Recently there was a secret meeting held by the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) and one of the proposals they had to fight copyright infringement leaked out to the web and it has a great number of people worried.

The proposal is for a China-like firewall to block sites that they deem to be inappropriate, meaning any sites that they feel contribute to violating copyright laws.

This of course puts sites like The Pirate Bay right in their cross-hairs as they are the big bad infringer in the eyes of the entertainment industry.

So it is no surprise that The Pirate Bay has come out strongly against this to the point that they believe that a Battle of the Internets is imminent.

Using the “this was their finest hour” by Winston Churchill but reworked the Pirate Bay posted their declaration of war against Internet censorship advocates.

The finest hour

February 2011, MAFIAA Lobbyists began a massive attack against the European Union.

Defending the union were seeds and peers of The Pirate Bay along with the Telecomix, Anons, and the Pirate parties. The MAFIAA relied on an aggressive battle plan, utilizing modern communications such as radio and telefax to direct troops in the field. The Allies, for their part, assumed a defensive posture, just as they had done at the start of World Internets War of 2003, and in many cases still relied on irc.

As a result, the MAFIAA blitzkrieg caught the Allies off-guard. MAFIAA’s smooth talks and bribes against key players in the EU staged a surprise attack, then turned northward and soon surrounded the bulk of the EU headquarters in Belgium.

After just a few weeks of battle, MAFIAA’s armies had conquered the right, the left and the liberal parties.

I expect that the Battle of Internets is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of an Uncensored civilization! Upon it depends our own free life, and the long continuity of our sites and our trackers. The whole fury and might of the enemy will very soon be turned on us.

MAFIAA knows that they will have to break us in Brussels or lose the war. If we can stand up to them, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the free internets and its multitude of sites last for a thousand years, citizens will still say, This was their finest hour.

Yours Winston Bay

 

Pirate Bay channels Winston Churchill, calls for Battle of the Internets is a post from: The Inquisitr

Are you watching the 2011 Golden Globes tonight?

The Oscar warmup is on, and we’ve got the results live, as they happen. So far we have random British people interviewing celebrities on the red carpet, and Claire Danes and Catherine Zeta-Jones are discussing their dresses. Did you know if you’re Claire Danes, Calvin Klein makes dresses for you?

7:50 Anne Hathaway is twenty feet tall. The moar you know. She’s subtexting about totally banging Jake Gyllenhaal. Jimmy Fallon says the Golden Globes is like “one of the coolest parties.” Random British lady says Michelle Williams, Natalie Portman and Olivia Wilde are the hottest bitches on the red carpet tonight. Natalie Portman looks all pregnant and stuff.

7:58 Random British lady says January Jones has a “bangin’” body, and also would like to add she has “Bieber fever,” and he side hugs. Carson Daly is still insufferable. How is is still on TV?

8PM Yay, no more Carson Daly! Ricky Gervais is out. He is still smarmy. Opens with a gratuitous Charlie Sheen joke. LEAVE CHER ALONE, RICKY. Oooh, he called the Sex and the City girls old. Burn.

OMG he just called Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Scientologists “gay.” On the subject of Lost, Gervais said he’s not sure what happened, but he thinks “the fat one ate them all.”

8:05 Scarlett Johanssen is presenting, and her hair is insane. Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, Christian Bale wins! No idea what he’s saying.

LL Cool J and some blonde are presenting Best Actress in a TV Series (Drama), which goes to Katey Sagal for her awesome portrayal of Gemma in Sons of Anarchy. She is very cute and surprised. Her first Golden Globe. Shocking. They are musicing her after like five seconds!

8:16 Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore are presenting Best Mini-Series or Movie (Television), along with Joe Mantegna’s daughter. And the winner is… Carlos? They are musicing the French guy, but he will not be cowed, and continues to be French at us.

8:21 Bwahahaha, Ashton Kutcher’s dad, Bruce Willis. Now he’s gone, and Leighton Meester is presenting Best Supporting Actor (Television), along with some dude. The Golden Globe goes TO CHRIS COLFER FOR GLEE! Yay, Kurt! OMG, he is so cute and excited and said he dropped his heart between Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Now he’s shouting out the baby gays and he talks so fast! This is, of course, Chris Colfer’s first Golden Globe. So sweet!

