Corporate networks are defenseless against the growing threat from instant messaging, and the government warns WiFi is insecure and easily sniffed.

Experts suggest we take precautions against the growing risk of p2p software that’s exposing sensitive documents and threatening national security.

Businesses blame security problems on their employees, their mobile devices, and other consumer technologies.

And now we have MySpace.

Marketplace reminds us the storm of RIAA lawsuits began in September 2003. In that time they’ve sued a thousands of people, and most lawyers apparently advise those caught in the madness to simply roll over and take it. But Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother didn’t.

After years of litigation (and mounting legal bills), it finally came out the RIAA’s lawyers had misidentified her and dropped the case, casually saying “Sometimes when you go fishing with a driftnet, you catch a few dolphins.” Anderson, no docile dolphin, is seeking class status for her countersuit. New York lawyer Ray Beckerman thinks it’s about time:

I have a client with multiple sclerosis, gets around with an electric wheelchair, has no real understanding of what this is about, had nothing to do with any file-sharing, knows nothing about it. And [the RIAA] will not drop the case against her.

Extra: did I tell you the one about the dead defendant?

riaa, copyfight, dmca, lawsuits, Tanya Andersen, madness, p2p, peer 2 peer, file sharing

On demand internet TV has been just around the corner since the dawn of the popular internet, but like flying cars, it’s still not here. The problem is how TV streams clog the internet’s tubes. Bandwidth may be cheap, but there’s still never enough of it.

Well, that’s true if your metaphor for the internet is a hub and spoke system. Not so if you think of it as a mesh.

Kazaa and Skype creators/founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis are mashing up peer-to-peer distribution with the mainstream media and turning our computers into expensive TV tuners.

Joost (pronounced “juiced”) is graphically beautiful and very easy to use, though surprisingly slow on my Mac Mini (it runs fine on my MacBook Pro). Zach set me up with an invite when he heard I had no cable in my new home (“ahh, look at the media deprived dork, give’m an invite”). And when he flipped to World of Stupid I couldn’t resist.

Sandee’s not altogether pleased, though there is other content. Some.

At least it’s easy to use. A drag and drop install, launch, login, browse, watch. In the background the software is streaming the program in from other peers on the network — people like you — and back out to even more people. It’s watching your viewing habits, and though the few commercials running now won’t reveal it, you have to imagine the ads will become more targeted as advertisers start to understand the service.

Joost, tv, television, old media, ptptv, peer to peer, p2p, video, on-demand, streaming

Napster — the legal, reincarnated music download site — essentially invented the concept of incumbent campus download services. They loudly touted deals with schools “anxious” to stop the p2p music sharing problem. Trouble is, according to this story at The Reg, it’s not working well. A survey at one client university paints a sad picture:

Not a single University of Rochester student admitted to buying a song via Napster during the Fall 2004 semester. Instead, eight per cent of the students turned to the likes of iTunes and Musicmatch to buy songs they enjoy. That’s an ominous sign for a company spending millions to seed the university market with music in the hopes of unseating Apple as the clear leader in online music.

The Reg notes that “Napster has put a new twist on the notion of being a loss leader,” but I’d say the opposite. So long as universities continue to cut Nap in on the student fees and the students continue to ignore Nap, it should be very profitable in the short run.

tags: itunes, music download, music download services, music sharing, musicmatch, napster, new york, ominous sign, p2p, rochester, survey, the register, university of rochester