file-sharing

Record labels ask judge for ruling against Lime Wire

Updated at 3:00 p.m. PDT with comment from Lime Wire.

Thirteen record labels have asked a judge to issue a decision in a 2-year-old case against peer-to-peer software company Lime Wire for allegedly inducing copyright violations of music files.

The motion for summary judgment was filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The record labels, including Warner Bros. Records, Sony Records, and Virgin Records, are asking the judge for a decision because they claim Lime Wire has "promoted infringement," and has taken no steps to prevent illegal file … Read more

First Look video: LimeWire for Mac

LimeWire has spent a long time at the top of our Most Popular list for good reason--it's easy to use and gets the results people want. Though there is a certain amount of controversy surrounding file sharing, there are plenty of legal files that you can get through LimeWire. Once downloaded, you can even preview audio files with LimeWire's included media player.

Check out this First Look with Jason Parker from Download.com to get the lowdown on this extremely popular app for Mac.

Download BitTorrent files at home from wherever

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

Random Sampler: Being like Google, JBoss worth the wait, and more

So many good stories, so little time....Here are a few of the best posts today:

You might not be able to get Google-like profits, but at least you can treat your employees more like how Google treats its own employees. There's a good lesson in there.... Most of the music on the iPods of UK youth has been pilfered. Surprising? No. There are two interesting factoids in the data, however: "80% of those who admit to illegally file-sharing are prepared to engage with a legal file-sharing service, and place a considerable monetary value on it"; and The older people get, the more they pay for music. 55 percent of youth aged 14 to 17 illegally download music, jumping to 60 percent when they're aged 18 to 24, but dropping down to 39 percent when aged 25 and above. Does this mean that "old fogey" music is more likely to be monetized than Britney Spears?… Read more

Power Downloader e-mails large files

Summer is fast approaching, and Power Downloader is fielding lots of vacation-related questions. Kitty Kilobyte wants to know what's the best way to send her friends and family photos and video of her upcoming trip to South America. Pando for Windows and Mac is the way to go, says Power D.

Power then explains that with Pando installed, Kitty can drag and drop her large folder of images and WMVs into the Pando interface, which lets her send Power D, Francois Foto, and virtually anybody else in her address book a message with a link. When Power clicks that … Read more

British ISP, recording industry warn illegal downloaders

Virgin Media and the British Polyphonic Industry will work together to "educate" broadband customers on avoiding legal action while downloading music with peer-to-peer software, the organizations said Friday.

A joint release posted on the British Polyphonic Industry (BPI) Web site said Virgin Media broadband customers using their accounts to illegally share music will receive letters from Virgin Media and the BPI. Customer names and addresses will not be disclosed to the BPI--which is comparable to the Recording Industry Association of America--and the release says the letters will be of an "informative" nature.

According to the BPI, … Read more

True or false: Is file swapping legal?

Students at one Missouri university don't just have to take surprise quizzes on economics, chemistry, or Spanish these days. They also get pop quizzes on digital copyright law. The online test aims to prevent piracy and violation of copyright laws, and if students want access to peer-to-peer file sharing, they have to ace it.

According to an Associated Press report, the Missouri University of Science and Technology now requires students to correctly answer six questions about digital copyright law before they can use peer-to-peer tools. If they pass the test, they get six hours of access to the software. … Read more

RIAA reveals how it tracks college file sharing

A painstaking examination of how the RIAA goes about its business hunting down file sharers on college campuses is available online.

The Chronicle of Higher Education visited the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America and got a demonstration.

The RIAA employee, who declined to give his or her name for fear of receiving hate mail, said the organization has hired online copyright enforcer MediaSentry to do most of the heavy lifting. MediaSentry writes scripts to automatically hunt for the names of copyright songs and locate the IP addresses of computers sharing files, and forwards the information to the … Read more

Featured Freeware: Pando

Emailing large attachments has never been easy, but Pando for Windows and Mac combines P2P tech with a clean interface to make sharing files or folders as large as 1 GB a cinch--and free.

Circumventing FTP servers, online storage, and tertiary e-mail accounts, Pando either generates a link for instant messages and Web pages, or e-mails your recipient a tiny attachment. When you click that attachment or link, Pando connects to its server and downloads the "package," as the Pando people call the contents of your attachment. You even have 14 days to grab the "package" … Read more

Malware outbreak blamed on file-swapped MP3s, MPEGs

Consumers are being warned that they may get an ad instead of a music or video file on several file-sharing sites in what security firm McAfee says is the most significant malware outbreak in three years.

McAfee Avert Labs reported on Tuesday that more than 500,000 detections of a Trojan horse masquerading as a media file have been found on computers since Friday on services like Limewire and eDonkey.

Instead of playing an adult video, the Lion King in Portuguese, or the Girls Aloud theme from the St Trinnians soundtrack, for example, hundreds of rigged MP3 and MPEG files … Read more