[LINK] CNN, Octoshape and Obama

Pilcher, Fred Fred.Pilcher at act.gov.au
Fri Feb 6 14:17:18 AEDT 2009


This article  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octoshape) is about the use
of Octoshape by CNN during the live streaming of President Obama's
inauguration.

The gist of it is:

"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."

The suggestion is that up to 30% of viewers may have allowed CNN to
install the Octoshape software on their computers without fully
understanding what they were agreeing to.

If the article's correct, and it certainly seems plausible, it would be
a fairly serious issue of bandwidth hijacking, yet I couldn't find any
other reference to it as a problem.

Are they overstating the case?

Fred 
  
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