Ares Connect

A children’s charity in the UK has decided to take on the issue of filesharing and spread the word about the evils of illegal music downloads, which are both against the law and “unsafe”, apparently.

One converted child said, “I used to use Limewire, but didn’t realise it was wrong and my parents didn’t know what I was doing.”

Oh dear.

Childnet admirably campaigns to improve Internet safety for children. There’s nothing wrong with that. The charity is sending a leaflet to schools to persuade kids to take care while surfing the net and using their mobile phones.

The clear message is that filesharing is an adults’ games. While America’s college students haven’t been so lucky, UK children will be “educated” about the errors of their filesharing ways. How noble.

However, for the million of non-children who still use filesharing programs like Limewire, there is no hope of salvation.

More campus activity this week. This time, the University of Arkansas has been targeted by the RIAA for filesharing students.

The RIAA has formally requested that UA complies with its dealing with filesharing activities, which means that the university must supply the names that match up to IPs that show illegal filesharing activity.

This has caused much uproar, as some at the university have slammed the request, saying that the RIAA does not have the right to do such a thing.

One senior compared this filesharing monitoring to phone tapping. The RIAA has basically requested that UA keep records of all Internet filesharing activity that occurs on campus.

What this means is that the UA’s IT department finds filesharing culprits who are getting free music downloads and passes on their names to the RIAA, who in turn send a letter to the students demanding damages or a court case.

UA responded by issuing a statement saying that students’ details will not be passed on unless a there is a subpoena.

While America’s students are being terrorized by the RIAA for filesharing, it looks like one special group of students is immune to filesharing rules and regulations. Step up the class of 2008 from Harvard.

The RIAA has delivered thousands of letters to universities to try and curb filesharing habits. This action often results in students who are accused of filesharing being given an ultimatum with the threat of court action if they don’t cough up several thousand bucks.

Perhaps Harvard’s students are simply a law-abiding bunch of students, but they are students, right? For whatever reason, Harvard has not received any pre-litigation letters from the RIAA.

What’s most bizarre in this case is that the RIAA admits that Harvard students are engaged in filesharing activities, but the “levels are not sufficient enough to warrant legal action”. Hold on a minute. When did it become about levels?

Is the RIAA too scared to go after Harvard’s hardened team of lawyers?

Great news for fans of Nokia phones. All new Nokia handsets will now come with unlimited music downloads from Sony BMG for one year as part of Nokia’s new music service.

The “Comes With Music” campaign was launched by Nokia last year. It meant that Nokia users had access to unlimited music downloads from Universal. Now, the mobile giant has added Sony BMG into the mix.

All the songs Nokia users download will be theirs to keep. If you cancel your subscription, you won’t lose all the music downloads you’ve accumulated.

Nokia is opening up new doors in the world of music downloads. This surely gives the phone maker an edge over the iPhone. Nokia has a lot of ground to make up in terms of mobile music downloads, but this should go some way to evening out the playing field.

The US Federal Communications Commission chairman was before senators this week testifying about the network management techniques employed by Comcast. He said that Comcast definitely blocked access to P2P filesharing networks. Not only that, but it did it on a regular basis.

Comcast used several techniques to block its own users’ access to filesharing programs like Limewire and Ares. He added that this was not used only sometimes with the intention of delaying traffic, but rather, it was a full onslaught against filesharing.

Several consumer groups have filed complaints against Comcast, stating that the ISP blocked and tampered with access to filesharing network without good reason. Comcast has since defended its actions, although it’s clear that the company is in a spot of bother now.

Many of Comcast’s user were not able to access filesharing services in the past.

UK retailer Tesco recently launched a new service for music downloads. Starting next month, Tesco Digital will give users access to music downloads for iPods and other MP3 players with a selection of more than 3.3 millions tracks available for download.

Less importantly, there will also be about 100 flash games available for free download.

The service will be available from the Tesco Extra store in Portman Road, Wokingham. We’re sure this isn’t the only store the service will be available from, but we found this news on a local website.

Although Tesco is only beginning with legal music downloads, it’s expected that in the future, there will be movies and TV shows available for legal download. With the sort of sway that Tesco has over UK consumers, you can expect that this will be a big thing. Tesco, however, has never been a champion in terms of selling music to consumers. Retailers such as Asda have always done a much better job at bringing cheap music to the general public.

The name Ares conjures up a number of different things to different people, and its meaning is sensitive to the context into which it is introduced.

First up, and perhaps the most influential of the three meanings is of Ares the Greek War God; a truly nasty, vindictive and violent man. He stands alone among the other gods of was as being the one dedicated to savage warfare, bloodlust and slaughter. He was the epitome of brawn over brains.

NASA decided that naming their rockets after this particularly nasty deity was a grand idea and the Ares V rocket – planned for release in the 2019 – complements Ares I which is being designed as a crew launch vehicle.

Last, but certainly not least, is the Ares the P2P filesharing software. This is probably the most omniscient of all the definitions and certainly the one most likely to be recognized by younger readers.

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A study by the Ponemon Institute has said that people are unaware of the dangers associated with using P2P filesharing programs like Limewire and Ares. IT security organizations are, apparently, ignorant of the risks that filesharing networks pose to their businesses.

Several large financial firms suffered data breaches in 2007 because of P2P filesharing networks. Client data was exposed. Sensitive files are readily available over filesharing network to those with the technical know-how to find them.

Companies make thousands of documents available over filesharing networks daily. Anyone can gain access to these documents. 26% of those surveyed were unaware of any policies at their place of work addressing the issue of filesharing.

More disturbingly, 35% of those surveyed were convinced that sensitive documents cannot be mistakenly transferred over filesharing networks. Only 25% thought that their company would be able to prevent such a filesharing disaster from occurring.

Note to self: stop using Limewire at work.

Filesharing in Europe received a major boost this week with the announcement that the European Parliament has stated that filesharing should not be a criminal offense. More specifically, downloading copyrighted music and movies should not be punishable by law.

This is fantastic news. The key is here: “Criminalising consumers who are not seeking to make a profit is not the right solution to combat digital piracy.”

Most people who use filesharing to find free music downloads are not doing so for profit; they are doing it because they want to listen to music. It’s not the same as a thief who goes into a shop and steals a CD because he needs money.

This announcement could indicate a shift in opinion as the worldwide filesharing debacle rages on. This report is not binding, but it serves the purpose of putting forward new ideas to the European Commission.

Comcast, America’s largest ISP, has made a move to stop government regulation of the Internet, with the proposal of a filesharing bill of rights.

Despite being under investigation for meddling with users’ connection to filesharing networks, Comcast is keen on the idea of a “bill of rights and responsibilities” for users of filesharing programs like Limewire.

Comcast has already promised to stop interfering with access to filesharing services. This bill of rights would lay out what is an acceptable sue of filesharing technology. Comcast says that the move would help filesharing companies.

This could be a step forward in the battle to legalize filesharing and have it regulated. Whether or not this will be good for filesharing and free music downloads remains to be seen.

The main reason why Comcast is doing this is because the company desperately wants to avoid government intervention when it comes to filesharing.