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Posts with tag p2p

Comic Book Does the RIAA's Bidding

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 22nd 2008 at 4:57PM

Comic Does the RIAA's Bidding
Public Service Announcements in the medium of comics regarding the dangers of... well whatever the popular perils of the time are, have been hoisting well-intentioned gibberish on kids for generations. PSA comics have touched on everything from drugs, to smoking, to famine, and land mines.

The latest in a long heritage of comics urging you to do right comes without any super heroes or association with an established comic outlet like Marvel or DC. 'Justice Case Files' (really...) is an in-house effort from the National Center for State Courts, which we can only assume is a front for the RIAA, the most dastardly group of super villains to ever grace the pages of a comic book.

This disgrace to the label of propaganda bulges with misinformation so dense you'd have to bushwhack your way through its pages to find even a kernel of truth.

Issue one centers around Megan, a student with a file sharing addiction that puts her freedom and scholarship (seriously? jail time isn't motivation enough?) at risk. Megan is charged with Criminal Copyright Infringement by her fictional city government and faces charges at the state level that could net her a total of $25,000 in fines and 2 years in prison. Of course, in real life Criminal Copyright Infringement involves the selling of copyrighted materials, not peer-to-peer file sharing, and CCI is prosecuted by the federal government not local courts, but who's paying attention? Apparently, not the legal non-profit handing out this mumbo-jumbo.

You can download the entire comic in PDF form here, or for those with a taste for the ironic, you can search Limewire and BitTorrent. [From: Wired via: Boing Boing]
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Supreme Court Justice Breyer's Personal Data Compromised

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 10th 2008 at 8:14AM



You may think that that only average citizens are susceptible to security breaches that result in identity theft, but you'd be wrong. The rich, famous and powerful can also fall victim to the technological plagues of the 21st century.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer's name, birth date, and Social Security number were compromised when an employee of Wagner Resource Group decided to install LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file sharing program, on his PC. The default settings of the program resulted in the sharing of sensitive company data that included the names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of 2,000 of the firm's clients, which included Justice Breyer and a number of high-powered lawyers.

The breach went unnoticed for six months before a reader of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog found the information while searching LimeWire. Spokespeople for Justice Breyer have not acknowledged any negative consequences, though some of the company's other clients have reported fraudulent credit card charges and unexplainable cell phone bills.

The company has offered six months of free credit-report monitoring, but we're sure that is of little consolation to those whose personal data has been compromised. [Source: Washington Post]
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Comcast Cable Sued Over Bandwidth "Throttling"

by Tim Stevens, posted Nov 15th 2007 at 3:21PM

Comcast Sued Over Bandwidth ThrottlingJon Hart, a Californian who has filed a suit against Comcast, is claiming that not only is the company violating its own "Crazy Fast Speeds" advertising, but is breaking federal computer fraud laws.

When it was speculated that Comcast was doing shady things to limit and even block its subscribers' use of bandwidth-hungry applications, the company responded that the accusations were largely untrue. It then admitted to taking steps that were "temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users."

Hart's accusations stem from claims that Comcast is actively blocking peer-to-peer network traffic. Peer-to-peer traffic is most often used by file sharing applications like Kazaa or BitTorent for sharing music or videos. Comcast is allegedly sending fake signals to these applications that make them stop transmission of data, effectively shutting them down. It could be argued that such fake signals are not altogether different from a hacker taking control of your computer.

Beyond that, the suit mentions that nothing in Comcast's user agreement bars file sharing, and that their advertising claiming "unfettered access" to all of the Internet is misleading. For its part, Comcast has denied blocking peer-to-peer applications, yet also says:
We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications.
We'll be watching this story very closely going forward.

From Wired

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Apple's New Leopard Hits Illegal Download Sites

by Tim Stevens, posted Oct 26th 2007 at 9:01AM

Apple's Leopard Hits Illegal Download SitesAfter yesterday's (mostly) glowing reviews , it's no surprise that Mac fanatics want to get their hands on Leopard, the new Apple operating system (OS), as quickly as possible. It's also no surprise that anyone who wants a new OS this badly isn't necessarily inclined to pay for it. So, enter the Bit Torrents of the world, which are sites that enable peer-to-peer sharing of (not infrequently illegal) files. Wired's Threat Level blog found the torrent sites were humming last night with copies of Apple's latest Mac release.

