torrents

The Federal Communications Commission came down hard on cable operator Comcast when it said its network management practices were illegal. But what will the FCC's move mean for the rest of the industry and the ongoing debate over Net neutrality?

It's still too early to say exactly what the long-term affect will be. Policy wonks from the phone companies say the decision puts to rest any notion that Net neutrality legislation is needed, but Net neutrality proponents believe that a legal challenge from Comcast will necessitate the need for laws that make it clear the federal government has … Read more

This is truly pathetic. A couple weeks ago, L.A. rock band BuckCherry issued a press release (since removed) complaining that their latest single had been leaked on BitTorrent. But a little clever research by TorrentFreak revealed that the leaker had only uploaded one track--this one--to BitTorrent, and had the same IP address as someone who'd edited the band's Wikipedia entry. When TorrentFreak e-mailed the band's manager to ask his opinion, lo and behold, the IP address matched.

Leaking a track is a valid way of getting promotional buzz for a new album. But complaining about it … Read more

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.

"We need to protect consumers' access, said FCC Chairman Kevin … Read more

Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is drawing fire from economic conservatives over his plan to declare that Comcast violated the law when throttling BitTorrent last year.

The vote is expected at a FCC meeting (PDF) on Friday morning. It promises to be a landmark one: this would be the first time the commission has ruled on a Net neutrality violation. (An earlier one was settled without a formal ruling.)

Martin's intra-party backlash started on Wednesday with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that started with this uncomplimentary paragraph: "Bad personnel decisions have … Read more

Federal regulators are planning to meet on Friday and declare that Comcast violated Net neutrality principles when throttling BitTorrent traffic on its network. This would become the U.S. government's first Net neutrality-related ruling.

There's just one problem with the Federal Communications Commission's plans: They may not be quite, well, legal. In other words, the FCC may not actually have the authority to make its ruling stick.

In 2006, Congress rejected five different bills, backed by groups including Google, Amazon.com, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, that would have handed the FCC the power to police Net … Read more

TorrentSpy may be gone but its attorneys continue to allege in court that the motion picture industry engaged in a spying campaign against the company as well as others, including the Pirate Bay.

TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent search engine that was driven out of business last March as a result of fighting a copyright suit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is seeking another chance to argue that the MPAA wronged the company when it purchased information obtained from a hacker who had pilfered company e-mail.

A federal judge threw out TorrentSpy's hacker complaint last August, saying … Read more

Once upon a time, Mac users got the short end of the stick when it came to BitTorrent clients. Those days are gone, thankfully--and Transmission is a perfect example of that. This excellent open-source client is one of the very best choices for a BT client on the Mac, being both extremely lightweight (some users even manage to run the Ubuntu version on their cell phones) and fairly feature-packed.

Transmission's interface is easy to use--and easy on the eyes. The layout should be familiar, even to PC users, with torrent controls like stop and pause on the top, and … Read more

Formerly the feature-rich Azureus, Vuze takes Azureus' BitTorrent foundation and builds on top of it a network for video discovery and user-created video publishing tied together by social networking.

From XML torrent options to IP filters, firewall tests to UPnP plug-ins to baked-in social networking, Vuze isn't breaking new ground--the original BitTorrent client has gone this path, too--but it is doing it in an innovative and attractive way. When you install the program, you're faced with a Web 2.0-style interface from which you can get a general overview of your torrents and Vuze's latest media. Users … Read more

BitTorrent tracker Mininova has a cool and useful new feature that lets you download any file to your machine at home with just a click of a button from any remote machine. It works by using a new bookmarking option found next to the download link on any file in Mininova's directory. All that needs to be done on your part is to subscribe to a special RSS feed in your local BitTorrent application and it will automatically start downloading as long as you've got it running. You can also share this feed with others in case you … Read more