Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - The Most Trusted Name in News Just Stole Your Computer

			November 23, 2009 Log in / Register
			Text Size

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence

The Guantanamo Lawyers: Shipwrecked

Claire Wasserman on Europe's Islamic Immigrants

Battlefield in the War of Ideas

'Left, Right & Center': The Geithner-Summers Backlash; Is Palin Dangerous?

Obama’s Third Way in Afghanistan
By E.J. Dionne

Battlefield in the War of Ideas
By Eugene Robinson

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence
By David Sirota

Despite Subsidies, Class Sizes Rise in California Schools
By Louis Freedberg and Hugo Cabrera, California Watch

Let the Debate Begin

U.S. Weighs a Greenhouse Gas Target

Hamas Stills the Rockets

Iran to Test Its Readiness

Obama’s Job Approval Slips Below 50 Percent

Brit Warns Against Leaving Afghanistan

‘Left, Right & Center’: The Geithner-Summers Backlash; Is Palin Dangerous?

Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple

Yuletide Weirdness With Your Host, Bob Dylan

Hedges and Friends Debate Illusion, Conservatism and 9/11

The Guantanamo Lawyers: Shipwrecked
By Baher Azmy

Freedom’s Fight: Part II
By Gary Phillips

Claire Wasserman on Europe’s Islamic Immigrants
By Claire Wasserman

Oprah Sets Her Show’s Expiration Date

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Vetting Sarah Palin

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

The Most Trusted Name in News Just Stole Your Computer

windowssecrets.com

Visitors to CNN’s Web site looking to watch streaming video of the inauguration on Jan. 20 got this message: “For faster, better video, click ‘yes’ here.” Doing so installed a peer-to-peer plug-in that transferred the bandwidth responsibility of streaming the video from CNN to the users, taking over visitors’ computers and potentially saving CNN a boatload of cash in the process.

Distributed downloading can be efficient, and there’s nothing wrong with a major media company trying something new, but there are a number of ethical and technical concerns that could have been avoided if CNN had simply bothered to tell its visitors what clicking “yes” would actually do.

Windows Secrets:

Many people who watched live streaming video of the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 20 may not realize that their PC was used to send the video to other PCs, too.

Clicking “yes” to a CNN.com dialog box installed a peer-to-peer (P2P) application that uses your Internet bandwidth rather than CNN’s to send live video to other viewers.

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement

TAGS: cnn inauguration internet media obama technology video web

Related Entries

November 23, 2009 Obama’s Third Way in Afghanistan
November 21, 2009 Obama’s Job Approval Slips Below 50 Percent
November 20, 2009 Lou Dobbs for President?
November 20, 2009 Obama Warns of Iran Sanctions
November 20, 2009 Battlefield in the War of Ideas

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

Previous item: Senators Hammering Out Workable Stimulus

Next item: Pentagon Propaganda Is Booming

Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By geeks, October 8 at 6:56 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

That was an inspiring post,

would it not just show up with a anti virus scan that there is somthing hidden within the file.. and i agree wit h the opinon the internet is great censored over the past few years.. and that is great…..for some.

Thanks for writing about it

Report this

By KDelphi, February 8 at 4:33 pm #

The internet is more censored and cynical than it was 10 years ago. You might not notice it if you were always online.

I was offline for years. When I came back on, I couldnt believe it.

Report this

By ocjim, February 7 at 6:07 pm #

The business community has been infected with the Bush-neocon virus of lies, misinformation, distortion, and deceit. The greedy and self-serving have chosen to be immune to decency while our laws, our media, and the voters have allowed crooks like Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Rove, and many others to escape without facing justice, thus pardoning this criminal behavior for all future times.

Ironically, only morality—something the neocons erroneously claim for themselves—is all that keeps us more honest since most poorer lawbreakers are behind bars.

Report this

By Margaret Currey, February 7 at 10:21 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I trust the computer less and less, when I get junk in my e-mail box I do not read it I just eleminate it as soon as possible, I download nothing, I do not go for the okey doke because you have to watch your back all the time, if large corporations can trick people into paying for their game they will do it after all who goes after large corporations?

THE TIME FOR CHANGE CAN COME NONE TOO SOON.

Report this

By Hatchcover, February 6 at 1:54 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

cyrena - it means “your goose is cooked”!

Ah that’s too bad cause I loved reading your comments on TD.

Report this

By wok3, February 6 at 8:06 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

As near as I can tell, what CNN did is use those who clicked “yes” to distrubute video, saving them a ton on bandwidth usage. Many ISP are proposing or implementing caps on how much bandwidth a person could use, so this software could easily put you over the limits set even though you yourself did nothing wrong.

Report this

By cyrena, February 5 at 10:12 pm #

Oh Jeeze…what does it all MEAN?!?

I read the entire article, and none of that stuff clicks in my mind. Does this mean that if I watched streaming Inaugural video from CNN on my computer, that I’m now hooked into the Oceania mainframe? Forever after?

Does it mean Cheney has a direct hook-up to my computer now?

Does it mean that I can get even MORE paranoid?

What should I do? Is my computer now permanently infected?

Woe is me.

Report this