8:30 Michelle Pfieffer is talking about Alice in Wonderland. Now Eva Longoria is coming on to present something, I think. She’s presenting some guy with creepy hair. Like Nicholas Cage’s “your argument is invalid” hair. Kevin Bacon and some chick Milla Jovovich are presenting Best Actor in TV Series (Drama).

How is this Steve Buscemi’s first win? He’s so awesome as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire. They’re already musicing him.

8:37 Boardwalk Empire also takes Best TV Series (Drama). Which it deserves, but The Walking Dead is awesome, too. (Weirdness, the Ted Williams Mac & Cheese commercial just played! Do they have the Golden Globes in rehab?)

8:44 Some British guy from The Social Network cannot read the teleprompter. Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Lopez are awkward. Did she just criticize his singing? This is the most outrageous thing I’ve seen all night. Best Original Song goes to “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from Burlesque, and some lady named Diane Warren. She dedicated her win to murdered publicist Ronni Chasen.

Best Original Score goes to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Network. Trent Reznor looks exactly the same as he did when I was in high school.

8:55 Justin Bieber takes the stage to present Best Animated Feature Film. Toy Story 3 wins. Ricky Gervais lost his jacket. He’s implying all the stuff Robert Downey Jr. has done is gay, and threw in a crack about RDJ’s drug use. RDJ snarked back. Now he’s saying he tried to sleep with all his former co-stars. Oooh! He said “I’d give it to all five of you. At once.” Dirty.

The award RDJ is presenting is Best Actress (Comedy or Musical), which goes to Annette Bening, for The Kids are Alright.

9:10 That was a long commercial break. Sylvester Stallone is inexplicably on stage, presenting a montage of The Fighter. Now Geoffrey Rush and Tilda Swinton are presenting, and Tilda Swinton looks reliably insane and is wearing a bedsheet and no lipstick. The Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Mini Series or TV Movie goes to Al Pacino, for You Don’t Know Jack. Apparently, Al Pacino gets to talk as long as he wants with no music, so screw you Steve Buscemi.

Claire Danes wins Best Actress in a Mini Series or TV Movie, for Temple Grandin- her second win after My So Called Life. Temple Grandin is in the audience. “Everyone was so viiiital,” Danes whines.

9:23 Oh, hello, Zac Efron. Looking inappropriately handsome. Ricky Gervais introduces Tina Fey and Steve Carrell by saying Carrell is ungrateful for leaving The Office. Aaron Sorkin wins Best Screenplay for The Social Network. I think he’s on mushrooms. Sorkin says elite isn’t a “bad word,” which I think is a bit of a political jibe there.

Two boys are presenting Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, and the Golden Globe goes to Jane Lynch! For her awesome Sue Sylvester!

9:37 Olivia Wilde and Robert Pattinson derp the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe to In a Better World. Helen Mirren just said “inseminated.” She is still very old.

Vanessa Williams is now presenting with an action figure of Blair Underwood for Best Actress in a TV Series (Drama), and Laura Linney, who was too cool to show up, wins.

9:46 Jane Fonda is onstage, presenting a Burlesque montage. Now there are two people presenting Best Actor in a TV Series (Comedy), and Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory wins.

Jeremy Irons is presenting Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, and Melissa Leo wins for The Fighter.

9:58 Matt Damon is presenting the Cecil B. DeMille award to Robert DeNiro, who looks exactly like my dad. Who is Cecil DeMille? Look it up on Wikipedia, like everyone else is going to do tonight. Montage time. I guess we forgot about Focker Babies or whatever that movie was called. (Update: he said he did it for the money.) Oooh, off color immigrant joke! He gets a standing O.

10:13 Megan Fox is talking about The Tourist, and she looks amazing. Annette Bening is presenting Best Director for a Motion Picture, and the Golden Globes goes to David Fincher, for The Social Network.

