The Constable on October 24th, 2008
There’s a new article over at Ars Technica discussing how the legal use of P2P is growing at a faster rate than illegal use. Of course, the fact that illegal use is already so immense does make it quite easy for legal use to grow at a faster rate (a much lower baseline).
What’s the most interesting about the article is that P2P is seeing some very legitimate uses. As we’ve said before: if people pay attention to technology and distribution models that gain popularity as a way to steal content, they may start noticing that the technology isn’t always created solely to “steal” but instead as a better way to distribute (and may have help businesses better serve their customers, if they can figure out how to give customers what they want - and then build a business model around it).
The Constable on October 9th, 2008
Just a year after one of Romania’s most popular BitTorrent sites was raided by the police (and its admins arrested, then released), Torrentbits.ro is now being blocked by one of Romania’s largest ISPs, UPC.
The move mirrors other recent blocks by ISPs, including the now-famous block of The Pirate Bay by Italian ISPs - a block which was later forced to be removed at the behest of the Italian courts.
Kind of makes you rethink Net Neutrality, doesn’t it? While freedom on the net may sound like a great idea at first, perhaps a middle ground can be found where ISPs are at least allowed to block access to sites it deems to be potentially illegal.
Just a thought.
(Thanks to TorrentFreak for the heads-up)
The Constable on September 11th, 2008
AT&T’s just updated its terms of service for broadband customers, and starting next month, if you’re a heavy downloader, get ready to have your connection squeezed to a trickle. While they haven’t implemented usage caps a la Comcast (yet) they are using a similar traffic management technique starting on Oct. 18 that will slow down your whole…
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