Category Archives: p2p

Bittorrent throttling

Geeklawyer spotted this news story about Comcast throttling bittorrent traffic. Geeklawyer does, on occasion, ‘steal‘ films using bittorrent. Really, it’s not like anyone suffers (please, spare me the crap about ‘he would have bought it if it hadn’t been available on p2p’) and he certainly isn’t the only IP/IT lawyer to do so.While many would […]

The DRM dam is crumbling …

617 OpenRightsGroup-Squadron has rolled lots of bouncing anti-DRM bombs and it is definitely looking like cracks are developing. Record companies need to get to high ground.
Geeklawyer was interested to see yet another label talking about issuing DRM free music. Last time it was EMI that released DRM free music in April. Now Universal is looking […]

Music Industry: “Dude, we are, like, soooooo screwed :(”

Yes, gentle reader, get your hanky ready. You thought Geeklawyer brutally dumping Ruthie was a tearjerker? well that was trivial compared to the emotional pain of the music industry. It seems that some idiot carelessly broke their business model. Now it seems that they are strapped for cash. Cocaine is no longer available on-tap in […]

The world is saved: free music now available

Geeklawyer stripped and ran naked through the streets of his city in celebration when the BBC began broadcasting the news today that Universal was to make music available for free.

RIAA takes a pop at p2p developers

According to el-reg the RIAA is going after Limewire, the p2p company that provides a premium connection client to the Gnutella network to allow people to share files. That much was already know. Geeklawyer’s interest was piqued by the Register’s contention that a new feature of the RIAA’s complaint that distinguished it from previous litigation […]

Kazaa circles into the ground from 30,000 feet

Geeklawyer has a fair number of punters on the ‘wrong’ side (from the record industries perspective that is) of the p2p industry. The news that Kazaa eventually settled out of court for $100million was, on one analysis, a predictable form of its demise.

Private: Mouldy French Apples

Geeklawyer has said before that he is a conflicted Apple fanboy. The iPod and OSX-10 are sexy designer kit with great interfaces. OSX is Linux as it should be: full of non-geeky ‘just workingness’. But its hardware is always a tad expensive, significantly and deliberately so: Apple’s profit centre is bolts not bits. And it […]

filesharing politics

The Inquirer reports on Swedish filesharers starting a political party. Political action on IP policy is a generally good idea and certainly permission to copy one’s own paid-for music onto MP3 players is fair and reasonable. But really, “the pirate party”?! WTF. Or do the Swedish have a sense of humour?

RIAA at it again

The Register reports that Microsoft is having to pull out of talks with the RIAA who are unwilling to settle on a commercially realistic licensing rate. If there’s one thing the RIAA know how to do it is overcharge. Perhaps with all the ailing p2p file sharing companies and tripling revenues for legal services […]

p2p paranoia

techdirt was recently reporting that the RIAA were pretending that they had had an unqualified success in the Grokster case when sending intimidating cease an desist letters to other p2p applications providers. They are attempting to send a dishonest chill through the industry.