Adobe is getting serious about their implementation of peer-to-peer technology to assist Flash-based video streaming and applications. The upcoming release of Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 will enable publishers to dramatically reduce bandwidth costs by outsourcing media distribution to users.
After an earlier decision failed to reach its objective, this week a Brazilian court made an unprecedented ruling against file-sharing clients. Following legal action by anti-piracy groups against a website offering a file-sharing client for download, the court decided that software which allows users to share music via P2P is illegal.
A politician being touted as Britain’s next Prime Minister has been persuaded to take action to criminalize 7 million citizens following intensive industry lobbying over file-sharing. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson is in favor of introducing tough laws including Internet restrictions and fines of up to £50,000 ($83,000).
A new version of the P2P plug-in Littleshoot makes it possible to download torrents right from within your browser. The software runs on Macs and Windows PCs and works with IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. It even offers Gnutella and Youtube integration as an added bonus.
The UK Government, through the BERR, commissioned a public consultation last year into illicit file-sharing, and how to deal with it. The responses should have been published in December, but due to a holdup concerning a freedom of information request, it was delayed until today. Despite this, some will still be kept confidential.
This year, several established bands have decided to give away their music for free, while giving fans the option to donate whatever they seem fit. For Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails it was a great success since they made more money from the donation model than they would have otherwise. However, it seems that this doesn’t hold for less established artists.
Sandvine, best known for manufacturing the hardware that slowed down BitTorrent users on Comcast, has released an Internet traffic trends report today. The report shows that, on average, P2P traffic is responsible for more than half of the upstream traffic, but mostly the report seems an attempt to sell their traffic shaping products.