University law school, but this in no way makes me a legal expert. CaveatlLector.

Within the last few weeks, there have been a number of reports by Comcast customers claiming that their BitTorrent downloads and uploads have been capped--or worse, blocked. TorrentFreak recently reported that Comcast, a major U.S. cable company, is using an application from Sandvine to throttle such connections.

Many ISPs routinely filter the traffic on their networks. Many forbid customers from running e-mail servers or Web servers, … Read more

Torrent Swapper mashes a perfectly reasonable BitTorrent client with the idea of a burgeoning community. The result?

Nobody's quite sure yet.

… Read more

Comcast on Tuesday denied rumors that the company is filtering BitTorrent traffic running over its network.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used to distribute large data files such as video. The protocol has been used widely throughout the Internet to distribute pirated movies. And sites that use the protocol have been targeted by the movie industry to stop the illegal distribution of copyrighted video.

Broadband providers have also not been big fans of BitTorrent because the use of the peer-to-peer protocol can clog networks with huge files. The blog TorrentFreak claims that several Internet Service Providers have been &… Read more