Pardon this bit of network promo. Our Joystiq gaming site has opened its first affiliate—Xbox 360 Fanboy—and we're jazzed about it. Go to it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll become a part of you. In fact, you might have to scrub it off in the shower.

Bit Torrent developer Bram Cohen submits to an interview for Newsweek in which he talks briefly about his meeting with MPAA chief Dan Glickman, and what it's living and coding with Asperger's Syndrome. Cohen talks his usual talk about copyright infringement, distancing himself from all such behavior. "If there's widespread copyright infringement, you really want to go after the ringleader. And we're not being the ringleader for that." Now, this I don't get. Cohen's site, www.bittorrent.com, fronts a torrent search engine that for all the world seems to operate just like MPAA-busted sites that no longer exist. Not that I mind, but how does Cohen coast on friendly meetings with Dan Glickman while making it ridiculously easy to locate and download every movie and TV show I type into his site?

Google Talk's open standard has been appropriated in an unexpected way: Mercora, the peer-to-peer collaborative streaming network, now offers a Google Talk on-ramp to the community. The main benefits seem to be a single sign in for both Google Talk IM and Mercora listening, and the ability to bulk-invite all of one's Google Talk friends to Mercora participation. This is actually a pretty good way of easily setting up small listening-sharing groups, starting with the Google Talk invite system and extending seamlessly into Mercora.

Any Bit Torrent engine is, in a sense, a metasearch engine, since Bit Torrent files are by definition distributed, scattered among many inidividual providers. Torrent Finder searches over 30 torrent sites, making it a sort of meta-metasearch engine. [via Digg]

The Grokster an illegal service; the landmark ruling merely voided a lower-court summary judgment in Grokster's favor and sent the case back to that court—albeit with a recommendation that Grokster be held accuntable for inducement to infringe. Grokster isn't bothering to fight the matter further, though. This message now appears on the Grokster home page:

"The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon."

Something called Grokster 3G will presumably offer some sort of P2P experience with licensed content.

An M.I.T. sophomore has published a stirring editorial in the campus newspaper that compares the RIAA to a jihad nation, and winds up saying that the only way to achieve peace and understanding is to "relearn the ethics we hold dear." It's an example of an oft-repeated argument that the marketplace must change one individual at a time, and that people must reconsider ethical aspects of their consumer behavior.

If you click on the copyright and distribution information at the bottom of the piece, you find eight paragraphs of "may be distributed" and "may not be distributed" conditions. Here lies a deeper reality than the editorial's argument: "may not be distributed" is always thwarted by "can be distributed." When the technical possibility is easy and global, enforcement of "may not" is impossible, and that simple fact changes ethics. Or, I should say, it removes ethics. The marketplace lacks morals; it is as dumb as a falling object in a gravity field, acquiring its desires in the most efficient possible ways. You might as well say "may not fall" to a brick dropped from a window, or suggest that the brick reconsider the ethics of hitting someone below.

The argument plays well when made by a student, in the idealistic environment of a college campus. It might have some influence. But the larger marketplace is immune to the education initiatives (lawsuits and advertising) of the RIAA. If you want to stop the market from falling in gravity, you have to change the gravitational conditions. [via Dean at Pho]

FeedTree (download page) is a P2P java app that uses distributed bandwidth to push RSS feed content to users faster than traditional newsreaders that poll their feeds on a schedule. A poster describes graphically how it works … which is not to say I fully understand it. But I do understand that speed and timeliness are the payoffs here. Currently the installations process and user interface are rough going; the developers promise improvements. My eyes glazed over reading the command-line and port-massaging requirements to get this thing running, but if such technicalities are up your alley, this looks like an interesting new spin on both P2P and RSS. [via Pho]

Grauw's Web Spot has posted a review of 11 Bit Torrent clients. Obviously not a comprehensive overview, it's still a healthy roundup and there aren't enough of those. The winner of this survey is uTorrent, an amazingly small (94k!) BT application. BitTornado, which I have used exclusively for at least a year, is not represented. Maybe it's time I branched out. [via Karasuhebi]

The Guardian reports that the BPI (British Phonographic INdustry) has taken Apple and Napster to task after spotting their adds on "P2P sites." The "sites" were not specified and it's unclear whether the ads were placed on Bit Torrent directories (doesn't seem too likely) or in stand-alone P2p clients. Whichever, Apple and Napster sped into contirtion mode, and, naturally, blamed their media brokers. There is a mixed logic to all this. The message of Apple and Npaster is obviously congruent with that of the BPI/IFPI/RIAA ethos, but those trade groups don't want the P2P advertising model supported, even with the right message.

