Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)

With that phrase the Pirate Bay founders welcome people in Pirate Bay website since yesterday. The court found them guilty and convicted them in one year in prison and 4.5 million dollars in fine.

The founders said that they find it really peculiar that they were found guilty and even more peculiar that they were found guilty of the charge the organized crime. I might add that as everything nowadays they are trying to give it a sense of common crime rather than something different that is new in our times but something old really. The record labels werer doing the same thing with the cassete recording during the 80s...they survved and they are still fat ugly and greedy.

The founders declared that they do not have the money to pay the "damages" but even if they did they would rather burn it and would not even give the court and record labels the ashes.

Last.fm is no longer free

I just received an email from last.fm stating that the service will no longer be free for me. They will start charging a subscription of 3 euros per month. The fee is small, but no matter how small it is, it is still a fee. I still have to give them my credit card number and I still have to perform additional steps to enjoy the service. Needless to say...I will stop using it.

Hi,

You're getting this email because you have been using Last.fm Radio.

Today we're announcing an important upcoming change: Last.fm Radio will require
a small subscription of €3.00 /month. You'll receive a 30 track free trial to
try before you buy. All other Last.fm features will remain free.

Why, you're probably asking? Read on about the change here:
http://www.last.fm/about/subscriptionradio

We hope you'll continue to support our service,
- The Last.fm Team

It is a shame really since I liked various aspects of the service. A few months ago it became obligatory to subscribe in order to listen to music. Now they are changing it to a fee based service... The one thing I don't understand is why they are changing this for certain countries only while others are exempt. USA, UK and Germany are exempt from it. The rest of the Europe though is not. WHY? Are we second class webizens?

You can read their lame explanation here.

Lars Ulrich pirates Metallica album

In a recent interview Lars Ulrich, probably, the most hated heavy metal figure in the computer world admitted that he downloaded the new Metallica album Death Magnetic to see what it's like. Wow Lars. Welcome to the 21st century!

He said "I was like, 'Wow, this is how it works.' I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download 'Death Magnetic' for free, it's me.".

Over the years Metallica have changed their stance against music downloading allowing the songs to be downloaded from Napster and also giving free songs from their website. The have gone as far as to welcome the Death Magnetic leak on the Internet.

Lars stated that he was shocked to find out that everybody was hating him and calling him greedy after napster closed down, since he believed that he was doing to the right thing for Metallica and that they were always anti-record company. I do not know what to make of it. The guy might just be dump-enough not having realized exactly what he was doing at the time or he is just trying to fix his public image now. This is coming from someone whose band was welcoming filming of concerts from the fans during the 80s and early 90s.

This is what a criminal looks like

As support for The Pirate Bay people on trial, a site was created where you can upload your photo and declare that you are a "criminal" because you share movies, music and other files.

So far more than 1000 people have uploaded photos of themselves!

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.

The value of Internet in the world of tomorrow.

Due the nature of my job I am in front of a computer screen at least half of my day. At home I continue to be in front of a screen for recreational reasons many days of the week. Internet is my primary source for news, communication and entertainment. During the past days I was pleasantly surprised by rediscovering the true value of information and the power of communication through the Internet.

Last week started in Greece, what can only be described as, a revolt with riots spreading to the whole country minutes after the murder of a 15 year old boy from a special unit policeman in Athens. The shooting was only the tip of the iceberg against an unfair system, against police brutality against a dead end, many young people see in front of them, caused by unemployment, an economic crisis where billions are given to banks instead of those in need and an incompetent conservative government.

After many days of riots and a public outcry against the government with much playtime on the news, talk shows etc, suddenly the TV and radio stopped most of the broadcasting of riot related news, stopped the related talk shows and generally toned down the whole thing. Television continued playing their garbage shows, trash news and lame TV series. After a day I read in the newspaper that the state-run Television and Radio Comity prohibited the TV channels to broadcast riot videos and instructed them to tone down the news on the riots. A failing government had censored the news so that the public will loose interest in revolting against the government feeling the thing is blowing off.

These days the Internet plays a very significant role. Many people, including myself, are informed about the news by other means. These means include Internet news groups, independent news sites, and collaborative groups that report on whats happening on their city or country such as Indymedia (which spans over many countries). Many people where mobilized using the Internet. Many movements set up a blog to inform other people about their intentions and declarations. People rally other groups of like minded people through Facebook. An amazing thing happened. I was using Internet in my everyday life as a power user, but I never actually saw its potential work. I did now. It gives people voice and enables other people to hear what they have to say. It is a tool for a truly democratic society where people do not need a state or any other organization to self-organize, to mobilize, to get informed or to get heard. This is the power of Internet. That is why governments around the world have started experimenting with ways of censoring the Internet. Some countries have even prevented poeple from using certain services such as youtube. We have to prevent that from happening. They have taken away television and radio which have long before sold out. Now, they will try to take away our most powerful tool today. We should not let that happen.