Pirate Bay Trial

Torrent Freak reports that the verdict for the Pirate Bay Trail has come to an end. Unfortunately, all defendants were found guilt. Perhaps more disturbing in the Torrent Freak report is the following:

The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.

and

While the judge won’t be getting any flowers for this verdict, Roger Wallis who spoke in favor of The Pirate Bay at their trial and received a mountain of floral tributes in return, noted, “This will cause a flood of court cases. Against all the ISPs. Because if these guys assisted in copyright infringements, then the ISPs also did. This will have huge consequences. The entire development of broadband may be stalled.”

This case which has been watched closely by everyone in the world has ended with the copyright holders winning this round. There is of course, a court of appeal. I think Pirate Bay kind of shot itself in the foot with its pirate image however. I mean, they call themselves pirate bay after all.

Perhaps a better test case is the Mininova case. Mininova has a policy of taking down torrents should they be contacted by the copyright holder. Mininova also acts with copyright holders who wish to promote their works via bittorrent. Part of the case is to do with whether they should actively filter the information.

If the Mininova case does not go well, then I believe that the anti-piracy movement has gone too far and its actions as Roger Wallis believes, these actions will not benefit society in the short, medium or long term. The only organisation it would benefit is the copyright holders associations and maybe not even the artists!

Torrents and Public Broadcasting

TorrentFreak reports that the BBC is starting to move into BitTorrent and will be releasing shows under the creative commons license allowing downloaders the chance to share This is a big step up for public broadcasters.

Most public broadcasters such as Television New Zealand included have a broadcasting mandate to provide some form of 'public service' including archival. Any member of the public for example, can request something from the broadcasting archives for personal use for example.

A key problem with this mandate of public service is that information is locked away and can't be browsed nor shared despite the advances in modern IT technology which would. Can a public broadcaster be said to be performing its mandate of public service when information remains under lock and key? Wouldn't TVNZ be better serving the public if it made available old TVNZ shows via bittorrent, maybe TVNZ documentaries?

This is a step in the right direction for public broadcasters. I hope TVNZ will follow suit.

Jamendo

Recently I've been exploring the net for a good place to get free quality music and came across a really good site called Jamendo.


All music on the site is under a creative common license so it's legal to download and share.

According to Jamendo, they currently have over 17000 free music albums available and over half a million registered users. Although it's free for personal listening and sharing, if you're a business or organisation you have to pay to license it. Considering its success I'm surprised the mainstream press haven't heard more about it which is a real shame!

Although I'm not into music, I really enjoyed listening to some of the tracks I personally think that this is a very good sign of where things are heading towards and I believe that a website like Jamendo benefits both artists and users. I really do wish all the best for it.

Check it out here!