As of November 7, 2005, Grokster, the much-beleaguered file-sharing service, is no longer in operation. Grokster's Web site says:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon.

Grokster was targeted by the RIAA and the MPAA as one that promoted sharing of films and music that were illegally available on their network.

In Hong Kong, the BBC reports, Chan Nai-ming has been sentenced to three months jail time after pirating and sharing three movies using BitTorrent.

Chan's nickname is apparently "Big Crook." He is possibly the first individual to get jail time for this kind of file-sharing activity.

Happily, the article does point out that BitTorrent has other uses besides digital piracy.

Just announced: Acquisition 123.1, a Mac file search program, has just released a new version with BitTorrent built in.

I'm a fan of Acquisition. I just wonder when we'll see BitTorrent in iTunes itself.

Fortune Magazine's Oct. 31, 2005 issue includes an article on BitTorrent titled "BitTorrent: The Great Disrupter; Torrential Reign" in which writer Daniel Roth explores the paradox of a technology that permits pirating of Hollywood movies on a massive scale, but still wins the support of the entertainment industry.

Today there are roughly 1.7 million copies of Hollywood movies—typically the most popular ones—being downloaded at any one time using BitTorrent, a 12% jump from last year, according to online media measurement firm BigChampagne. Analyst Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that in 2004, the downloads cost Hollywood roughly $860 million, or 4% of box office receipts. In the same period the number of TV shows downloaded grew by 150%—about 70% of them snagged using BitTorrent.

Our first review appeared today on Duffbert's Random Musings. The review was written by Dummies book reviewer extraordinaire Thomas Duff. If you're thinking about reading a technical book, Thomas has probably written a review of it!

Here's part of what he said about BitTorrent for Dummies:

If you want to know how to make it [BitTorrent] part of your world, it's worth reading...

Go read the rest of Thomas' review!

When a book is ready to go, the author is sent 10 copies to give away, or roll around on, or whatever... Today my box of 10 arrived!

The book looks great, if I do say so myself. It's always a little nervewracking to open up a book, and there's a certain amount of disbelief that it could actually be real, too.

What a great way to finish a pretty rough week.

Brad Cohen was just selected as one of this year's TR35 -- top technology innovators under the age of 35.

Says the article:

They create their wonders in universities, startups, and large corporations. They gravitate to the most interesting and difficult scientific and engineering problems at hand, and arrive at solutions no one had imagined. They take on big issues.

Congrats, Bram! We knew y

If you have a number of BitTorrent files you want to seed, but you don't want to dedicate a computer to it, or you don't have a host that allows you to seed files, there's now an interesting third option.

The ADS NAS Drive Kit has a built-in BitTorrent client, and attaches to your local network in a snap.

The review says the BT client is glitchy, and in based on the overall review, I don't recommend this particular drive. But the idea of including an independent BT client in a network device -- that's a great

Oh My News has published an interesting translation of this Chinese interview with Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent's COO.

Here's the most interesting part of the Q&A, I think:

According to a study by CacheLogic, eDonkey is now roughly on par with BitTorrent in the United States, China, Japan and Britain. In your opinion, why could eDonkey be on par with BitTorrent and what actions will BitTorrent do next to keep exceeding other P2P tools?

BitTorrent is a web-publishing tool, increasingly used by content creators and rights owners. We are not a P2P network, and we are not developing file-sharing tools. eDonkey and the P2P networks can have the entire file-sharing market because we're not interested in it at all.

The first Amazon copy of the book has left the warehouse and is zipping (well, plodding through the rain) to us here at Hop Studios.

This also means that those of you who want to write an Amazon review of the book can jump in now.

Here's an interesting use for BitTorrent:

www.geotorrent.org

This is a site that shares huge (200 MB to 26 GB) topographical maps and map sets. For example, here's a 1.72 GB Landsat map of Europe.

 

 

 

Variety reports that things are looking better, legally speaking, for P2P networks.

The music industrial said is wasn't seeking any particular new legislation at a Senate hearing.

What does this mean for BitTorrent? Maybe they can take a slightly deeper breath -- and prepare for the next round of legal challenges...

From TUAW - the Unofficial Apple Weblog
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/05/19/reminder-azureus-runs-on-os-x-too/

Posted May 19, 2005, 11:00 AM ET by C.K. Sample, III
Filed under: Tips and tricks, Software
azureus

Hackaday today discusses the twin evils of the RIAA and the MPAA, focusing on the way they are attempting to undermine P2P networks on the Internet by targeting tracker sites that host the .torrent files. The good news: there's something called distributed tracking that means you no longer have to depend on a tracker site to host your .torrent file, and Azureus supports the protocol. Also, java-based Azureus runs on Mac OS X.

MPAA Sues BitTorrent Trackers
December 14, 2004
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000737.html
[by Edward W. Felten, at 01:45 PM]

The MPAA has announced lawsuits against the operators of P2P index servers, such as BitTorrent trackers, according to a Wired News story by Xeni Jardin.

A BitTorrent tracker keeps track of who is downloading and/or uploading a particular file, and makes this information available to others who want to find the file. The suits will presumably allege that the person running the tracker knew that the people downloading the file were infringing, and knew that the tracker was facilitating those illegal downloads, and yet the person ran the tracker anyway.

P2P: The Secret's Out

By Jon Newton
www.TechNewsWorld.com
Part of the ECT News Network
02/15/05 5:00 AM PT

Unfortunately for Hollywood, BitTorrent isn't the only game in town. As far back as 2003, Rain Networks engineers in Brazil used Windows Media 9 software to transmit a 90-minute movie by satellite from Rain's central computer in São Paulo to cinemas across the country. And it only took 20 minutes.