Technology News

Pirate Bay Raising the Surrender Flag to Hollywood

Source: Michael Ricci
June 30, 2009

The world's most notorious website for illegal music and movie downloading is going legit.

The Pirate Bay, a Sweden-based website that's one of the most popular sources for Internet piracy, has agreed to be acquired by Global Gaming Factor, a Swedish operator of Internet cafes, for $7.8 million.

Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factor, said he intends to cooperate with studios and record labels to turn Pirate Bay into a copyright-friendly business.

“We're a publicly listed company, so whatever ...

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China Postpones Controversial Web Filter

Source: All About Jazz
June 30, 2009

China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Chinese Web surfers just hours before it was due to take effect.

The rule would have required manufacturers to include filtering software known as Green Dam with every computer produced for sale in China starting Wednesday.

A two-sentence announcement by the government's Xinhua News Agency said regulators “will delay" the plan but gave no indication whether it ...

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Great Wall of Facebook: Keep Google Out

Source: All About Jazz
June 29, 2009

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet and Keep Google Out

Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internetits structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithmsrigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions ...

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Pirate Bay Retrial Denied; Judge Declared "Unbiased"

Source: All About Jazz
June 28, 2009

After The Pirate Bay defendants lost a high-profile copyright infringement trial in Sweden, they charged that the judge belonged to pro-copyright groups and was therefore biased against them. A Court of Appeals ruling today disagrees; there will be no retrial.

A Swedish court ruled that the judge overseeing The Pirate Bay trial earlier this year was not biased by belonging to various pro-copyright organizations. The unanimous decision (Swedish) means that there will be no retrial; the defendants must hope for ...

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Time Warner Cable Charges for a Service It Doesn't Provide

Source: Michael Ricci
June 28, 2009

It's telephone customers are charged 99 cents a month to not be listed in a directory published by telecom giants. The kicker: Time Warner doesn't even share the revenue with those companies.

I've always admired the way phone companies charge a monthly fee for people not to be listed in a phone book. I mean, talk about chutzpah -- charging customers to not receive a service they didn't even ask for in the first place.

But Time Warner Cable takes ...

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Myspace Begins Redefining Its Space

Source: PC Magazine
June 27, 2009

Wrenching job cuts at News Corp's MySpace are only the first steps the online hangout must take to regain its cool. Outshone by newcomers Facebook and Twitter, MySpace must reverse worrying trends in user metrics and replace a lucrative $300-million-a-year advertising deal with Google Inc that expires next year, or risk lining up among Friendster, AltaVista, GeoCities and other once-mighty Internet brands. That means redefining itself as a music and entertainment site, improving returns for advertisers and maybe even finding ...

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Friendfeed Adds Music File Sharing

Source: HypeBot
June 27, 2009

How will the RIAA react to this one? FriendFeed, the popular site that enables discovery and discussion of “interesting stuff your friends find on the web", has added the ability to share any file, including music, by attaching it to a FriendFeed post.

To share files on friendfeed.com, click the “Files" link underneath the post box and select which files to want to include. You can also share files by including them as attachments on emails sent ...

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Post Music to Twitter Using Soundcloud

Source: HypeBot
June 27, 2009

The guest post is by Dave Haynes, OpenMusicMedia founder and UK manager for SoundCloud. You can also follow him on Twitter @haynes_dave. There have been a number of services crop up recently to allow you to post music to Twitter. But did you know there's three different ways to do exactly the same using SoundCloud? A few people told us they didn't realize just how simple it was so here's a little “how to".