Hasta La Gadget!

Movie studios and record labels have always lamented how online piracy is destroying the industry and as we have seen in the past, these media giants have gone to rather extreme measures to punish individuals who have allegedly downloaded copyrighted material illegally. Interestingly it seems that despite their stance on the whole issue of piracy, it would seem as though some Hollywood studios might be guilty of pirating movies themselves. The folks at TorrentFreak are reporting that they are using BitTorrent monitor Scaneye to track down IP addresses they believe are associated with Hollywood studios.

Based on their results, they have found that IP addresses associated with Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Walt Disney were using BitTorrent in order to access copyrighted material illegally. For example they found that someone over at Paramount was downloading an illegal copy of The Hunger Games, while someone at Disney was caught downloading an episode of Downton Abbey. It’s rather ironic when you think about it – granted these are probably individuals working at these studios who were doing the downloading as opposed to some conspiracy theory, but you would think that these studios would have some sort of security measure in place to prevent the downloading of torrents, right?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Teases Its New Smart TV Bound For CES 2013 In Video, Google Testing “Quick View” On Mobile Search Results,

BitTorrent, the company responsible for developing the innovative technology that delivers gargantuan files across the Internet, is heading into a new direction. BitTorrent Executive Director for Marketing, Matt Mason, says that the company is planning to “align itself with the entertainment industry and legally distribute movies, music, and books online.” Apparently BitTorrent wants to prove that it can go beyond offering free downloads by generating more sales. So far, the company already has over 160 million users of its two software clients – BitTorrent and μTorrent. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: YouTube Auto-Captions Now Supports 6 European Languages, TED Talks reaches 1 billion views,

In a couple weeks, the Center for Copyright Information’s anti-piracy system will go into effect in the US. The CCI is composed of five major Internet providers, including Verizon, in conjunction with the MPAA and the RIAA. Back in October, we reported on a leaked AT&T memo that discussed how the provider would deal with copyright infringers. Now information has been revealed stating that Verizon will deal with the issue by throttling the speeds of repeat offenders.

During the New York Chapter of the Internet Society panel discussion, both Verizon and Time Warner discussed their plans for dealing with piracy. Verizon customers will receive an email notification when their account is flagged for copyright-violating activities. A total of two alerts will be issued.

Upon receiving a third flag, a popup will appear that forces the subscriber to read a notice and confirm that they acknowledge the copyright infringement. If the illegal activity continues, a punishment will be enacted for the 5th and 6th flags. The user’s Internet speeds will be severely throttled for a period of two or three days, at which point it will return to normal.

As for Time Warner, the company will likewise deliver notifications when the account is flagged for copyright violations. Rather than reduce speeds for repeat offenders, however, the users will be redirected to a landing page. No word was given on whether all Internet activity will be redirected, or only some, and how long the punishment will be in place for. According to CCI, the purpose of these punishments is to educate the public on the issue of piracy.

[via Torrent Freak]

Verizon to throttle repeat BitTorrent offenders is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When we last checked in on one of Sandvine’s traffic studies, Netflix had just edged past BitTorrent as the largest source of internet traffic in North America while YouTube was still a small-timer. A year has made quite the difference. Netflix is up to 28.8 percent in a new study, while YouTube has moved up to second place with 13.1 percent and demands even more than ordinary web requests. Rivals like Hulu don’t register in the top 10, and YouTube is by far the ruler of mobile with nearly 31 percent of smartphone traffic headed its way. Overall usage is moving up rapidly, no matter what kind of network the continent uses — the typical North American chews up 659MB per month when mobile and a hefty 51GB through a landline. There’s little reason to dispute worries of the impact on bandwidth-strained internet providers, although we suspect most would disagree with Sandvine on what’s to be done. The company naturally sees the study as a chance for business with carriers wanting to curb usage or charge extra through its tools; a generation that grew up with internet access, however, would likely see it as a better excuse to roll out more capacity for all those streaming videos.

Filed under: Networking, Internet, HD

Sandvine: Netflix up to 29 percent of North American internet traffic, YouTube is fast on the rise originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 04:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GigaOM  |  Sandvine  | Email this | Comments

A lot of people think that file sharers and other Bittorrent downloaders never pay for music or other forms of digital media. It’s an understandable stereotype, but according to a study, it’s not all true. It turns out that file sharers actually buy 30% more music than those who don’t download content illegally.

You’ve probably heard the gripe from multiple music labels about how piracy is translating to billions of dollars of lost revenue, citing that the more people who illegally download content, the less likely they are to buy the content. However, the American Assembly, which is a non-partisan public policy forum affiliated with Columbia University, published part of its upcoming Copy Culture Survey that sheds a little light on this “issue.”

The study focuses on the digital music collections of different users and how they obtained the music in their collection. The study found that not only do file sharers have larger music collections compared to others (predictably so), but file sharers also buy more music legally than those who don’t illegally download.

The explanation for this isn’t too tricky. A lot of file sharers use Bittorrent and P2P services as a way to sample music first and then decide if they want to buy a certain song or album. It’s a pretty solid system, and the study even says a lot of the music that users get for free simply come from friends through physical media as well — such as borrowing a CD and ripping the files to your computer.

[via TorrentFreak]

Study finds that file sharers buy more music than anyone else is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.