The British government appears to be running out of patience with ISPs as they struggle to come to an agreement with the music industry on P2P music piracy. One ‘top-level’ ISP executive says “The British government just put a gun to our head.” Major UK ISPs are now in “serious” talks with the music industry.

Recently we reported on the agreement between UK ISP Virgin Media and the British Phonographic Industry to start sending out warnings to Virgin’s subscribers who the BPI accuse of uploading copyright music.

Now, according to a Digital Music News report, the British government has started urgently applying pressure to prominent ISPs to find a solution to the ‘problem’ of file-sharing. The pressure includes a threat to bring in new laws, should ISPs and the music industry not come to a solution of their own.

The government previously set a deadline of April 2009 for the parties to reach an agreement but according to sources, pressure is intensifying to deal with the issue sooner. A “top-level executive” gave an indication of the level of pressure stating: “The British government just put a gun to our head.”

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing, the EFF goes for the jugular and shows that the RIAA’s entire approach is wrong.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing (PDF), the EFF goes for the jugular, seeking to show that the RIAA’s entire approach to file-swapping cases is flawed.

Not only does the Copyright Act not grant a “making available” right, the EFF said, but trade groups also shouldn’t be allowed to claim that an actual distribution took place based solely on downloads from their own investigators.

Together, this two-part theory would effectively eviscerate the RIAA’s current legal campaign by making it nearly impossible for copyright holders to show that infringing distributions to the public have taken place over P2P networks.

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In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.

Earlier this week, Swedish parliament had voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor Internet traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders.

Before the law was passed, The Pirate Bay crew spoke out against it, and now they are upping the ante. In an initial response they went out putting “wanted posters” up, of politicians who voted in favor of the law. Their next move is to ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, according to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

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Peer-to-peer traffic management was a hot topic at this year’s NXTcomm convention in Las Vegas, as keynote speakers and telecommunications industry panelists highlighted new methods for handling P2P traffic crunches.

Internet service providers’ methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast Corp. was actively interfering with P2P users’ ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset.

Because the RST packets did not appear to be sent directly from the company, critics accused Comcast of deceiving its customers and actively blocking their ability to share files online.

Although Comcast has said it doesn’t actively block any P2P protocols and merely “delays” P2P uploads during times of heavy congestion, the company has agreed to change its P2P traffic management policies and stop targeting traffic such as that of BitTorrent. Read more »

Only a few weeks ago, a University of Washington study showed showed how inaccurate the MPAA and RIAA’s evidence gathering techniques are.

Now, instead of improving their pirate chasing tactics, the MPAA simply claims they don’t need any evidence to bankrupt “alleged” copyright infringers.

Threat Level reports that the MPAA now argues that it has the right to demand up to $150,000 in damages per illegally downloaded file, without having to proof that someone actually downloaded that file.

Yes we know, this doesn’t make sense at all. Luckily, MPAA lawyer Marie van Uitert explains why copyright holders should be able to claim thousands of dollars without having to proove that a copyright infringement actually took place.

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Having once been brought to its knees by Napster, the entertainment industry may have to look to the site for its future.

The smooth running of the internet may depend on a technology that has long been synonymous with illegal downloading and online piracy, one of the foremost authority’s on network infrastructure has said.

In order to accommodate the growing popularity of bandwidth-rich services such as YouTube, internet users may be asked to host videos and other content on their home computers and then share that content with other computers whose owners want to access it.

The prediction – which would mean that the world’s personal computers would become one, giant peer-to-peer network of the sort that was made famous by Napster, the file-sharing site – was made by VeriSign, which runs the largest so-called “top-level domain”, .com.

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Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. Adding fuel to the ’significant non-infringing use’ argument is their latest partnership, with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo.

When BitTorrent sites have come under attack by media groups and their battalions of lawyers, it’s usual for them to pull up the drawbridge and keep the site going as is, and try to get the case over with as soon as possible.

The other option is to close down and hunt for a settlement, but isoHunt, like its other big-site brethren, hasn’t. Despite a legal campaign that’s now over two years old, it continues to grow and add features and functionality.

One of these new developments has been the addition of increasing numbers of Creative Commons (CC) licensed material. Creative Commons media is licensed by the creator, to be shared – usually with some restrictions – and is the same license used by TorrentFreak.

It’s not a niche license, instead it is becoming increasingly popular, with Nine Inch Nails having released their Ghosts album under a CC license earlier this year.

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According to an ever increasing wave of emails to TorrentFreak, it appears that residents of at least two countries can no longer access Demonoid.

Not only are users from the Netherlands complaining they cannot access the site but now it ’s the turn of Brazilian BitTorrent fans to wonder why they’ve been cut off.

Whenever a popular torrent site goes down, it’s fairly normal for us to start receiving emails from users concerned about what’s happening, which then dry up fairly quickly after the site in question returns.

Just recently we’ve been receiving a steady stream of emails asking why Demonoid is down which seemed strange because the site was operating normally each time we checked.

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With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Kid Rock has been commenting on file-sharing again but says he doesn’t need to steal himself, because he’s rich – but not rich enough, as it turns out. Kid Rock announced that he’s boycotting iTunes because he says between Apple and the labels, they’re keeping all the money.

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Despite public protests both online and on the streets of Stockholm, the Swedish parliament has voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor web traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders or similar authorization.

read more | digg story