AT&T Tech Support 360
- Related Stories
-
Week in review: The bell tolls for Ma Bell
February 4, 2005 -
Week in review: Patches and pirates
January 28, 2005 -
Week in review: Wi-Fi goes to Washington
January 21, 2005
The Motion Picture Association of America said it had won a quick court victory against LokiTorrent, and was launching a new round of actions against other online piracy hubs. The data provided by the onetime file-swapping hub would provide "a road map to others who have used LokiTorrent to engage in illegal activities," the trade group said. MPAA executives said the information could "quite possibly" lead to lawsuits against individuals.
In what could be a new weapon in the file-swapping war, researchers at Royal Philips Electronics are developing new "fingerprinting" technology that could automatically identify and block transmission of digital-video files.
Once completed, Philips' technology--along with related tools from other companies--could be a powerful weapon in Hollywood's increasingly aggressive attempts to choke off the flood of films being traded online. For now, the tools are in an early stage of development, but Philips has begun to show them to potential partners and customers.
Meanwhile, fee-based digital music is gaining popularity among downloaders in the United States. About 47 percent of people who downloaded music in December and who were age 12 or older paid a fee to do so. That's up from 22 percent a year ago.
While users between the ages of 25 and 54 are the most likely to have paid to download music, the number of younger people paying for it is also rising. More than half of respondents between the ages of 12 and 17 reported that they have paid for music.
See more CNET content tagged:
file-swapping,
Philips Electronics N.V.,
P2P,
Hollywood,
weapon
