Pirate Bay trial about to start

The people behind the operation of the infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay stand trial starting today in Stockholm. Hans Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Kolmisoppi, Carl Lundström face charges for copyright infringement. That is pretty big news. The Pirate Bay has been much more than a place for someone to find pirated software and movies. The four operators run the site by provoking just about everybody in the software and movie industry. The run many anti-DRM campaigns and were promoting freedom of speech and freedom of file transfer on the internet. Pirate Bay started the Spectrial Campaign (Spectacle + Trial) to promote their case.

This is a very fussy trial as the Swedish law is not very clear as to these things. Pirate Bay does not host copyrighted material so the prosecution will have hard time convincing the court they they are breaking any law. De fence is going to stress about other legitimate services that have links to copyrighted material. Any search engine out there is potentially a guilty of copyright infringement by that right as they provide links to copyrighted material.

In slashdot forums there was a particularly great comment about that situation:

Google provides links to infringed copyrighted content. So does Pirate Bay.
Google makes money from advertising. So does Pirate Bay.

OOoooohhhh! But Pirate Bay's advertising is PORN!!

Oh, well. That settles it, then. We find the defendant guil-cup of the charge of accessory to copyright infringement.

The lawyers are turning the trial into a spectacle trying to get as many people as they can interested about the trial in order to get their voice heard. This actually a very good idea since if the trial had no publicity it would probably end up being a "get these people locked up" trial behind closed doors. National Swedish television has announced that they are going to stream live from the courtroom. For anybody that does not speak Swedish their is even going to be a twitter translated broadcast.

UPDATE

50% of the charges have been dropped so far. Major win for defence in the 2nd day of the trial.

Check out the photos from the press conference and the supporters outside the court.

Online Music Tax in the UK

Dumb-asses in the UK government are thinking about enforcing a new tax, the online music tax. Basically this will be a tax of 20 BP (approximately 21 euros or 28 dollars) for every broadband connection in the country. This tax would be used to cover the losses of big music and production companies from illegal internet downloads.WTF?

This does not make sense. The tax payers will start paying for the failures of the much-hated record labels? It is not enought that UK tax-payers pay 100 pounds per year to the BBC as a licence to watch TV, now they will have to pay an additional 20 pounds to the labels. Think about how much money these companies would be gaining for nothing? Why should we give them such a present? What sick mind thought of that? I think they will start to justify all sorts of stuff just to play along with the big companies, saying its all because of the economic crissis....I am getting angry again....calm down..calm down..

Best Anti-DRM images on the web

I grow increasingly pissed off with copy protection systems, music DRM and our non existent rights as customers. Below you will find the best anti DRM images on the web. DOWN with the copy protection systems. Death to DRM!

Microsoft insists on DRM (they just dont get it do they?)

Microsoft mobile music service in a surprising turn insists on using DRM. While Amazon and iTunes services have turned their back on music copy protection, Microsoft, the smaller of the players in terms of market share on music distribution, insists on something the users clearly have condemned. In addition the cost per track is almost double than the rest of the services. Do they really belive that this will work?

PC Pro has a mini interview on the subject. I could not believe my eyes when I was reading this one :

With the likes of iTunes and Amazon offering DRM-free music that you can play on any device, why would anyone choose the MSN Mobile service?

There may well be people who just want to listen to the track on their mobile alone.

WHAT? Who in their right mind would pay a double fee to play a song only in his/her mobile phone. Not only that who on earth would WANT to play a song that he/she bought ONLY in his/her mobile phone. Does Microsoft considers that as an actual argument on their ridiculous decision?

iTunes DRM free and 8 hour battery Macbook Pro

Each Macworld Expo is as exciting as the previous one. New policies are unveiled, new products are presented and as always many people talk for days before and after each Macworld about what will and what did happen respectively.

This year we saw an incredibly important announcement. One that will shake the very foundations of the music industry. DRM free songs from iTunes. For years now people complain about the DRM and the big music companies fight them following one golden rule: lock, lock, lock. At last The biggest player in online music distribution is allying with the users to provide them with what they wanted. DRM is dead. Woohoo. Apple already has 8 million DRM free songs on the store and all 10 million will be DRM free by the end of March this year.

Anoher exciting announcement was the release of the new 17" Macbook Pro with up to 8 hours battery. This is yet to be tested though. I guess if you were to use wireless and the disc drive this would go down to 6-something hours but who cares. 6 hours is more than enough for pretty much anything. I mean, my pevious gen Macbook pro does around 3-something hours if am careful and I am very happy with it.