May 15 - 1:00pm EDT   Comcast is not the only company guilty of sabotaging BitTorrent traffic, the Associated Press reports. While that company has taken the brunt of criticism for potentially violating the FCC's net neutrality policy, the AP says it has obtained the results of a worldwide study of 8,175 Internet users, which found that only three companies were all but certainly blocking connections: Comcast, Singapore's StarHub, and Cox Communications. In the case of the last, 82 out of 151 subscribers had their transfers blocked. [full story]

May 8 - 1:30pm EDT   Movie studios are the latest group to launch a legal assault on Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, filings indicate. The Motion Picture Association, an international extension of the MPAA, has filed a 93kr million ($15.4 million) lawsuit against Pirate Bay, which it accuses of hosting illegal torrent trackers for movies such as The Pink Panther and Syriana, as well as 13 episodes of the TV show Prison Break. Damages are said to amount to between 222 and 261kr ($37 and $43) per movie, and 415kr ($68) for each Prison Break episode. [full story]

April 28 - 11:35am EDT   Japanese electronics maker Planex today launched a pair of networked hard drives it says streamline loading web video on portable players. The DigiJuke 500GB and 1TB both include facilities to download clips from YouTube or similar Flash videos directly to the drive and convert them into "universal" video. Although the conversion software is built for Windows, clips are saved in MPEG-4 and will play properly on video-capable iPods as well as the PSP, PS3, and the Wii. [full story]

April 3 - 12:10pm EDT   Comcast today said it would be the first cable Internet provider in the US to offer Internet access based on the new DOCSIS 3.0 standard for cable Internet service. In its early form, the service will bond together multiple cable channels to offer download speeds of 50 megabits per second, or more than six times the 8Mbps ceiling previously set by the company's existing 8Mbps tier. This early implementation isn't set to have full support for the technology on uploads but will still offer 5Mbps upstream. [full story]

March 27 - 12:15pm EDT   Comcast on Thursday made a surprise reversal of its past practices and said that it would halt its practice of blocking BitTorrent traffic on its cable Internet service. The provider revealed that it would instead work towards a management system on its network that will remain strictly neutral, preventing a bias towards or against any one distribution format. The move is publicly claimed as a recognition of the use of BitTorrent as a legitimate mechanism for business, which requires that it receives equal treatment along with other traffic, according to the company. [full story]

March 21 - 3:15pm EDT   Myka is offering a self-titled media hub it says is a viable alternative for those who want most of the features of the Apple TV but a less restricted environment. Rather than depend on a closed download system such as iTunes, the Myka depends chiefly on BitTorrent downloads to accomplish its download goals. The peer sharing format not only reduces dependence on any one server for content but also theoretically allows downloads of content beyond the typical music and videos, according to the company. The system is designed to simplify the experience and also includes web access so the owner can queue up content away from home. [full story]

March 14 - 9:30am EDT   Verizon today revealed that it has found a way to at once improve the speed of peer-to-peer Internet sharing services while simultaneously lightening the load on its own network. Nicknamed "P4P," the technique has the software look primarily for download sources from the user's own Internet provider rather than just performing a search. By prioritizing nearby connections, the optimization speeds up connections by about 60 percent; it also eliminates a major bottleneck for the provider itself. As Verizon or other companies can often keep this P2P traffic to its local network, it can avoid paying for the extra bandwidth needed to reach an Internet backbone. [full story]

March 10 - 3:05pm EDT   Comcast may have already undermined its position in an ongoing government investigation, according to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Kevin Martin addressed the question in a recent speech at Stanford University Law School, where the subject of Comcast's peer-to-peer sabotage was raised. Martin said he was disturbed that Comcast initially denied throttling peer-to-peer content, only to later claim the practice was standard and necessary. [full story]

February 22 - 2:10pm EST   Internet service providers in the UK may have no choice but to impose anti-piracy scans on their networks if they cannot agree to a solution voluntarily, the country's government said today. A strategy document released by British officials warns that the companies must agree with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as well as other music and movie producer associations to develop an anti-piracy agreement that will curb illegal sharing at the carrier level rather than targeting individual users. Without a private agreement, the government may have to impose its own rules mandating such a change in April 2009 to protect the UK's creative ... [full story]

February 21 - 4:30pm EST   The FCC will on Monday hold a public hearing to discuss the ramifications of traffic shaping, it has announced. The focus will specifically be on the concept of net neutrality, an FCC policy which traffic shaping is said to violate, by dictating which services and/or websites an ISP customer can use. Panels at the hearing will be staffed by academics, engineers, lobbyists and politicians, in contrast to a workshop held last year which was mostly helmed by industry representatives and supporters. The hearing is scheduled for 10AM to 4PM at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [full story]

February 13 - 2:55pm EST   A recent Danish court decision against an ISP violates EU law, a Swedish judge has declared. Cecilia Renfors, a government investigator being asked to propose new file-sharing legislation, says that Denmark was in error when it told Tele2 to prevent customers from reaching The Pirate Bay, a site well-known for aiding piracy through hosting BitTorrent trackers. The site's owners are in fact facing copyright infringement accusations from a group including Fox, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal. [full story]

January 9 - 9:55am EST   Comcast is under investigation and could be subject to fines over its tactics of throttling BitTorrent traffic on its cable Internet service, the Federal Communications Commission has revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show. FCC chair Kevin Martin acknowledged that it was looking into complaints from advocacy groups and lawyers, both of which accuse Comcast of violating basic principles of network neutrality by preferring certain data types over others. If found to be violating FCC rules, the cable provider could face fines as high as $195,000 for every affected subscriber, Martin claims. [full story]

December 19 - 4:10pm EST   A US District Judge has terminated a case against TorrentSpy.com in view of evidence tampering, reports say. Representatives from the MPAA sued TorrentSpy in 2006, claiming that the BitTorrent tracker provided illegal access to copyrighted video. Although TorrentSpy countersued, arguing that the MPAA hacked into its computers and e-mail accounts, the company was later ordered to record its data traffic, which could have been used as evidence. Lawyers protested, calling the request "unprecedented and damaging to online free speech and privacy and to free market values that support technological development." [full story]

December 14 - 10:50am EST   Search terms involving the iPhone have placed extremely high in Google's 2007 rankings, the company has announced. As a part of its Zeitgeist 2007 report, it notes that "iphone" was the fastest-rising search term of the year, in the US and worldwide, beating out "badoo," "facebook" and numerous other competitors. The term also did reasonably well as one of the most popular news searches of the year, coming in at number six; "american idol," "youtube" and "britney spears" represented the top three. [full story]