January Jones and Jimmy Fallon are presenting. She is wearing red tape on her boobs. January Jones’ boobs. They’re presenting Best TV Series (Comedy or Musical), and Glee wins!

10:25 Halle Berry is presenting Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical), and Johnny Depp has been nominated twice. However, Paul Giamatti wins.

10:32 Is Joseph Gordon Levitt faking a British accent? Inception montage. Jeff Bridges is presenting Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama). The Golden Globe goes to Natalie Portman, for Black Swan.

Tim Allen and Tom Hanks are presenting Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical), and The Kids are Alright wins.

10:46 Sandra Bullock is presenting Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama). Colin Firth wins for The King’s Speech.

10:54 Michael Douglas is presenting the last award of the evening, and jokes that there “has to be an easier way to get a standing ovation.” He is presenting Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama), and the award goes to, unsurprisingly, The Social Network. It is official, Facebook has completely usurped our lives and entertainment industry.

10:59 Wrapped! Are you excited for the Oscars?

Liveblogging: 68th Annual Golden Globes 2011 results is a post from: The Inquisitr

64-year-old longtime publicist Ronni Chasen was shot to death early this morning in Beverly Hills, just hours after attending the premiere of the film Burlesque.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing. Chasen was taken from the scene to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where she was subsequently pronounced dead. One of Chasen’s longstanding clients, Diane Warren, commented to Entertainment Weekly on the incident:

“It’s very shocking,” songwriter Diane Warren, a longtime client of Chasen, told EW. “I was with her at the Burlesque premiere. I saw her just before she got in her car. It could have been any of us.”

Warren continued:

“This is just f—ing insane. I don’t want to use the word ‘was’ with her. She’s a great person. Probably the most loved person in this town. She’s the best there is. Who would want to hurt her? Nobody would want to hurt her. Did someone follow her from [the premiere]? Did they want to steal her car? It’s utterly senseless. I hope [the police] find some answers, but it still won’t bring her back.”

Police have not disclosed whether the incident is believed to have been random, or if they think Chasen was specifically targeted.

Veteran publicist Ronni Chasen shot to death in Beverly Hills is a post from: The Inquisitr

Dear President Obama,

I am writing this open letter to you in the hopes that you might be able to explain why it is that the United States Government is so actively trying to hide all information regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

I remember when you were elected as the president of your great country that I, like a lot of people suddenly had high hopes for the United States after the dark years of the Bush Administration. You see even though I might be a Canadian the fact that for the first time in its history your country saw past the color barrier and elected a black president. That, on top of your election platform, gave not only your country great pause but the rest of the world as well.

But increasingly the hopes and dreams of your election seem to becoming more of an illusion. I’m not referring to your recent healthcare victory but rather your government’s stance on matters that are going to have far ranging effects on the world as a whole.

Sure everyone is pre-occupied with your recent discussions regarding the nuclear issue which I must say is providing great cover for what is potentially the most far ranging slaughter of copyright and intellectual property laws we have ever seen. Yet your government is doing everything it can to make sure that any agreements reached remain a secret.

This from a government that promised its people, and by extension the people of the world, that there would be a new transparency with your government but increasingly we seem to be finding it is actually quite the opposite.

Nowhere is this more evident than when the subject of ACTA comes up as James Love recently found when he requested under your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) only to be told that documents pertaining to ACTA were considered state secrets (pdf of denial letter)

Today we received this letter from the White House, Office of the United States Trade Representative. Our FOIA request was denied on the grounds that the documents are “information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”

As well as Canada’s esteemed Professor of Internet and E-Commerce Law Michael Geist pointed out today that the US is the primary force behind the increasing effort to pull all future discussions surround ACTA back into the shadows

The text of the treaty can be released without regard for the level of agreement on substantive issues.  Yet unlike most other ACTA countries that have called for transparency without condition, the U.S. has set conditions that effectively seeks to trade its willingness to release the text for gains on the substance of the text.  The only thing needed to reach consensus on sharing the text with the public is for the U.S. to give the go-ahead.  This statement indicates they will only do so for a price.

