News with comments - Tech stuff

Limewire – Next on the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of
America) list it appears and they have their man. Limewire is dead
well the company is anyway and the default software it releases will
no longer allow users to search and download files from all the dark
places of the Internet. Limewire’s settlement was $105m, hardly a
paltry amount but nowhere near the $1 billion the RIAA were looking
for at the beginning of their suit. As always there is a modified
version of the software that will allow users to continue on their
evil pirate ways (arrrrrrr).

Those who follow such things will know that RIAA has already done
much the same to the once might Kazaa (known to me as those dudes who
popped up after Napster bit the dust) the settlement that Kazaa had to
be pay was $115m in case you like to keep store. Makes you wonder who
is next but I would think it might be the torrent based websites that
will get more of the attention in coming months but we will have to
wait and see.

Want to see something really scary?
Then take a look at this American Bill currently under consideration
by the US Senate.

IP Act

The Actual Act

Some comments on it

The first link is the real nuts and bolts and the second is for the
rest of us whose heads exploded when we tried to read the actual draft
bill. From time to time raw legislation will do that to mere humans.
The bill aims to target sites that offer pirated material and
counterfeit products. The powers of this bill will allow US law makers
to block the domain names of offended sites and even force search
engines to pretend that these often popular sites don’t exist in
search results.

People describe the Internet as the last bastion of lawlessness but
this controversial act seeks to wrangle the pirates and
counterfeiters. As you can see from the above stories this is only one
in a number of ways that the forces of government and business are
fighting back against the previously untouchable and hard to target
internet copyright infringers.


WIKI LEADER HATES SUPER INJUNCTIONS

Just in case you were wondering I am referring to the founder
of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, so many famous
Wikis around these days it can be hard to tell.

"They should be done away with as quickly as possible. There should be
no law constraining people from publishing legally obtained, factual
information," he said.

Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here but when I look at the
above station my eyes do the bug out thing and I wonder if he has
really thought through the extreme ends encompassed by that statement.

LEGALLY OBTAINED

That particular label is an interesting one, I think back to the case
of the poor business secretary, Vince Cable getting roasted as a
result of speaking to reporters pretending to be constituents (very
pretty constituents) now what they did wasn’t illegal but it sets out
one hell of a precedent in how you might live your life. I don’t want
a situation where every time someone is nice to me or seems talkative
I need to whip out a legal waiver for them to sign and demand ID along
with some DNA so I can sue their asses later when they turn out to be
reporters.

This is not the case of so-called investigative reporting
when you get a reporter pretending to be a criminal in order to catch
out celebrities, because apparently members of the public themselves
would NEVER agree to do something illegal or immoral if asked to do so
by someone in a position of power, I digress this is the case of an MP
doing what he is paid for talking to his constituents (fakes ones)
although of course he did very much say the wrong thing.

Maybe we should charge the newspaper involved for the time they took
from the public with this little gambit of theirs.