[Infowarrior] - CNN video player is P2P concern

[Richard Forno]

Watch a live video, share your PC with CNN
By Brian Livingston

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.

The P2P application is called Octoshape Grid Delivery and is managed  
by Octoshape ApS, a company based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Web surfers who visit CNN.com and select a live video stream for the  
first time see in their browsers a dialog box, shown in Figure 1,  
saying, "This site requires the Octoshape Grid Delivery enhancement  
for Adobe Flash Player." The dialog box doesn't appear when playing an  
ordinary video file, only when starting a live feed. (Feeds labeled  
LIVE typically appear in the upper-right corner of CNN.com's home page  
during business hours.)

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