Download.com

Someone in the home of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, a strong proponent of anti-piracy legislation, has been using BitTorrent to download pirated versions of music and movies, according to a French blog.

An associate of the Nikopik Web site found IP addresses allocated to the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy's residence, on YouHaveDownloaded.com, a Russian-based site that tracks public downloads from BitTorrent.

It appears that copies of movies including "The Tower Heist," "Change-Up," and "Arthur Christmas," as well as the "The Beach Boys Greatest Hits" album were among six downloads linked to … Read more

Download Community,

I just wanted to send out a quick follow-up to my post on Wednesday.

(By the way, yes I now I have my own account, so I can post here myself. I wanted to get that last one up quickly since it was already late in coming, and Cat already had an account, so I went with it. Sad, but true. Oh, and because you all know who Cat is, but may have no clue who I am, I'm the General Manager of Download.com).

Clearly we had a big breakdown this past week and I sincerely … Read more

Dear Download.com Community,

Some press surfaced yesterday about how we're bundling advertising offers with an open source software called Nmap. The bundling of this software was a mistake on our part and we apologize to the user and developer communities for the unrest it caused. In addition to immediately taking Nmap out of the download manager, we reviewed all open source files in our catalog to ensure none are being bundled. It is a Download.com policy not to bundle open source software and we will continue to take pains to ensure this does not happen again.

Following … Read more

Long before the iTunes Store was a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye, Download.com launched in 1996 as the most comprehensive, safest place to get all your software, from the latest drivers and codecs to professional-grade programs. It was, and still is, notable for scanning and testing its software catalog to ensure that none would infect your computer. We take a look at the history of the software world before Download.com, the rise of modern software, and where software stands now.

The software world before Download.com: The software world grew rapidly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In … Read more

Hello, downloaders!

We want to let you know about a change you'll start to see when you download software from us over the next few weeks. CNET Download.com recently started using a new piece of software to help deliver our downloads. This new software is called the CNET Download.com Installer and it adds an extra layer of security and reliability to downloads that come from CNET.

Windows' disk defragmentation tool is an old workhorse that recent upgrades haven't really improved. In fact, more than a few users were disappointed that the strangely mesmerizing block-by-block progress display had vanished from newer versions. You can get the old view back and much more with O&O Defrag, an automatic utility that can not only improve your system's performance by defragmenting data but also keep it running smoothly by preventing data fragmentation before it happens as it chugs on unnoticed in the background.

Today, the developer has announced a brand-new version of its Defrag software: the … Read more

At CNET Download.com, we are very aware that--regardless of our large catalog of downloadable software, music, and games--our greatest asset is you, our users. When it comes to any development on the site, we think about you first.

We've always been grateful to have intelligent, respectful, and engaged users on CNET Download.com. Our user reviews of software are some of our most prized features, because they generally display an accurate opinion of the download community.

We continued to expand our communication with CNET Download.com users two years ago, when we introduced our blog, The Daily Download. … Read more

Like so much else on the Internet, you have to be skeptical about the star ratings of software. Perhaps you suspected this, but now there is proof.

A software developer in the U.K., Andy Brice, was suspicious about the ratings assigned to his software, so he did a test--a lab experiment if you will. He started with a plain text file that said "this program does nothing at all" a few times. Then he renamed the file so that it ended with ".exe" and submitted it to 1,033 download sites. The "program," … Read more

March Madness finds a way into offices, schools, and between friends faster than most of us can imagine. Nearly everybody knows someone who is either running or a part of a betting pool. Download.com has put together a handy set of March Madness software tools to help you create your own pool or keep track of all the data that will be flowing in during the coming weeks. But what about Web services that can do the same thing? We've put together a roundup of some of the handiest services to keep track of all the money you'… Read more