Pirate News Top Three 28/02/2013

1. Pirate Bay Hosting Sails To Spain And Norway

 

As a result of pressure put onto the Swedish Pirate Party, the decision was made by both the Swedish Party and The Pirate Bay to move its web hosting services to the Pirate Parties of Spain and Norway. Although The Bay had already moved most of it's services "To The Cloud", the Swedish Party was still providing web hosting for the website. Now, bandwidth will be split between the Spanish and Norwegian Pirates, who will be providing The Bay with an "exit node". It is most likely both of these countries were chosen as a result of of their respective courts ruling in favour of defendants of filesharing cases.



Full Article At Wired UK: The Pirate Bay moves to safer shores, Norway and Spain

2.  64 Pirate Parties Worldwide

 

The number of Pirate Parties worldwide has now reached 64 in total, with 50 of those being active and/or registered in their respective countries, according to The Pirate Times. Australia, Norway and Poland are those most recently to have a Pirate Party registered with the governments of their countries. What's more, there are more 600,000 people are following a Pirate Party on Facebook or Twitter worldwide. Tunisia, Serbia and Isreal have more than one country claiming to be the official one. Maybe the Copyright movement should do a double take at those figures.

Full Article At The Pirate Times: The Pirate World 2013

3. Pirates Without Borders

 

European Pirate Parties of different countries sharing a common language have started to "twin" and share common knowledge between each other. Known as “grenzenlos Piraten-Partnerschaft” (or Borderless Pirate Partnership), parties in German-speaking parts of the Netherlands and Germany are meeting up to share/copy ideas, with those from Brussels and Liege likely to follow. Here's hoping this could be replicated between UK and Irish Pirates.

Full Article At The Pirate Times: Pilot project for International Pirate Partnerships Announced

New Interface For Firefox Mobile Nightly Version 22

I don't deny I love living on the edge when it comes to software like Firefox. There's something cool about saying "Haha, I saw it first!" And seeing what new surprises await.

I updated my Nightly version of Firefox today to find they seem to have overhauled the interface. The tab menu is now in the top right, and when tapped the open tabs are now arranged as horizontal screenshot icons rather than the focus being on a vertical list.

The interface isn't complete, however, as tapping the sync button shows. The menu of tabs on other computers is hidden underneath the awesomebar, making it impossible to access some of them. However this is the development version, so bugs are yet to be ironed out.

Feeling adventurous? Check it out on the Firefox Nightly Website.

EDIT: After trying the nightly on my Nexus 4, it turns out the interface upgrade is only for the tablet version of Android.

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

The Twin Cobra

From the end of this month the Cobra ODE (Optical Drive Emulator) will be available for purchase for the Playstation 3. At £79.99, this hardware mod requires no soldering for older versions of the console (all phat and most slim versions), although the one-size-fits-all device can also be soldered onto the new slim variants.

According to the website, the Cobra ODE is compatible with both Official Firmware versions and software-modded Custom Firmware versions of the Playstation 3 and allows the user to play backups of their PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. There is also the hope that it will allow the downgrading of the most recent versions of the official Playstation firmware, which if true would be a first.

More information can be read at the official Cobra ODE website, or visit the news story at the end of the page.

Original Article at NextGenUpdate: PS3 Hardware Hacks - Cobra ODE Released!

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

Abandon Ship! German Pirate Party Shipwreck In Elections?

In the last couple of weeks the German Pirate Party has failed to secure a seat in the state Parliament elections in Lower Saxony, with momentum fading since the rise of pirate parties across the world following attempted shutdowns and arrests over Bittorrent site The Pirate Bay.

This follows an apparent tirade of negative press and bad publicity over arguments within the party, as well as claims of being unable to shift the opinion that The Pirates are a single issue party concerned with copyright.

However, the profile of the German Party has in general risen since first coming onto the scene a year and a half ago. They are concerned a seperate political entity rather than a fringe party, and the recent result should increase state funding for the party.

Full Article at The Pirate Times: Lower Saxony Pirates Fail to Gain Seats in State Parliament

Mega Content Taken Down

Kim Dotcom, former owner of MegaUpload and also owner of the newly created file locker website Mega, has revealed that the recent flurry of DCMA takedown notices originated from non other than the Mega site itself.  This was the result of an independent search engine for the site not having a valid takedown procedure for rights holders claiming ownership of files aggregated on the search page.

As a safety measure, the many hundreds of files already indexed by the search engine have been taken down on the Mega site, including many that are legally hosted. It looks like Dotcom is taking legal issues far more seriously in order to prevent a repeat of the shutdown of his MegaUpload site last year.

Full Article on TorrentFreak: https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-mega-search-engines-have-to-play-by-the-rules-130201/

Antigua To Launch "Legal" Piracy Site

The World Health Organisation in the last few days has approved Antigua's request to suspend the enforcements of US Copyrights in their country (a decision that any country can make regarding copyright law, including the United States itself). Local authorities are now preparing a new media portal offering millions of films, TV shows, albums and software. It is unsure exactly how the site will work at present.

This comes after years of negotiations regarding the business practices of the United States which resulted in the shut down of the Antigua online gambling industry.

As the goods and services of the website will be available worldwide, it raises an interesting question as to whether the authorities of other countries will pursue those who buy their media from the site. It is most likely that the goods will still be considered "pirate" in the other countries that continue to enforce US copyrights.

I will be interesting to see what affect this will have on the local economy; will it truly drive away investment from multinational businesses and bring the country further down, or will it enable it to create its own jobs and its own economy again?

Source Article:  Antigua’s Legal “Pirate Site” Authorized by the World Trade Organization

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.