"Go A-squad! Move, move, move, he is uploading the new
James Blunt album," might have been the words uttered outside a
flat in Teesside last week, as officers moved in to shut down one
of the largest illegal file-sharing websites in Europe. The UK-run
website allegedly leaked as many as 60 major pre-release albums in
2007, according to reports from the International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry.
Given that this has been a fairly lacklustre year for releases,
it is ironic that one of the best albums of the year was released
free of charge, quite legally, courtesy of Radiohead.
Downtime wonders how the band coped with the excessive bandwidth
demands placed on its website, and whether it used any wireless
area network optimisation technologies to cope with the surge in
demand.
When we asked the band to comment, we got a response that
sounded like "go away, computerhead".
