Practical Technology

The MPAA, RIAA and other copyright holding companies have long used Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to identify users for their lawsuits. They’ll find that people at various IP addresses have used BitTorrent or some other peer-to-peer (P2P) service seem to have downloaded copyrighted video or music and then sic their lawyer attack dogs on them. [...]

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The U.S. Department of Justice working in conjunction with New Zealand’s law enforcement agencies has taken down the popular file-storage and sharing site Megaupload. So, since Megaupload has been shut down, Internet piracy has gone down significantly, right? Right? Well, probably not, NPD market researcher Russ Crupnick said, “Only about 3 percent of the U.S. [...]

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People have privacy delusions about the Internet. They seem to think that just because they don’t sign their real name to a site that no one can see what they’ve been doing on it. Oh dear. So dumb, so wrong. The latest example of what you do on the Internet is no where near as [...]

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Skype, the voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video program, is very popular. It’s also pretty bad software. Really, what were you thinking Ballmer when you wrote a check for $8.5-billion for Skype? You do know that not even two years ago Skype was valued at $2.75-billion right? Here’s the simple truth. Skype has historically [...]

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“I am not an IP number, I am a free man!” OK, so that’s not exactly what actor Patrick McGoohan said in the classic TV show, The Prisoner, but Number 6 would have agreed that people aren’t numbers, and they certainly aren’t their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. And, now a U.S. District Court has ruled [...]

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