p2p

FCC set to punish Comcast on P2P blocking

The Federal Communications Commission appears poised to take steps to punish Comcast for allegedly blocking access to file-sharing traffic.

Three of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of an item saying Comcast violated federal policy by dialing down peer-to-peer traffic over its network, according to FCC officials cited in The Wall Street Journal.

The news isn't much of a surprise, given that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has publicly criticized Comcast for the practice and recommended to the rest of the commissioners that they vote in favor of the decision.

"The commission has adopted a set of … Read more

First Look video: LimeWire for Mac

LimeWire has spent a long time at the top of our Most Popular list for good reason--it's easy to use and gets the results people want. Though there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding file sharing, there are plenty of legal files that you can get through LimeWire. Once downloaded, you can even preview audio files with LimeWire's included media player.

Check out this First Look with Jason Parker from Download.com to get the lowdown on this extremely popular app for Mac.

ISPs prepare for video revolution

Video may have killed the radio star, but it doesn't have to kill the Internet.

That is if Internet service providers can figure out how to keep up with the video-driven bandwidth demand on their networks. Peer-to-peer technology provider BitTorrent says it can help.

Video consumes more network resources than any other media distributed on the Web. Even poor-quality video from YouTube eats up more bandwidth than e-mail, music downloading, and voice over IP services. And when you throw full-length high-definition video into the mix, you're talking about even more bandwidth. Depending on the compression used, a single … Read more

MPAA helps land criminal conviction in P2P piracy case

The Motion Picture Association of America has helped convict an administrator for EliteTorrents.org, a peer-to-peer site, of felony copyright infringement and conspiracy, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday.

Daniel Dove, 26, of Clintwood, Va., was the first criminal conviction after jury trial for peer-to-peer copyright infringement and the eighth overall resulting from a federal crackdown called Operation D-Elite that targeted administrators and people who provided content that was distributed through the BitTorrents hub.

The case began in 2005, when federal agents raided and shut down the popular Web site that had distributed copyrighted music and movies, including Star … Read more

News.com Daily Podcast: After the Yahoo reorg, now what?

Yahoo announced its long-awaited reorganization Thursday. Jerry Yang and Sue Decker are still are in charge. But there's been a shift to three main teams aimed to improve products and speed decision-making inside a company slowed down by bureaucratic dawdling. CNET News.com's Editor in Chief Dan Farber assesses the changes

Will history repeat itself? Microsoft sure hopes so. The company's finally getting into the virtualization market, albeit relatively late. That doesn't faze senior management and News.com's Ina Fried explains why.

In the 1960s, Lawrence Roberts invented computer networking via data packets, which led … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 754: Molly.wood, here I come!

ICANN approves its plan to totally overhaul the Internet domain structure, but all we can do is make fun of the name "Winklevoss." Hee. "Winklevoss." Also today, Microsoft wants to shut off your gadgets from afar (or at least, their patent filing suggests that they do), the Samsung Instinct is totally the new iPhone, and torrent freaks think JJ Abrams' new show, Fringe, will be a hit. Phew! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 754

Judge Ends Facebooks Feud With ConnectU http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/judge-ends-facebooks-feud-with-connectu/

Facebook suspends app that permitted … Read more

Daily Debrief: Defusing a P2P crisis before it starts

The backlash against BitTorrent is only beginning. Mark Cuban and others have raised the idea of charging for upstream bandwidth usage. That's not a popular suggestion but when 5 percent of the people using the Internet are hogging up to 80 percent of its capacity because of P2P transfers, then there's going to be trouble in River City.

Happy to say that there may be a technology answer to the problem. Dr. Lawrence Roberts, who invented computing networking via data packets, gave a talk at the recently concluded Structure 08 conference. I chatted on today's Daily Debrief … Read more

Inventor of the Internet takes aim at BitTorrent

In the 1960s, Lawrence Roberts invented computer networking via data packets, which led directly to the development of ARPANet and the Internet . And now Roberts is trying to fix one of the Internet's biggest problems: network overload caused by peer-to-peer file transfers.

At Structure 08, he laid out the problem: 5 percent of the Net's users are running P2P transfers taking up 80 percent of its capacity, which is dramatically limiting the available bandwidth available to everyone else. Roberts' company, Anagran, is able to detect which "flows" are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 747: Get Firefox (if you can)

It's Firefox Download Day! In bummer news, Mozilla's site was down by at least 10:12 a.m. (about the time we started our show). So, that's a bad start, then. In other news, AT&T customers using phones other than iPhone will, indeed, have to pay full price for a new iPhone. That's just how the cell phone world works. And the blogosphere takes a legitimately outrageous situation and wildly exaggerates the outrageousness by repeating old information over and over. Sigh. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 747

Firefox Download Day To Start … Read more