bittorrent

Verizon has its customers' backs.

The Internet service provider is refusing to give up the personal information of customers that book publisher John Wiley & Sons allege are online pirates -- despite the threat of subpoena. Verizon has instead called into question whether the information would lead to any relevant findings and expressed concerns about the violation of privacy, according to TorrentFreak.

Verizon's unwillingness to give up the information is significant because its challenge could signal a potential hurdle for content companies looking to prosecute individuals using Bittorrent to illegally download books, movies, and music.

A key argument is … Read more

After filing a lawsuit against 24,583 individuals who allegedly downloaded the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker," movie studio Voltage Pictures is at it again. This time, in a new lawsuit, they've added about 2,500 other alleged BitTorrent users to its list, according to TorrentFreak.

Voltage Pictures, which filed the suit in Florida last week, says that all of those people downloaded "The Hurt Locker" illegally; as a result, it has lost millions of dollars in revenue. One of the studio's goals in this lawsuit is to get a subpoena to reveal the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--What would the world look like a few years from now if all the emerging technologies we saw at CES this year became as ubiquitous as Android phones, iPads, and DVRs?

Well, let's pretend it's a January morning three years from now. You might wake up to a hot breakfast freshly extruded by your new MakerBot 3D food printer--hopefully you remembered to refill the flavor cartridge the previous night or you could get a mouthful of a bland protein construction.

Next you'll probably turn to your Yoga. Not the ancient practice of physical, mental, and spiritual balance, but the tablet/laptop computer hybrid that became more popular than the iPad last year.

If you're into the meta thing, you could use your Yoga to play a yoga video, but you'd probably rather use a larger screen--a much larger screen like the 96-inch OLED taking up most of your wall. … Read more

On today's show, Time Warner's new live TV iPad app is too cool to last very long, iOS is slower than Android (but Apple's nit-picking the results, predictably), and Sony is continuing to try to turn George Hotz into a smoking crater for daring to jailbreak the PS3. --Molly

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast deals with a lot of movies, which makes sense after last night's utterly forgettable Academy Awards ceremony, or so Wilson claims, because he forgot to watch.

The awards committee certainly wasn't lacking a sense of irony after selecting Sandra Bullock for the best female performance in "The Blind Side." The actress also won the Razzie for worst female actor in "All About Steve." Audience members were also surprised to see "Avatar" lose the best picture award to "The Hurt Locker," despite the questionable activity of one of its producers prior to the event. It's also interesting to note how the same movies in the best picture category ranked on BitTorrent, with "District 9" earning the most at more than 12 million downloads since its DVD-quality release last September.

Tim Burton's adaption of "Alice in Wonderland" came out last weekend, and Jeff went to check it out with his fiancee, who festively dressed up as Alice for the showing. Don't get your hopes up though; Jeff sadly left his White Rabbit costume at the dry cleaners. I won't spoil Jeff's personal review of the movie, but let's just say that 91 other movie-goers on Rotten Tomatoes agree with him.

No matter what you think of AIW, we can all agree that Zach Snyder's new movie "Legend of the Guardians" will win next year's Oscar for best comedy. Based on the novel "Guardians of Ga'Hoole," the teaser implies that the movie is about talking owls...fighting in the sky...wearing Elven face masks. Check out these screenshots and join us as we purchase advanced screening tickets live on the show.

All these stories plus some a near-expired batch of Calls From the Public and a news piece about your grandmother DJing Parisian nightclubs, all on today's episode of The 404!

Vuze is the free, full-featured reincarnation of the popular BitTorrent client Azureus, an app for finding and watching video content that you download via torrent files.

Compared with more traditional and utilitarian BitTorrent clients, Vuze has a much richer, iTunes-style interface--with as much attention devoted to finding and viewing videos as to downloading them. You can browse the "Vuze HD Network" for videos (although you'll find a lot of lower-grade Internet fare, like promos, trailers, and podcasts), or you can look around using a friendly, easy search interface (although much of the content you'll find is … Read more

Months after Verizon Communications began issuing warnings to accused file sharers, the company has acknowledged that multiple offenses could result in a service interruption.

"We've cut some people off," Verizon Online spokeswoman Bobbi Henson told CNET. "We do reserve the right to discontinue service. But we don't throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing. Verizon does not have bandwidth caps."

What this means is that Verizon, one of the country's biggest broadband providers, appears to have adopted an approach to illegal file sharing that sounds very similar to one promoted and pushed heavily by … Read more

As we close the book on 2009 and ready for 2010, a legal settlement takes us back to 2007 and 2008, when Comcast got into trouble with customers and the feds for throttling peer-to-peer traffic on its network.

Comcast has agreed to pay $16 million to end to a class action lawsuit alleging the broadband provider promised and advertised certain download and upload speeds, but blocked peer-to-peer traffic on its high-speed Internet network.

"Comcast denies these claims, but has revised its management of P2P and is settling to avoid the burden and cost of further litigation," according to … Read more

Radiohead is now notorious for innovative distribution after their "pay what you want" initial sale of their last LP, In Rainbows, breaking from the traditional label system. In many ways, they are leading the fight against major music labels. All this adds up to some interesting speculation on the leak of a new Radiohead song, entitled "These Are My Twisted Words."

Last night, the song leaked on a torrent site and was quickly picked up by Radiohead fan forum ateaseweb. While it's not 100% confirmed to be Radiohead, there seems to be a consensus that … Read more