This guide walks the user step by step through a DVD-ripping process that formats the resulting file so that video-enabled iPods will play it. The program is Handbrake. Not being a Mac user I know nothing about any of this, but I do think people should be able to make personal use copies of their movies and carry them in iPods. Mind you, ripping a DVD for any purpose is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Digg user who posted this page speculates that a podtorrent sote would be nice.

It's more than anybody guessed. Much more. See Engadget's live blog of the press conference. Main points:

• New iMac computer with strong media capabilities. Very thin, very big screen. Very moderate price. Built-in video cam (iSight). Front Row software with remote for couch viewing of media on the computer.

• iPod is now a video iPod. No name change. 30GB and 60GB. $299 and $399. 2.5-inch screen, native 320x240.

• iTunes 6. Already? Yes, and iTMS now stocks 2,000 music videos. FairPlay DRM as with the music. Madonna is in. $1.99 per video. Also, a first recommendation engine for iTunes. Full review of iTunes 6 in this space later.

• TV shows from ABC for sale in iTMS, the day after broadcast. Whoa.

I don't expect the last point to get a lot of media play, but to me it's the most important announcement of the day. I have waited years for some sign that the TV industry "gets it"—that is, gets how much trouble it's in. Much more trouble than the music industry. Forget about the MPAA crushing Bit Torrent sites; those actions don't harm TV-show file-sharing. But give me a reliable, easy-to-find, reasonably priced way to catch up on missed episodes, and I am there. I can't be the only one who feels that way. If the Steve Jobs Effect holds true here as it did with music, it's only a matter of time before the other networks come aboard. Then, at long last, we'll be on the way to on-demand TV, or subscription major-network TV, or any number of other possibilities.

This is an amazing day for Apple, and a fabulous launch of its holiday quarter. AAPL stock hasn't responded yet.

The media industry has enjoyed a long free ride in its business of suing individuals for alleged file-sharing transgressions. Consumer timidity and confusion have led to thousands of meek settlements. Cases are starting to go to court now, both in the U.S. and overseas; a Swedish court is beginning to hear the case of a 28-year-old man accused of storing and sharing a movie file. The defendent admits to storing but denies sharing. At stake is the ability of Swedish police actions to gain identifying information from ISPs.

Trivial but funny: Reuters is running a piece covering the Senate Judiciary Committee's P2P hearing—the one at which Diane Feinstein spoke her mind, or her campaign contributors' collective mind, or something—and the article is supported by a helpful illustration of the Sony PSP. [from Digg]

Quick on the heels of reports that eDonkey was going out of business along with WinMX, then refutations that eDonkey was alive and well, company president Sam Yagan testified in a Senate committe hearing on the future of P2P, and declared his intent to comply with the RIAA's cease-and-desist threats. "Because the Grokster standard requires defining a company's intent, the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don't have very much money," explained Yagan. "Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn't afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster." Yagan implied that eDonkey would settle (damages?) with the RIAA, then repone as a closed and presumably fully licensed system.

Yagan wrapped up his editorializing with an odd remark: "As you know, eBay recently acquired the P2P company Skype for more than two billion dollars. Note that Skype was founded offshore; it would be a real tragedy and a blow to our economy should all technology entrepreneurs take their innovations offshore." Skype is a P2P company? Only in the loosest of definitions. Perhaps Yagan is confused by the background of Skype's founders; they were the creaters of the original KaZaA. While Skype represents an example of P2P technology, it is not really the type of application Yagan is implying. Offshore incorporation is a shield for companies that use IP without authorization. Skype is far removed from that business model. For that reason, Yagan's point, as made to a Senate committee exploring the issues of content infringement via P2P, is lost on me.

UPDATE: The complete transcript of Yagan's remarks (it's a long but interesting read), is here.

The RIAA has taken the Grokster ruling, widely predicted to have a chilling effect on new technology, and applied it to old technology in a chilling way. Sending cease-and-desist letters seems to be having the desired effect, shutting down operation of long-running network WinMX. A related story noted that eDonkey was no longer operating in New York, but the significance of that item was squashed when eDonkey announced that it closed the New York office in 1994.