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Happy Birthday, Gnutella: Pioneering P2P Protocol Turns Ten
Ten years ago this week, online music pioneer Justin Frankel released a little application dubbed Gnutella that enabled file sharing through a distributed P2P network. Frankel, whose previous claim to fame was programming the then hugely-popular Winamp MP3 player software, supposedly named the client after his favorite hazelnut cream spread, and the first version published online was really more of a proof of concept than anything else. Still, Gnutella hit a nerve.
Continue reading »Feds: TSA Worker Tried to Sabotage Terror Database
A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others. The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date but was caught by other workers before it delivered its payload. Douglas James Duchak, 46, had worked as a data analyst at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center, or CSOC, since 2004.
Continue reading »Yelp Accused of Extortion
Yelp, the online review site, is being accused of extortion in a class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles this week. The suit alleges that the site tried to get a Long Beach veterinary hospital named Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital to pay $300 a month — for a minimum 12-month commitment — to suppress or delete reviews that disparaged the hospital. Yelp , a popular San Francisco-based site, is one of the leading sites for consumers to post reviews and comments about their local businesses and services and touts its integrity of “Real people.
Continue reading »How MPAA Failed to Cut Off the Alleged File Sharing Grandma
MPAA have not succeeded in their attempt to ban Cathi Paradiso, the grandmother falsely accused of illegal-file sharing, from accessing the Internet. Following the efforts of the News.com team, MPAA’s plans against Cathi Paradiso, who was hazardously accused multiple times of copyright infringement based on disputable evidence, were finally impeded. Under the pretext of the “three strikes” concept, the MPAA were determined to force the prosecution of Cathi Paradiso in order to set an example aimed at discouraging illegal file sharing.
Continue reading »Consumer Group Publishes Guide on How to Fight False P2P Claims
“Speculative Invoicing Handbook” details how to avoid being extorted by UK-based law firm ACS:Law and its “revolutionary business model” that targets illegal file-sharers en masse. ACS:Law, a UK-based law firm that “specializes in assisting intellectual property rights holders exploit and enforce their rights globally,” announced early last month that it planned to target some 15,000 suspected illegal file-sharers across the UK as part of its “revolutionary business model” that “generates revenue for rights holders and effectively decreases copyright infringement in a measurable and sustainable way” unlike the “costly and ineffective” anti-piracy measures of other companies. It later announced that after a careful review had dropped a “good number” of these cases because they decided litigation was either not a “viable option” or “beneficial” to their clients.
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