The New York Times has a timely article about the increasing popularity Created Strange, it took US 12 hours to download the latest from the New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most Shared Shows: Number of files shared during the week ending Jan. 16. Source: Big Champagne The New York Times has a timely article about the increasing popularity of recording, swapping and downloading TV shows. Apparently, this activity is illegal. Who … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/sharedd.jpg\")
Most Shared Shows: Number of files shared during the week ending Jan.
\n 16. Source: Big Champagne<\/a><\/p>\n
\n of recording, swapping and downloading TV shows. Apparently, this activity
\n is illegal. Who knew? Much of the article deals with BitTorrent, which seems to be some kind
\n of hacker’s Napster…<\/em> <\/p>\n
\n by Bram Cohen, a 29-year-old programmer in Bellevue, Wash., BitTorrent
\n breaks files hundreds or thousands of times
\n bigger than a song file into small pieces to speed its path to the Internet
\n and then to your computer. On the kind of peer-to-peer site that gave
\n the music industry night sweats, an episode of "Desperate Housewives" that
\n some fan copied and posted on the Internet can take hours to download;
\n on BitTorrent, it arrives in minutes. BitTorrent may sound like some
\n obscure techno-trickery, but more than 20 million people have already
\n downloaded the application. Each week dozens of shows are shared by hundreds
\n of thousands of people. "The Simpsons," "Family Guy" and "Friends" top
\n the most-popular list, but even "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Trading
\n Spaces" and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" landed in
\n the Top 20 for the week ending Jan. 16, according to Big Champagne, which
\n measures file-sharing activity.<\/p>\n
\n episode of "Desperate Housewives," which we just got through watching
\n on the laptop snuggled under the down comforter with Norma Yvonne, who
\n has become a big fan, of Desperate Housewives and the down comforter.
\n Maybe we need to update our software our upgrade our internet connection.
\n Of course, we are only previewing the program for inclusion in our American
\n Culture class at BU. Each week, we have been snipping a few scenes, and
\n writing exercises exploring the language and cultural themes, like attitudes
\n towards infidelity, suburban morality between Red States and Blue States
\n (where does the story take place, anyway?), socioeconomic
\n stratification on Wisteria Lane, teenage slang and dating habits, pharmacalogical
\n treatment of psychological disorders, the list goes one and on. Of course,
\n some weeks we get caught up in a half-hour discussion of "Can anybody
\n really be as dumb as Susan?" The students love it, and we feel it really
\n does capture the cultural pulse of the nation in a way NPR can only dream
\n about.<\/em><\/p>\n