U.S. authorities have demanded the extradition of Justin Bieber, the Canadian singer who turned blatant copyright infringements into a profitable career. The teen star is accused of streaming unauthorized songs to millions of people without compensating the copyright holders and now faces a 5 year prison sentence.
Torrent Stream Magic Player is a brand new add-on that allows users to stream video and music torrents directly in their browser. The Magic Player works with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and supports dozens of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, BTjunkie and EZTV. It’s one of the first solutions to create a true video-on-demand experience directly in the browser.
The popular video streaming site “Fast Pass TV” shut down earlier this week following the arrest of one of the site’s alleged operators. The site itself didn’t host any copyrighted content but indexed videos hosted on third-party sites. The operator has been released on bail pending inquiries.
Three U.S. Senators have introduced a bill that would make streaming unauthorized music, movies and TV-shows a felony. The bill is said to address a gap in current legislation where streaming is not considered a criminal offense. The question is whether the new legislation is really needed though, as the authorities have already started several criminal investigations into movie streaming sites in recent months.
A new report by a consultancy firm specializing in analyzing consumer consumption of digital media reveals that during the last quarter of 2009, increasing numbers of Swedes accessed unauthorized movies and TV shows online. The research indicates that the downward trend provoked by the introduction of the IPRED legislation is over.
uTorrent – the client of choice for most western BitTorrent users – has added the option to stream video files while downloading. With this new functionality, BitTorrent Inc. hopes to provide the ‘point-click-watch’ experience people have grown used to from their usage of streaming sites such as YouTube.
The Swarmplayer developed by the P2P-Next research group is now capable of streaming live video in true 4th generation P2P style using a zero-server approach. With a $22 million project budget from the EU and partners, the P2P-Next research group intends to redefine how video is viewed on the Internet.