I understand that the entertainment industry are really big contributors to election campaigns but they are also the driving force behind the original drafting of ACTA and its subsequent adoption by various friendly governments around the world – Canada included. However President Obama this self-same group of global entertainment conglomerates are using ACTA to perform an end-run around the laws of your country.

As I pointed out in an earlier post ACTA as an international trade agreement can be used as a great big club against countries who decide at some point that t he rights of the actual creators and the consumers are more important than the entertainment industry’s right to hold all content hostage. That includes the country that you are president of Mr. Obama.

This so-called trade agreement has the potential to forever change the copyright landscape and yet the United States Government sees fit to hide all the dealing to do with it behind a shroud of secrecy. Why is this President Obama especially in light of your promise of change and transparency?

If there was ever a time, ever a reason, for openness and total transparency ACTA is that time. If there was ever a time to keep your word to the American people ACTA is that time.

So how about it President Obama – can we have some of the truth and openness? Or does the entertainment industry truly hold the keys to power?

Sincerely,

Steven Hodson – concerned citizen of Canada who is about to get his rights stomped all over.

Dear President Obama: About this ACTA secrecy thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

We are coming up to a watershed moment in the existence of the Internet and very few people seem to care. Right now there are two separate events happening that will have a direct impact on both the Internet we have right now and the one we will have in the future.

While they might seem like two disparate events they are in fact being lead by one industry. Under the guise of copyright infringement and piracy the entertainment as a whole is spearheading the adoption of the Digital Economy Bill in England and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which would be global in impact.

It is easy to shrug our collective shoulders over the Digital Economy Bill suggesting that it’s strictly a British problem and doesn’t affect the rest of at all. Well one only has to look at the persuasive use of CCTV in Britain and how it became the template for other countries like the U.S. to follow suite to see how foolish that argument is.

When I first wrote about the Digital Economy Bill here back in August of 2009 it was in light of how the original bill was changed after a weekend meeting get-together on the Greek island of Corfu. This little confab consisted of Lord Mandelson, the British business secretary, members of the Rothschild banking dynasty; who paid for the retreat, and David Geffen, an American billionaire record producer.

Prior to this retreat in sunny Corfu the Digital Economy Bill was actually a forward looking document that the British government hoped would take the country into the next millennium. After the trip though it suddenly became a totally different beast all together that saw everyone using the Internet as a criminal.

Now just this past week thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing we find out that this new Digital Economy Bill that is now before the British Parliament not only will treat web users as criminals but it is also being used to create a process that will see unelected officials able to do just about anything without Parliamentary oversight or control as long as it is done in the name of protecting copyright.

Doctorow was able to get his hands on some reliable information (via a British Labour Government source) and points to the three specific arguments that Lord Mandelson uses for justifying the revamped bill

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to “confer rights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

As Doctorow points out in this post, and a follow-up to it, unelected officials like Lord Mandelson would have the power to create and run a private copyright police force that wouldn’t answer to anyone.

But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

Now it would be a common reaction from the rest of us in the world to shrug our shoulders saying ah it’s a British problem, if they want to let this happen it’s their own fault and carry on our way. The problem is that besides recent history showing that this is a short-sighted position to take there is also another much more subtle and potentially dangerous change to individual country laws.

Under the guise of protecting corporate copyrights a new global treaty; think WTO, WIPO, WHO etc., called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is being created and agreed to in secret. The secrecy around ACTA is so persuasive that anyone viewing the actual agreement and participating in the talks around it are forced to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even had to go to court to force the release of any documents surrounding the Treaty.

This is a treaty that has been written by the entertainment industry and then promoted to governments around the world and being the necessary way to protect the status quo in a world that is changing to fast for many people – especially in the corporate world. Both here in Canada and in the U.S. this treaty will fundamentally change the way that copyright laws are written and policed – just as we are seeing in England with their Digital Economy Bill.

In an article published in the Yale Journal of International Law (PDF version) Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze wrote

In brief, the ACTA process has been deliberately more secretive than customary practices in international decision-making bodies to evade the debates about intellectual property (IP) at established multilateral institutions. The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all.

via Cory Doctorow

In Canada Professor Michael Geist; Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has been heavily involved in trying to keep this treaty in the public eye. You can read his work in this area here at his blog but he points to the spin that the organizations and governments involved in foisting this treaty on the world are putting around the secrecy.

In their opinion this secrecy is just normal business when working on large treaties like this but the facts; and history, tell a different story.

In the face of widespread criticism of the lack of ACTA transparency, participating governments and music industry lobbyists have claimed that the transparency issue is much ado about nothing.  As governments seek to keep relevant information secret, those same governments released a joint statement last week arguing that “it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation.”

It is important to emphatically state that this is simply not the case for many multilateral agreements and the activities of international organizations that typically serve as the forum for global agreement discussions.  U.S. NGO groups have made a strong case for how ACTA’s lack of transparency is out-of-step with many other global norm setting exercises.

Michael Masnick at Techdirt also has a good post where he examines this argument that secrecy is normal and that any open discussion about ACTA is nothing more than a distraction.

A third point raised is that this isn’t a “treaty” but a “sole executive agreement,” so we shouldn’t worry since it can’t change the law. Except, by categorizing it as such, it’s actually a loophole that could potentially take Congress out of the process of reviewing or approving anything that’s in the agreement, and then just wait for the “but we must live up to our international obligations” to start pouring out of lobbyists and industry lawyers’ mouths.

This isn’t a treat about securing copyrights for rights holders as much as it is a method by which the entertainment industry of the U.S. can exert a stranglehold on the Internet. James Love at Knowledge Ecology International has a list of who the White House shared the ACTA text with; under an NDA, but what is more interesting is seeing just who some of the corporations behind this push for the acceptance of ACTA are.

In this regard Michael Masnick has a list of entertainment companies that signed a letter that was sent to the government supporting ACTA; which considering that they helped draft the treaty shouldn’t be too surprising.

Advertising Photographers of America
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. (ASMP)
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI)
Commercial Photographers International
Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Evidence Photographers International Council
Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)
NBC Universal
News Corporation
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Stock Artists Alliance
Student Photographic Society
The Advertising Photographers of America
The Walt Disney Company
Time Warner, Inc.
Universal Music Group
Viacom Inc.
Warner Music Group

In combination these two seemingly disparate items might seem to be connected but the fact is that behind both of them are the powerful people in the entertainment industry that don’t want to boat rocked. In fact they are doing everything they can to get the boat back into dry dock and under lock and key.

We might like to believe that the Internet will always be open and free but the reality is that there are some strong forces at work that want to turn it into something totally different. It is my fear that with the secrecy surrounding things like ACTA and the Digital Economy Bill along with people’s seeming nonchalant attitudes we will end up with something totally different than we dream of.

That would be a sad day.

The usual suspects are threatening to dismantle our Internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

In some ways you have to admire the audacity and amount of hot air that lawyers for the entertainment industry can expel. Nowhere though is this type of verbal buffoonery more apparent than the defense they use to prop up the concept of DRM’ing our music and movies.

A good example of this attitude can bee seen in the submissions made to the Copyright Office during its triennial DMCA review by Steven Metalitz, a Washington lawyer who represents the MPAA, RIAA and other rights holders. This is his response to the Copyright Office over the possible exceptions that would allow users to legally strip DRM from content if a store closes and takes down the authentication servers.

"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."

Source: Ars Technica :: Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever

Talk about priceless but it doesn’t stop there. He continues on with this

"To recognize the proposed exemption would surely discourage any content provider from entering the marketplace for online distribution… unless it was committed to do so… forever. This would not be good for consumers, who would find a marketplace with less innovation and fewer choices and options."

Even as Amazon and iTunes make music available without any form of DRM we still get this lawyer blow hot air up everyone’s butt. It’s no wonder that people are getting fed up with the whole entertainment industry.

Lawyer says it’s stupid to expect DRM’d goods to work forever is a post from: The Inquisitr

So I gather by now you’ve all heard the terrible news about the guys behind The Pirate Bay torrents search site have been found guilty with lots of help from the US entertainment industry and their lackey trade groups. While everyone and their brother seems to be bemoaning this latest victory – which is pyrrhic at best – by the entertainment I am surprised by two things.

First – who in their right mind didn’t expect this outcome. Come on get your head out of the sand for five minutes and face the fact that the multi-billion dollar might of a global entertainment industry could have shit bricks and they would have still won.

Second – if you think it will stop here or that the decision in anyway will affect the Pirate Bay search business then you are sadly mistaken. The four people behind Pirate Bay have already made it clear that they have planned for this contingency and spread their servers around the world in such away that they are going to be very difficult to shutdown. As well it didn’t matter who won in court this time around because you can be assured that in either case the appeals would have been filed before the ink was dry.

What is interesting is to read all the various hyperbole that has been circulating throughout the tech blogosphere this morning. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström have been described as being everything from the ones responsible for the world’s most notorious file-sharing site to being money grubbing opportunists who caused the entertainment industry great financial harm.

Ya okay we’ll let you roll with that for a minute or two while Sony Music Industry, Warner Bros., EMI and Columbia Pictures decide how to divvy up the $3.6 million award for damages. The thing is that for all the accusations of Pirate Bay being a file sharer the argument is fundamentally flawed. Pirate Bay as a site does not host any of the files that they are accused of sharing. All they are doing is providing a search engine interface for torrents that point to both legal and illegal content. It’s not like they are twisting anyone’s arm to download anything – they are providing a service not a file depot.

This would be like suggesting that Google or Microsoft Live are file sharers because they provide links to downloadable content. If the grounds that the entertainment industry used against Pirate Bay are valid by even the farthest stretch of the imagination then the same arguments should be used against Google and Microsoft. After all a simple search for Rolling Stones MP3’s on both of those search engines will give you a multitude of download links.

Think not? Then think again

While using torrents actually is more difficult until you get use to downloading them both Google and Microsoft through their respective search engines provide direct links to easily downloadable files. so what is the difference here?

As Paul O’Flaherty pointed out this morning

The entertainment industry is a monolithic conglomeration of companies that would rather litigate than innovate and have proven time and time again that the pursuit of money and protecting their outdated business model is all that matters to them. What better direction to take than to go after those with the deepest pockets? Especially now that they have a precedent ruling against what is essentially just a search engine.

Why is it okay for Microsoft or Google to use the exact same excuse that the guys running Pirate Bay used and yet while they go to jail, Google and Microsoft get a free pass. This story is far from being done but in the meantime everyone talking about this bullshit decision will carry on with misleading information about how these file sharers are getting what they deserve and racking up the pageviews as they go. In the end though there is no difference between them and any other search engine provider – they just made a better target and better press.

The Pirate Bay boys heading to jail and Google keeps serving up files is a post from: The Inquisitr

It looks like the good times will be coming to a grinding halt for those of you that like listening to Last.fm Radio. In an announcement posted to the company blog Richard Jones lets the world know that if you don’t live in the United States, United Kingdom or Germany you are going to have to start coughing up some dough for a subscription

Today we’re announcing an upcoming change to the way Last.fm Radio works in some parts of the world. In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change.

In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month. There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.

Since we streamed our first track from Last.fm back in 2002, we have focused on playing the right songs to the right people, compensating artists for playing their music, and being the best music site on the web. We appreciate the support we get from the 30 million people who use Last.fm every month—double the number of people since this time last year. We work with over 280,000 labels and artists, many of whom we pay directly, and have built up the largest catalogue of any web radio platform: over 7 million tracks are available on Last.fm Radio stations.

In order to keep providing the best radio service on the web, we need to ask our listeners from countries other than USA, UK and Germany to subscribe for €3.00 per month. In return you’ll get unlimited access to Last.fm Radio, and a promise that we’ll be hard at work improving the service for years to come.

Source: Last.fm Blog

Why do I get the feeling that much like Pandora the sticky fingers of the entertainment industry is behind this move.

Last.fm Radio to go subscription – sort of is a post from: The Inquisitr