Pirate News Top Three - 25/02/2013

In a new daily feature, a daily summary of the top news in the 4 areas I cover in this blog: Pirates, Green, Gaming and Politics. In this first post? Pirates!

Just as a quick summary; the Pirate Posts will feature issues on technology, media, copyright, and the politics of these issues. Under no circumstances does this blog link to or condone pirate activities; it is my personal belief that, although copyright law needs reforming, one should always obey whatever the current laws are. For free music, film and software, choose only those freebies for which the copyright holder has given permission to download freely. A good start would be Frostclick, Frostwire's sister site, which includes only legal free downloads. If you are caught knowingly breaking the law, you deserve any penalty you get!

 1. Live Chat With Your Pirate In Parliament!

If you are a member of the European Union (or even if you are just interested) and willing to listen in Nordic at times, join your Pirate Party MEP for a live chat every Thursday at 17:30 in the UK (18:30 CET). The first of these was held in the Thursday just gone, with such fascinating insights as how lobbyists tried to trick MEPs into softening Data Protection laws for consumers. I wonder if any of our mainstream parties would be so open and direct with it's constituents!

Main Article by The Pirate Times: What Would You Ask A Pirate MEP?

2. Nintendo Wants Websites Blocked

Each year companies get to submit a list of proposals to the US government on how they could improve copywrong enforcement across the world, known as the Special 301 Report. Included in Nintendo's letter are such reccomendations as adding China, Spain, and Brazil (among others) to the USA's watchlist; publicizing raids and other sanctions to increase awareness; and giving stronger penalties to copyright infringers as well as taking to court more high-profile infringers. Nintendo's operating income has been around 37.3 Billion Yen (around £270 million) each year.

Main Article by TorrentFreak: Nintendo Wants To Hunt Game Pirates And Block Websites

3. Firefox Launch OS At Mobile World Congress

Mozilla has "Unleashed The Fox"; those attending the Mobile World Congress will be able to experience Firefox OS and The Fox firsthand. This is an interesting development, as it marks the first mainstream Mobile OS entirely created by a not-for-profit organisation. It will be interesting to see how it fares against Google's Android, which has already cornered most of the mobile market. Although Android is mostly Open Source, it is developed by it's for-profit parents Google.

Main Article by The Mozilla Blog: Moblizing Mozilla: Blazing Your Own Path

Professors Hunted Down For Pro File-Sharing Opinion

Torrentfreak reports that Roger Wallis (a multimedia professor brought in to explain the positive aspects of file-sharing during trials against the Pirate Bay founders) had numerous attacks on his credibility during the trial after making the statement that piracy can actually boost sales in certain circumstances.

It isn't new for large corporations to use lawyers to attempt to discredit professors for disagreeing with their views (just look at anyone trying to portray anything negative about pharmaceutical companies), but it does represent an act of desperation on the part of the music/film industry that they have to resort to such personal attacks.

Full Article at Torrentfreak: "Pro File-Sharing Professors ‘Hunted Down’ by the Copyright Lobby"

Legally Download "TPB AFK": A Documentary on the Pirate Bay Trials (from The Pirate Bay; licensed for free distribution)

FBI Agents Torrent Pirates Of The Caribbean (or they may as well)

With the help of ScanEye, a Bittorrent monitoring company, TorrentFreak has reported that a number of IP addresses for the popular file-sharing protocol come from non other than those registered to various FBI agencies. It is also likely that these would have been downloads for personal use, as they were spread across a number of months. This contrasts with their behaviour in undercover "entrapment".

Would people working for one of the biggest "intelligence" agencies in the world really be so careless? As one commenter points out:

At the end of the day, even the FBI's staff are just regular people like you and I who want to experience and share culture with everyone abroad.

It would certainly be ironic if the agency had to arrest its own staff as a result of RIAA/MPAA tracking.

