A group that advocates for peer-to-peer networks said it has stopped distributing Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2 update following legal threats from the software maker.
Earlier this week, Downhill Battle had started offering Microsoft’s free update through file-sharing network BitTorrent as a way to demonstrate the potential of peer-to-peer networks for more efficiently distributing large software updates. At the time, Microsoft did not comment on the legality of the action, but analysts noted that the action might well be infringing on Microsoft’s intellectual-property rights.
A Downhill Battle representative said Friday that two of the companies that host its Web sites received notices from Microsoft to take down the software, notes that cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A Microsoft representative declined to comment.
Although it has fought DMCA notices in the past, the group said it complied with the requests.
“We’d stood up to stuff like that before…when there was a real compelling political reason to,” said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson. But the group felt it had made its point. “Our real goal was to demonstrate how useful this technology could be.”
The site the company had set up, sp2torrent.com, now points those in search of SP2 directly to the software maker.
“If you need Windows XP SP2, you can download it from Microsoft’s inscrutable webpage,” the group said on the site.
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