FolderShare will create a personal Peer-to-Peer network that lets you retrieve and update documents or share your files (photos, reports, etc.) with family, friends, and colleagues. Create a Library with invited friends/colleagues and build a collection of files (documents, photos, etc.) that everyone in the group can access. Securely share as many files as you [...]

Recording industry withdraws suit Mistaken identity raises questions on legal strategy By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 9/24/2003 The recording industry has withdrawn a lawsuit against a Newbury woman because it falsely accused her of illegally sharing music — possibly the first case of mistaken identity in the battle against Internet file-traders. Privacy advocates said the [...]

Microsoft Corp. is pulling the plug on its free, unsupervised Internet chat rooms in 28 countries and moving them to a subscription service in Canada, the United States and Japan over concerns the forums have become a haven for junk e-mail and sex predators. “We’re taking the responsible move to make our service a safer [...]

File-swapping company Sharman Networks filed new antitrust charges against record labels and Hollywood studios, hoping to deflect copyright infringement claims still pending over the popular Kazaa software. The suit, which claims record labels and movie studios have conspired to drive Sharman Networks out of business in order to monopolize digital distribution, is virtually identical to [...]

Federal jury has convicted a Florida man of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in the first jury-trial conviction under the controversial law, according to a U.S. attorney’s office. The Los Angeles jury found 38-year-old Thomas Michael Whitehead guilty on Friday of selling hardware that could access DirecTV satellite broadcasts without paying for them, according [...]

The group that collects royalties for songwriters is taking aim at an unusual source: dentists. It’s not just dentists, but chiropractors and opticians — any kind of office space that plays CDs. “This was a money grab, what is the legitimacy of this kind of request of a license for this purpose,” asks Dr. Jack [...]

Earlier this month, a Philadelphia Comcast broadband subscriber got a letter from his service provider, telling him he’d been using the Internet too much. Keith, who asked to keep his full name private, said he’d subscribed to the service for four years and never had a complaint before. Now he was being labeled a network [...]

Ufasoft P2P Messenger (P2PMess) is an Instant Messenger that functions according to the P2P (Peer-To-Peer) principles. Contrary to other programs of similar use, such as ICQ, AIM and Windows Messenger, it does ***not*** use the central server. Each user becomes a node of the P2P-network Unet. – Creating the user account with user’s principal data. [...]

Mr. Egan, the co-owner and president of the independent music label Vagrant Records, had heard about the software — which let users trade songs over the Internet without paying artists or labels — and could not imagine how such a setup could benefit his business. Even as the major labels of the music industry pursue [...]

Since Thomas A. Edison recorded the human voice in 1877, the music industry has grappled with the uncertainties wrought by new technologies. “The form changes, but the issues – who owns the music, what rights pertain to artists, what rights pertain to the companies – these are issues that go way back into the 19th [...]

At a hearing of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday, Big Music squared off with ISPs on a bill that would modify how copyright owners can pursue digital pirates through the courts. The bill, filed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), would require copyright holders to file a civil lawsuit before obtaining a subpoena to gather [...]

In the rough and tumble of the student union here at Pennsylvania State University, the moral code is purely pragmatic. Thou shalt not smoke – it will kill you. Thou shalt not lift a term paper off the Internet – it will get you kicked out. Thou shalt not use a fake ID – it [...]

CDfreaks.com reports that besides all the negative news around peer-2-peer software Kazaa there is also some positive news. Game maker Atari is going to sell their latest RPG game, entitled “The Temple of Elemental Evil,” via the Kazaa software. People can download the demo (843MB) via the online file sharing network after which the game [...]

The British government introduced legislation on Thursday that aims to protect Internet and mobile phone users from unsolicited commercial e-mail. The new law, which is Britain’s implementation of the EU Privacy and Electronics Communication Directive, comes into force on Dec. 11. The law makes it an offense for a U.K. company to send junk e-mail [...]

The Recording Industry Association of America said Friday that it had sued Israeli file-swapping company iMesh, one of the oldest of the peer-to-peer companies still in operation. The record labels’ trade association alleges that iMesh has contributed to massive copyright infringement online, much as other file-trading companies before it. The suit marked the clearest sign [...]

Antivirus companies are warning Internet users about W32.Swen, a new worm that spreads using e-mail messages, vulnerable network connections, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and peer-to-peer networks. F-Secure, Network Associates, and Symantec all have issued warnings about Swen, indicating that the worm is spreading on the Internet. Customers are being advised to update their antivirus definitions [...]

Digital media will force the entertainment industry to rethink current business models and perhaps usher in a special tax to compensate artists deprived of revenue from Internet media distribution, according to panelists at a conference Thursday. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and research firm Gartner assembled a group of legal, [...]

This latest version of Shareaza has better BitTorrent support and is a bit easier on the ol’ hard drive. The full changelog is here. Download links: Magnet URI ED2k The web

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox sued Tritton Technologies on Wednesday, accusing the company of distributing software aimed at cracking technology used to prevent unlawful copying of DVDs. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order stopping Irvine, California-based Tritton from distributing the software called “DVD CopyWare.” It [...]

Grokster, Morpheus File Briefs in Song-Swap Appeal By Sue Zeidler LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two file-sharing services on Wednesday filed responses to a closely-watched appeal by film and music studios of a court ruling that found the services were not liable for massive copyright infringement. “The appeal is just one of several assaults that we [...]