Full Article at Torrentfreak: FBI Employees Download Pirated Movies and TV-Shows

Fighting the Copyright Cowboys and their Copyright Crusade (aka RIAA)

I'm going to start right off with something that could be quite unexpected: copyright is something we need, and continue to need for the foreseeable future. "Are you serious?" You may be thinking. Why, yes I am; without licenses such as the General Public License, it is unlikely projects like Android, Firefox, OpenOffice/Libreoffice would thrive quite in the way they have done. Copyright law has given these projects the right to determine how others can use their program and source code, whether or not others can profit from it, the right to have code attributed back to the original project and the right to grant anyone the ability to look at the original source code and learn from it. Without copyright law, we really would be in a Wild West of ideas stolen and profited from by Copyright Cowboys; or rather, corporations with lots of money that could (and would) take any of this free software and sell it as their own, with no repatriation or acknowledgement to those that wrote it.

I also assert my right to have my writing here attributed to myself, and the right that only I may profit from it. It isn't so much about my going on a copyright crusade in order to protect my work, and it certainly isn't about me advocating a limiting of our internet freedoms just so you can buy a single, DRM protected right to read this article on only the devices I decide. It is simply me saying I put a decent 30 minutes in writing this, so don't fob it off as your own. Other than that, you are free to do as you please; my work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so within those bounds you can be my guest.

But anyway. What absolutely angers me are these shadowy figures, in the UK and beyond, that (despite between £millions to £billions profits) claim piracy is "destroying jobs, income and livelihoods", and that because of this media companies and the police should have unprecedented powers to collect and snoop on ANYONE's data. While they are at it, they may as well be given the right to install cameras in our homes just to be doubly sure exactly WHO in a household is taking part in this crime which is certainly not victimless!

The attacks on our freedom of privacy, expression, and civil liberties is bad enough. But what offends me as well is this claim that it is all done in order to enforce the rights of content creators. Is that so? Does that mean, as an independent content creator, I have access to the same amount of police support/snooping in order to "protect" my intellectual property? I didn't think so. All these laws amount to are a protection racket perpetrated by the wealthy and vested interests of popular media. They are the mobs with easy access to guns and muscle. The reality is it is nothing to do with enforcing copyright laws; just enforcing it for those that can afford.

Fighting the Copyright Cowboys and their Copyright Crusade (aka RIAA)

I'm going to start right off with something that could be quite unexpected: copyright is something we need, and continue to need for the foreseeable future. "Are you serious?" You may be thinking. Why, yes I am; without licenses such as the General Public License, it is unlikely projects like Android, Firefox, OpenOffice/Libreoffice would thrive quite in the way they have done. Copyright law has given these projects the right to determine how others can use their program and source code, whether or not others can profit from it, the right to have code attributed back to the original project and the right to grant anyone the ability to look at the original source code and learn from it. Without copyright law, we really would be in a Wild West of ideas stolen and profited from by Copyright Cowboys; or rather, corporations with lots of money that could (and would) take any of this free software and sell it as their own, with no repatriation or acknowledgement to those that wrote it.

I also assert my right to have my writing here attributed to myself, and the right that only I may profit from it. It isn't so much about my going on a copyright crusade in order to protect my work, and it certainly isn't about me advocating a limiting of our internet freedoms just so you can buy a single, DRM protected right to read this article on only the devices I decide. It is simply me saying I put a decent 30 minutes in writing this, so don't fob it off as your own. Other than that, you are free to do as you please; my work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, so within those bounds you can be my guest.

But anyway. What absolutely angers me are these shadowy figures, in the UK and beyond, that (despite between £millions to £billions profits) claim piracy is "destroying jobs, income and livelihoods", and that because of this media companies and the police should have unprecedented powers to collect and snoop on ANYONE's data. While they are at it, they may as well be given the right to install cameras in our homes just to be doubly sure exactly WHO in a household is taking part in this crime which is certainly not victimless!

The attacks on our freedom of privacy, expression, and civil liberties is bad enough. But what offends me as well is this claim that it is all done in order to enforce the rights of content creators. Is that so? Does that mean, as an independent content creator, I have access to the same amount of police support/snooping in order to "protect" my intellectual property? I didn't think so. All these laws amount to are a protection racket perpetrated by the wealthy and vested interests of popular media. They are the mobs with easy access to guns and muscle. The reality is it is nothing to do with enforcing copyright laws; just enforcing it for those that can afford.