Canada’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has decided that incumbent Bell Canada can charge its wholesale ISP customers based on the bandwidth usage of their end users, as first reported by CBCNews.ca. This decision puts pressure on smaller ISPs that are using Bell’s network infrastructure to implement bandwidth caps similar to those the telco is imposing on its own customers, or significantly raise prices for unmetered accounts.

Bell’s new wholesale pricing structure includes bandwidth limits of as little as 2 GB per month for the lowest-priced wholesale DSL account and charges of as much as C$1.75 ($1.59) for each GB above that limit. Customers of resell ISPs will be able to subscribe to higher tiers if they’re wiling to pay more, but Bell’s highest cap stands at 60 GB per month. Good luck to all those Canadian HD video startups. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

Online video has significantly contributed to the growth of the market for content-delivery networks, two new research reports show, but it’s unclear how much the industry as a whole will benefit from this trend going forward. The worldwide value of CDN services is estimated to reach more than $2 billion in 2011, In-Stat reported today. That’s up from $1.25 billion in 2008. In-Stat attributes this growth largely to the increasing popularity of online video.

Those numbers are echoing similar predictions from competing market research outlet AccuStream, which is predicting CDNs to bring in $1.16 billion in 2010, up from an estimated $1.37 billion this year. However, the price war for online video delivery has actually resulted in video becoming a smaller piece of the cake in terms of percentage of overall revenue. And then there’s the big unknown: How will Apple’s and Microsoft’s plans to shoulder more of their data delivery in-house affect the industry? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

A German software developer is alleging that a company hired by rights holders to hunt down file sharers actually helped to seed the file he eventually got sued for, according to a report from heise.de.

Hannover-based software developer Daniel Finger got sued for downloading and distributing a pornographic video via Emule. However, Finger not only maintains that he got duped into downloading the movie through misleading file names, he also thinks he actually received the movie from the very people that later helped to bring charges against him – a practice that would be very close to entrapment, and in this case quite possibly illegal itself.

The crux of the case is that Finger used a modded no upload Emule client, meaning the client was only able to download dta, but not contribute anything to the network. That kind of behavior is frowned upon in P2P communities, but it’s also been regarded to be an effective shield against potential lawsuits. Don’t upload any data, and no one will know what kind of files you’re downloading. No one except the people you’re downloading from, that is.

Of course it’s debatable whether rights holders can use their own works as baits to catch file sharers. Some might call this entrapment, while others would probably argue that rights holders can distribute their works however they chose to, and still insist on the exclusive right of distribution. Read more »

P2P CDN solutions for online video used to be all the rage last year. Literally dozens of start-ups were pitching their unique flavor of BitTorrent to facilitate video streams and save content and platform owners some dough.

One of those companies was Mediadefender, better known for spamming BitTorrent sites with fake files in oder to prevent file sharing of major movies and albums. Mediadefender initially tried to go into the consumer space with its own P2P-powered video hosting site Miivi.com, but that ended in a disaster because people were assuming the site was set up to catch file sharers.

The company retreated, and eventually started to pitch its own P2P CDN solution dubbed Picast. Well, to make a long story short: Picast is no more. The Picast.com website is still up, but the project itself wasn’t mentioned at all when Mediadefender announced its rebranding as Peer Media Technologies last week.

I wanted to know more, and asked whether Peer Media Technologies is still trying to get into the P2P CDN market. Here’s what a representative of Peer Media’s parent company ArtistDirect told me:

”Picast is a great technology but we have decided to focus primarily on anti-piracy services for the time being.”

I wouldn’t be too surprised if other P2P CDN start-ups closed shop in the coming months as well.

Germany’s Pirate Party continues to attract support and attention in the weeks leading up to the country’s federal election. Representatives of the party were elected to participate in two city councils in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Pirates also did reasonably well in Saxony’s state election, where 1.9 percent of the votes were cast for the party.

Roughly 2000 people voted for the Pirate Party in this Sunday’s city council election in Muenster, a town known for its large student population. That’s about 1.6 percent of the vote – enough to seat one party member in Muenster’s city council. The pirates also won 1.7 percent of the vote in Aachen, which is the home of a well-known technical university. This means there will be a Pirate Party politician in Aachen’s city council as well.

Possibly even more remarkable is the result of Saxony’s state election, where 34,620 people, or 1.9 percent of the participating electorate, voted for the Pirate Party. That’s far from the 5 percent needed to enter the state’s parliament, and unfortunately only about a third of the number of votes cast for the neo-fascist NPD party – but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Saxony’s Pirate Party did particularly well in urban areas like Dresden, where it was able to get 3.43 percent of the votes. The Pirates were apparently a little bit overwhelmed with these results themselves: The party’s web server has been returning error messages ever since word about the results got out late Sunday.

