The music industry opened up a new front in the war on online music piracy yesterday, threatening to sue internet service providers that allow customers to illegally share copyrighted tracks over their networks.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, said it would take action against internet companies that carry vast amounts of illegally shared files over their networks. It stressed that it would prefer not to pursue such a strategy and is keen to work in partnership with internet providers.

John Kennedy, the chairman of the IFPI, said he had been frustrated by internet companies that have not acted against customers involved in illegal activity. He warned that litigation against ISPs would be instigated “in weeks rather than months”. Barney Wragg, the head of EMI’s digital music division, said the industry had been left “with no other option” but to pursue ISPs in the courts.

The IFPI wants ISPs to disconnect users who refuse to stop exchanging music files illegally. Mr Kennedy said such activity is in breach of a customer’s contract with the ISP and disconnecting offenders the IFPI had identified would significantly reduce illegal file sharing.

Source: The Independent via Neowin

isoHunt Web Technologies Inc the popular BitTorrent search website has been taken offline by it’s Internet Service Provider. In a statement on their website, which is now hosted on a Canadian ISP they have said that it’s most likely “related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA” (Motion Picture Association of America).

They haven’t ruled out going back to their original US based ISP but are also looking into a permanent move to Canada.

In an update to their original statement they ruled out moving to Sweden or Sealand with the following statement “FYI, since this is a common topic, no, moving servers to Sweden or Sealand isn’t going to help. I have no intention of hiding. BitTorrent was created for legitimate distribution of large media files, and we stand by that philosophy as a search engine and aggregation. Our current ISP is in the US. Our new ISP is in Canada, where this temporary page is being served. Depending on whether we get our servers back in the US, we will be back in full operation sooner or later.”

ISOHUNT serves both as a legitimate search engine for large BitTorrent files as well as a thorn for hosting torrents that enable guests to download full versions of just about anything available illegally.

View: ISOHUNT Statement
Source: Neowin

A new search engine, Cranky, was launched earlier this week and plans to profit from age-specific ads by targeting the 50-year-old-plus baby boomer. The man behind the site is Jeff Taylor, known for founding the online employment site Monster.com. The name “cranky” was chosen by Taylor – it supposedly illustrates his mood whenever he gets lost searching the web.

Now CEO at Eons, Taylor hopes that the search engine’s design will simplify Web searching by only displaying results pertinent to someone at least 50 years of age. Compete, an online market research company, helped the site find advertisements by identifying and analyzing 5,000 of the most popular Web sites used by a group of 500,000 users aged 45 and up.

Cranky includes a user interface that limits the first page to the top four authoritative sites matching the search term. The sites are rated and reviewed by Eons members and the ratings in turn influence the top sites. The search engine can potentially improve as more users engage with rankings. Of course, any rating system is prone to abuse and Cranky.com will have quite a workout converting users from other search engines already out there.

View: Cranky
Source: InfoWorld via Neowin

One of the lawyers involved in defending cases bought against people by the RIAA claims that if the music industry wins a crucial case, the Internet will have to be switched off.

Speaking on the DefectiveByDesign anti-DRM campaign site, Ray Beckerman said the case of Electro vs. Barker has become very important for the web’s future.

Barker was being defended by Beckerman who made a motion to dismiss the case because the RIAA had forgot to provide any acts or dates or times of copyright infringement as the law normally requires.

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Telstra has scrapped plans to build a new $4 billion fibre optic network after negotiations with the competition watchdog over regulatory issues broke down.

Telstra said the talks with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about the so-called fibre to the node network (FTTN) had reached an impasse over costs.

“Until Telstra’s actual costs are recognised and the ACCC’s regulatory practices change, Telstra will not invest in a fibre-to-the-node broadband network,” the company said.

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AOL just released the logs of all searches done by 500,000 of their users over the course of three months earlier this year. That means that if you happened to be randomly chosen as one of these users, everything you searched for from March to May (2006) is now public information on the internet.

This was not a leak – it was intentional. In their desperation to gain recognition from the research community, AOL decided they would compromise their integrity to provide a data set that might become often-cited in research papers: “Please reference the following publication when using this collection…” is the message before the download.

This is a blatant violation of users’ privacy. The data is “anonymized”, which to AOL means that each screenname was replaced with a unique number. “It is still a research question how much information needs to be anonymized to protect users,” says Abdur from AOL. Here are some examples of what you can find in the data:

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A predictable new MySpace-alike has been launched, this time targeting the adult market.

The company behind Utherverse.com is trumpeting that only those over 18 will be allowed to sign up, side-stepping increasing concerns from parents about their offspring being exposed to lurking paedophiles on the popular Murdoch-owned social network.

Purely in the cause of investigation, we checked out the sign up process for Utherverse. The T&Cs check-box links to a page which says you should be 18+ – and that’s it.

Chief executive Brian Shuster said the firm would use credit card age verification for its paid services – although the social networking side of the site is free. He said the company employs site monitors who scour the site for posts from minors.

The owners hope to have one million signed up by the end of the year.

Source: The Register

40,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 new web addresses created by internet chiefs… so we won’t run out of space soon.

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A local telecom consortium has announced plans to go ahead with a high-speed broadband network even if Telstra chooses not to join them.

Dubbed G9, the consortium of nine companies, including Optus, PowerTel and Primus, announced further details of their rival proposal to Telstra’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network.

The consortium plans to set up an independent company to run the network, called SpeedReach, which will have an independent board of directors charged with maximising use of the network in return for a management fee.

According to a report on the proposal from the Allen Consulting Group, the investment is expected to generate an economic return that will attract professional investors such as infrastructure funds, not just telcos.

Keeping with this theme, G9 rejected any proposal that would lead to Telstra keeping operational control of the FTTN which “effectively creates a monopoly around the local loop”, Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan said.

G9 plans to commence talks with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to get approval of the governance and access regime, which are crucial to the proposal going ahead.

G9 said its proposal would service 5 million homes – 1 million more than Telstra’s proposal – for an extra $1 billion but only if the ACCC gave its approval and Telstra joined the party.

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On the 14th of June 2006, Microsoft shuts down Vistatorrent.com because of “infringment activity”. The tracker has been shut down. The entire ordeal can be read here.

View: VistaTorrent
Source: WinBeta