Monday, August 29, 2005

Fraud: not all bad news

CacheLogic reports that BitTorrent is losing out to eDonkey. But what is most striking is the amount of P2P traffic. In 2004 it accounted for 60% of all internet traffic.
Guess who is riding this wave of (probably mostly) illegal file sharing? Telcos and internet providers, a.o. Could these parties be the subject of a legal battle because of secondary liability? Doesn't look like it.

In a way it reminds me of the click fraud phenomenon. Google et al benefit from this illegal activity (even though they are being sued).

Moving on, we get to Niklas Zennström, co-founder of both Skype and Kazaa. Because of his activities for the latter, he cannot enter the US.

The next step is only a small one: Vonage's Jeff Citron. Using an earlier company he ran, Datek, he committed fraud and settled the matter with the SEC for $22.5m. He is now planning his company's IPO.

To make full circle in the T.I.M. universe, let's not forget about Hank Asher. He flew seven plane loads of cocaine into the US, but in a new life he succeeded in making hundreds of millions by selling his company (Seisint) to Reed Elsevier.

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