With the increasingly aggressive position being taken by organisations such as the RIAA, BPI, MPAA, the British Games Organisation it is not surprising that a new advancement in peer to peer technology has occured to make the P2P data transfer anonymous.  This article on O’Reilly describes a new bread of P2P that makes the traffic anonymous – ONLamp.com — Anonymous, Open Source P2P with MUTE.

The effect of P2P clients such as this getting traction is that it will become increasingly harder for industry bodies to understand how to at least try and contain losses to piracy (real or perceived) and utilise the technologies to propel marketing and promotional activities – so shooting themselves in the foot.

The International Herald Tribune has interesting piece on Peter Gabriel and his subtle but important influence on music in the digital age – Cutting edge rocker blazes trail in digital age – International Herald Tribune.

Radiohead’s latest video is certainly gaining a lot of attention, purely because of the fact that it was shot without any cameras.  The end result is amazing. As you can see …

But having an engineering background I found the short video clip about how the video was made, just as intriguing…

The BPI (formerly British Phonographic Industry)  along with Virgin Media have started getting tough with people they believe are downloading illegally.  Virgin Media according to BBC News have sent out 800 letters to people they believe are illegally downloading warning them that they may face being disconnected and possibly legal action.  This is probably a step up on the BPI’s RIAA like campaign and probably to help apply pressure with the negotiations with ISPs about dealing with illegal downloading of music (previous blog here). The downloading information has been provided by the BPI to Virgin Media according the BPI’s new page (here) – interesting given that the similar approach by the RIAA is coming under increasing legal questioning in the US. 

The chief executive of the BPI told the BBC that the BPI in very bullish terms that if necessary the BPI will take the ISPs to court and win, including ISPs who will not participate in their actions such as Carphone Warehouse. This is also very reminiscent of the RIAA’s early campaign.  It seems to me that the BPI have not looked at the way the US litigation for the RIAA is going which has resulted in both counter cases, a lot of embarrassing revelations about how the cases have been built.  Not to mention that a number of US record executives and artists have been publicly disagreeing with the RIAA.

Interviews with a few of those affected so far suggests that Virgin Media may stand to lose subscribers as the perceived invasion of digital privacy talks hold, plus the ISP dictating how people can use the service that they’re paying for.