One was Comcast, which in 2008 was punished by the F.C.C. for blocking access by some of its users to the file-sharing service BitTorrent, which was often used for the unauthorized exchange of movies or music.
The Recording Industry of America has filed almost 1,000 subpoenas in Federal District Court in Washington, requesting information from educational institutions and Internet service providers on users of KaZaa, the file-sharing service.
In the United States, users of the BitTorrent file-sharing service, a large generator of broadband traffic, last year challenged a cable operator, Comcast, that had blocked the service by identifying and disabling a common protocol used by BitTorrent users.
Moreover, the file-sharing model of our system can be divided into real-time streaming media sharing and file sharing.
Tracking down the numeric Internet protocol, or I.P., address employed by any given user of a file-sharing network is relatively easy.
The Motion Picture Association of America announced legal actions against some users of a file-sharing technology that makes downloading huge files like movies quick and easy.
In June a poll of Swedish users of file-sharing software found that 60% had cut back or stopped using it; of those, half had switched to advertising-supported streaming services like Spotify.
Some are users of illegal file-sharing networks who want to be harder to track down.
BitTorrent claims to have 170 million active users of its file-sharing clients – BitTorrent and uTorrent – and it's this audience that it's pitching to musicians, broadcasters and other media firms and creators.
One frequent user of file-sharing software, who insisted on anonymity, said that the fear of being identified might cause some Internet users to think twice before making files available on their hard drives for others to copy.