Twitter’s 140 character limit hasn’t really stopped people to share all kinds of stuff through the micro-blogging platform. First there were dedicated photo services like Twitpic, then video sites like Twiddeo, and now there are all kinds of Twitter file sharing services popping up everywhere.

One that has gotten a lot of attention in recent days is Filetwt. The company behind it did a bit of PR for its service, and it quickly paid off: Mashable, Readwriteweb and Zeropaid all did positive reviews of FileTwt, with reviewers calling the service “handy”, “quick and painless” and “true P2P.” However, FileTwt isn’t any of these things.

The service currently uploads files to Rapidshare, where most users have to wait half a minute or longer before being able to download it. Files uploaded this way can also only be downloaded 10 times max, so you better don’t have too many followers. Then there is the fact that FileTwt seems to spam your entire twitter address book with obnoxious ad messages if you happen to click on the wrong button.

The worst thing however is that Filetwt makes users enter their Twittter username and password – a completely unnecessary and highly insecure way of authentication, given the fact that Twitter supports OAuth. I really can’t recommend using this service to anyone in its current form. Read more »

Google has added video recording capabilities to the HTC G1 through an update of its Android operating system that was sent out wirelessly to T-Mobile customers this week. Android version 1.5, code-named Cupcake, also features video sharing via YouTube, email and MMS.

Bruce Lidl did a great first write-up of the new features earlier this week, but we couldn’t resist giving Android’s video recording a shot as well.

First the facts. The G1 records 3gp videos encoded with the h.263 video codec. There are two recording modes: High-quality offers you a resolution of 352×288 and a 360 Kbps bit rate while the low-quality setting comes with a resolution of 176×144 and a bit rate of 192 Kbps. How does all of that look? Well, see for yourself. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.

Today, after almost a year, the OiNK investigation came to an end. Earlier today we reported that OiNK administrator Alan Ellis was charged with “conspiracy to defraud”. Now, just hours later the alleged uploaders are charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD.

This May, five men and one woman were arrested for sharing music on OiNK. The suspects were taken in for questioning, and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints.

Two months later, two of the six alleged uploaders were released from further investigation, but (at least) two of the remaining four have been charged today. The alleged uploaders were charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD. The “conspiracy to defraud” accusations vanished, as they were not mentioned.

The case(s) will be heard in two weeks at a Magistrates Court, after which there is a possibility that it will be passed onto a Crown court. TorrentFreak had the chance to talk to one of the charged uploaders. “I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut,” he said. The alleged uploader is convinced that he is being used to set an example.

read more | digg story

Noel Gallagher from the 50 million-selling band Oasis has been chatting about piracy on the UK
’s Radio 1. He jokes about mainstream journalists asking him about non-existent leaks from the new album and encourages everyone to download the music of rival bands.

Sooner or later, this type of article will cease to be news. In fact, so many artists are speaking out about file-sharing in a positive or at least pragmatic way that by this time next year, we’ll probably be writing about artists who don’t have something to good to say, such is the shift in attitudes towards P2P.

Big names like Nine Inch Nails, 50 Cent, Joss Stone, Duffy and Travis have all had positive things to say recently.

But before supporting file-sharing becomes mainstream and we don’t have to report it anymore, Noel Gallagher from the 50 million album-selling band Oasis has been chatting with Zane Lowe from the UK’s Radio 1 about many things, including (of course) file-sharing.

read more | digg story

Privacy has always been a major concern for BitTorrent users and there are only a few ways to remain anonymous. By using a secure connection, as the new TorrentPrivacy tool offers, you can bypass almost every firewall or traffic shaping application, while making sure that nobody can see what you’re downloading.

The TorrentPrivacy software has been developed so that anybody can use it, from BitTorrent novices through to experts. TorrentPrivacy uses a pre-configured version of v1.7.7 uTorrent, so there are no settings that have to be entered manually.

It pretty much works straight out of the box. First you have to chose a connection point – at the moment they have servers in Europe, USA, Canada. The closer the connection point is to your true location, the faster the speeds you will get from the service.

Then, after you’ve chosen a connection point, just click connect and the program will connect to the server. The connection is made through the SSH protocol with 128bit encryption, which prevents traffic shaping and keeps your traffic ambiguous to prying eyes.

read more | digg story