Leopard hits Apple Stores today, but pre-release review copies went out weeks ago to the media and other places. Unlike its Microsoft Vista OS counterparts, Apple doesn't use any copy protection or lengthy serial numbers or anything to protect its pre-releases. It relies on trust, and, it's plain to see, perhaps this trust is unfounded, since thousands of copies of Leopard are being downloaded illegally even as you read this.

It's speculated that the majority of these downloaders are just looking to get their instant fix and will eventually go out and buy a legal copy of Leopard, but we wouldn't be surprised if, as the Mac OS becomes ever so slightly more mainstream, Apple doesn't start adopting Microsoft-like copy protection schemes.

From Threat Level

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Comcast Admits It Crippled Internet Traffic

by Tim Stevens, posted Oct 24th 2007 at 11:17AM

Comcast Confirms Crippling P2P Internet Traffic0Earlier this week we reported on speculation that Comcast was blocking or at least seriously crippling certain types of Internet traffic. The content in question was peer-to-peer, or P2P, network traffic, the bandwidth-hogging type of data (read: movies, TV shows, and songs).

Tests run by AP reporters showed that file sharing applications either didn't work at all or were seriously slowed down when using Comcast Internet access. Comcast has now issued a response in which it fesses up to filtering the applications in question but also denies that they were actually blocked.

Senior VP of Comcast Online Services Mitch Bowling said that there is no blocking going on, and that any filtering in place was "temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users." In other words, they're trimming down the bandwidth hogs so that others get a share. That sounds fair enough, but there are better ways of doing that then disabling P2P traffic altogether. Any blocking, Mr. Bowling says, was "unintentional and due to a software bug that had been fixed." So, if the bug is already fixed, Comcast users should be good to go ... we hope.


From Engadget

















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Comcast Blocking Certain Types of Internet Traffic

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 22nd 2007 at 4:44PM

AP Confirms Comcast Blocking File Sharing Traffic
From our 'so much for Net Neutrality' department comes a story from the Associated Press, which assigned a reporter to see if there was any validity to recent accusations that Comcast, the cable TV and Internet provider, is throttling and/or blocking file-sharing on its networks.

The AP turned to the Bible, which is public domain and legal to share. The tests were run from two different PCs in the Philadelphia and San Francisco areas. The reporter found that two out of three times, the peer-to-peer BitTorrent transfer was blocked completely. The third time the transfer only started after a 10-minute delay.

Control tests were run on other providers, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, and no blockage or throttling was documented in those tests.

You can read more about exactly how Comcast blocked traffic on AP's more extensive story here, but suffice it to say that future blockage could be applied to more legit sites and services such as Joost, Skype, and online-video-rental-service Vudu.

This is exactly the sort of heavy handed tactic proponents of Net Neutrality have feared, and the widespread reporting may help bring the issue of Net Neutrality into the limelight.

From BetaNews and the AP

For further reading on Net Neutrality, visit these sites:


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File-Sharing Legislation Targets Colleges

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 24th 2007 at 5:28PM

New File-Sharing Legislation Targets Colleges

Senate majority leader Harry Reid is ruffling some feathers in higher education circles. He has proposed an amendment (PDF) to the Higher Education Act, which is up for reauthorization, that would place tougher standards on colleges for fighting illegal file sharing. The amendment would require that all colleges report their policies on illegal downloading, and how they are effectively implementing them.

The part that has universities most concerned is a requirement that they provide evidence to the Education department that they have a technology based system to prevent illegal file sharing at least in the development stages. Many experts question the effectiveness of such hardware or software based solutions for preventing file sharing. Universities also worry that such technology may prevent legitimate file sharing for educational purposes or of non-copyrighted material.

The measure would also call for the 25 colleges with the most copyright violation notices to be reported to the government. Many complain that this will unfairly single out larger colleges who will just by nature of scale receive more notices.

If you're bothered by Harry Reid's proposed amendment we suggest you write your senator and voice your opposition.

From Slashdot and Inside Higher Ed

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