OStatic

If you thought the RIAA had cornered the market on heavy-handed, misguided lawsuits, think again. TorrentFreak reports that the Societe civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) plan on pursuing a lawsuit against three US-based companies that develop P2P applications. Vuze, LimeWire, and Shareaza are the applications targeted in the lawsuit. There is a fourth company named that's not a developer, or a P2P site -- it's a repository.

It's actually not just any repository. It is, for many, the repository for open source applications -- Sourceforge.

Mac-based open source enthusiasts had plenty of great reading material to find around the Internet over the last few days. From free alternatives to expensive Mac applications and patched bugs, to free BitTorrent options and an open computer that ships with the latest version of Mac OS X, there has been much buzz.

Here's what you need to know.

Last week the Canadian public media service, the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) became the first major North American broadcaster to distribute a DRM-free download of a primetime television show via BitTorrent. The download was not only DRM free, it didn?t contain any commercials or license based copy restrictions. In fact the CBC website proclaimed ?You are free to download, share and burn this video?. This is how I like my media served.

The Pirate Bay will move away from the BitTorrent protocol within the next 12 months, one of the site's admins has announced in a video interview. The Pirate Bay is actively developing its own, yet-to-be-named P2P protocol that will feature added security measures to foil spammers and other enhancements. The team is said to already have a working software in place but is still hammering out the details of the protocol itself, which will be open source.

NBC Universal (GE) President Jeff Zucker wants more technological solutions to be used in the battle to combat piracy, and is specifically calling on ISPs, video-sharing sites, universities and others to implement better filtering systems. But until - and even if - that happens, content companies will have to rely on the services of copyright monitoring and enforcement services like BayTSP.

P2P is where it's at for online video these days. Not a week goes by without an announcement of a new P2P platform or distribution deal. It's easy to see why folks are excited about this: distributed data delivery can save you a lot of money, plus it's technology that millions of people already use to get their Harry Potter.

Hollywood execs reportedly got all giddy when they heard about the P2P-powered Vudu box. The jury is still out on Vudu's actual chances in the market place, but the device is a good example for a growing trend of P2P leaving the safe and boring world of the desktop P2P.

Bittorrent downloads are either illegal or DRM-infected, right? Wrong. There are plenty of websites out there that offer free and legal Torrent downloads to save bandwidth and make file sharers happy at the same time. Granted, sites like The Pirate Bay are still the major source for Bittorrent traffic. But legitimate platforms offer enough video goodies to clog your tubes for days. Here are 10 great places to get started: