Fudgiepoos

Recording Industry vs The People

Earlier, RIAA has used their own experts to find incriminating evidence on hard-drives.

BitTorrent Site Admin Sent to Prison at Torrentfreak

> The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.

I wonder why most torrent sites move to other countries, with a bit more liberal view on these things. Elitetorrents did promote that they had StarWars on their frontpage, so I can see how the MPAA got a bit pissed off.

Wired News: Secrets of the Pirate Bay

> MALMO, Sweden — It’s Saturday night and I’m lounging on a living room sofa surrounded by lanky twenty-somethings in shorts and deep tans. Across from me, a wire emerges from a green Xbox — modified to stream movies from its hard drive — and snakes past two dusty turntables and into a video projector, which is displaying a menu of movies that would make Blockbuster jealous.

Nice writeup of The Pirate Bays history and motivation.

PRESS RELEASE: Pirate Party Launches World’s First Commercial Darknet | Piratpartiet

> Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

The Pirate Party has gotten quite a bit of media attention after the The Pirate Bay bust. I can’t wait to see how it turns out for them at the next swedish elections - they have a huge following and are inspiring people in other countries to do the same.

Debbie Foster to RIAA : Dude, where’s my legal fees? - The Digital Music Weblog

> Debbie Foster, the woman in Oklahoma sued by the RIAA who asked for and won a motion for summary judgment, has finally filed her motion asking the court to force the RIAA to reimburse her attorney’s fees.

> The filing is pretty harshly worded and calls into question the RIAA’s motives on rather serious grounds. Citing “Improper motivation” and “other bad faith conduct”, the motion asks the court to rule that the RIAA was predatory in its execution of the case against Ms. Foster. The filing stops slightly short of accusing the RIAA of extortion, and in doing so is about as close to “yo momma… ” snaps as you can get in a legal document.

Maybe ignoring her will make her stop? I’m hoping some judge will give the RIAA a big smack for behaving like they do.

Woman forces US record industry to drop file-sharing case | The Register

> A group of US record labels agreed to drop a music piracy case in the US after the alleged file-sharer argued that it could not be proved that she downloaded any illegal music. The case may set a precedent that undermines scores of other music piracy cases.

> Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California refused to pay the initial $3,500 demanded by a group of record labels and opted to fight the case in court. Marson and her lawyer Seyamack Kouretchian of Coast Law Group argued that the fact that Marson’s computer contained illegal music files downloaded over her internet connection was not proof that she had committed a crime.

Hopefully, this will spread and the RIAA will either have to come up with some real evidence, or stop trowing around lawsuits.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Kazaa site becomes legal service

> File-sharing site Kazaa will become a legal music download service following a series of high profile legal battles.

> The peer-to-peer network has also agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry.

I remember trying Kazaa aaaages ago, and found it to be a hugely bloated and horrible piece of software which bundled loads of spyware. I think they’ll have to do a massive PR campaign to change the view people have of them, if they’re going to go legit and actually make money.

bit-tech.net | MPAA is at it again…

> Meet Shawn Hogan. He’s your average 30-something computer programmer, probably enjoys walks in the park, candlelit dinners, and whatnot. He also likes the movie Meet the Fockers, and bought it on DVD.

> So imagine his surprise when his phone rang, and a lawyer on the other end said the MPAA were sueing him for downloading the movie on BitTorrent. Not only did he deny the claim, but even offered to show them the DVD he had purchased, which he reasoned would illustrate how little sense it made to download the movie.

He’s a self-made millionaire, and wovs to fight back even if it could well cost him over $100,000 in legal fees. I love people who stand up to RIAA and MPAA, and refuse to be bullied into settling outside of court.

NOVELL: Novell Announces Next Generation Desktop: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

> SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 enables organization to gain flexibility in their IT infrastructure, have greater control of their environment, improve end-user security and dramatically reduce operational costs.

> It is the only enterprise-quality Linux desktop on the market designed for general-purpose business. Developed and backed by Novell, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop provides market-leading usability, seamless interoperability with existing enterprise computer systems, and dozens of essential office applications.

A preview is available for download from the link above. It’s a hefty 5 CDs though, so I’m not sure if I’ll bother downloading and installing it even though it’s gotten plenty of rave reviews and is being hailed as an Ubuntu replacement. One feature it sports that will prompt quite a few people to install it is that Xgl is included and integrated. They’ve also included the new ’start-menu’ replacement, and good Beagle integration. All in all it looks like a very polished distribution, and it will be very interesting to see how it will work out for Novell when it’s finally released in a stable form.