Practically before the trial is up and running, The Pirate Bay has achieved a major victory over the entertainment industry. On day two, the prosecutor has dropped half of the charges against the bittorrent website. The remaining charges are much lighter than the ones that have been dropped.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-10-10
It's entertainment, it does not contribute in a meaningful way to humanity surviving. Ask a starving African if he gives a damn about commercial music or movies. It's been overpriced for decades and it's about time the reality stick hit them! People can make their own music and listen to already made works for free.
The Entertainment industry was never responsible for driving civilization and never will be. And they certainly didn't need to make insane profits all those millennia ago to enjoy it either!
They remind me of monsanto complaining about their bullshit seeds growing in some poor farmers paddock!
HELLO! This is planet earth and seeds and music thrive "without" control or money!
Member since:2006-02-22
"Possibly, but what incentive are people going to have to use the legal services when they can still use the illegal ones and get the content for free? "
Not sure that's true. I am certain (yes hardly scientific, i know) that alot of iTunes users are former napster users (or Gnutella,etc). People will pay if they think its worth it. IMHO, most people would rather do something legally than illegally. Again, I think the iTunes music store proves this clearly. All those users still have the option to download music illegally.
Member since:2006-01-19
What does a Business need to provide do be successful?
Simple: A product which offers a better price/value ratio than all other players in the market.
Let's compare pirated vs. legal downloadable music:
Pirated comes for free, legal costs a lot
Pirated comes unrestricted, legal is locked into DRM
Pirated might bring you in trouble, legal won't
The key to make more money, would be to increase the product value and reduce the price:
1) Reduce the price by 50%.
2) Provide just plain mp3, no DRM files.
3) Provide high bandwidth.
Member since:2005-07-06
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Member since:
2005-11-13
Possibly, but what incentive are people going to have to use the legal services when they can still use the illegal ones and get the content for free?
It's kind of hard to create a business model around a product that your customers are demanding for $0.
Maybe they could sell t-shirts or coffee mugs?
Edited 2009-02-17 17:58 UTC