ISPs

A free lunch for Netflix?

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See the bios of Robert Hahn and Peter Passell below.

All right, we'll say it: We love Netflix, the company that has made it so easy to watch any of thousands of movies anywhere, with hardly a moment's forethought. And we're not alone. The company boasts close to 26 million subscribers in the United States and Canada, and it recently announced plans to expand to 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

But Netflix can't succeed without a lot of help from its partners in the digital supply chain. The company is only as good as the programming it offers. And content owners are apparently inclined to drive a harder bargain these days: Netflix paid a whopping nine times as much for streaming rights in the second quarter of 2011 as it did the same quarter a year earlier.

More relevant here is Netflix's rapid shift from being a supplier of rental DVDs by mail to video-streaming delivery on demand. The company last month separated its DVD-by-mail service from its streaming business by creating a DVD-only subscription and raising the base price for the combined service by nearly 60 percent, a move that raised the ire of many subscribers. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1506: Copyright Cops (Podcast)

Antuan Goodwin joins us today to discuss the ISP's agreement to become the Copyright Cops of the internet. Should we fear them? We also talk about driving while talking on the phone and whether or not it is safe. And we continue to follow all of the hacking stories and possible vulnerabilities in our devices. Also the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches for it's final voyage into outer space!

Best of Buzz Out Loud 7: Sega hacks, Lytro, and Amish sexting (Podcast)

This week in tech news, even hackers don't think you should hack Sega! Plus, the end of unlimited data at Verizon, the Lytro camera wows us, and ISPs go antipiracy on us.

Net time tracker

Net Usage Item is a free Firefox add-on that tracks Internet usage and displays it in Firefox's interface as a percentage and a progress bar. It can help users carefully monitor their access time or bandwidth, which can be critical to avoiding fees and penalties for exceeding your quota or subscription. The only trouble with it is that it probably doesn't support your ISP or even your country, unless you live in Australia, New Zealand, India, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Poland, or Ukraine. Many Internet users enjoy unlimited access or even broadband and don't need to keep tabs … Read more

Report: 20,000 users added to 'Hurt Locker' suit

Voltage Pictures, the studio behind "The Hurt Locker," has added nearly 20,000 IP addresses to its piracy lawsuit, a new report claims.

According to enthusiast site TorrentFreak, Voltage Pictures last week delivered to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia the IP addresses of more people that it believes pirated copies of "The Hurt Locker." The newly added IP addresses are in addition to the 5,000 identified when the studio filed the lawsuit last year.

According to alleged court documents obtained by TorrentFreak, Voltage Pictures attorneys identified 10,532 Comcast customers … Read more

Comcast, Time Warner join IPv6 test program

Comcast and Time Warner Cable, two major Internet service providers, will participate in the World IPv6 Day testing June 8 to help test readiness for the next-generation Internet Protocol.

Because the two companies are crucial gateways to the Internet for millions of people, their test will be an important--both for trying their own technology and for supplying some IPv6 users who can help other's setup. The companies announced the test today.

Internet Protocol version 6 supplies a vastly larger address space for attaching computers to the Internet than IPv4, which was established with a paltry 4.3 billion addresses … Read more

Do we need the Internet for a revolution?

In the last two years I have read at least a dozen books that champion the Internet as the key to personal and political freedom. Scholars and academics have come to see digital communication as a near messiah in power and prescience.

However, I believe that the current revolution in Egypt should temper our faith in the Internet.

The Egyptian government has cut off the digital tools that we have come to rely on. All ISPs are shut down, cell phone service has been cut, and Al Jazeera has lost its license to broadcast within the country.

Yet the people … Read more