Category: Internet
The Pirate Bay's new owners plan to pay users to host content
In an effort to legitimise the Pirate Bay its new owner, Global Gaming Factory, plans to pay users to host content as part of mass peer-to-peer network.
“We’re a publicly listed company, so whatever we take over has to be legal,” said CEO of GGF, Hans Pandeya. “To be legal, you have to have content providers who are paid. That’s what we want.”
The new system could also see data transmitted for ISPs who are having trouble with the ever increasing traffic of the internet.
It was only yesterday it was announced that the Pirate Bay was being taken over. There has been widespread concern on the web that the takeover was the beginning of the end for the Pirate Bay. Today’s announcement will only fuel that concern. If GGF plan to pay hosts then it might not be long until they begin to charge for content as well.
(via gamesindustry.biz)
Twitter directly from Flickr
Flickr has joined the Twitter revolution and now allows users to directly post pictures or videos into their Twitter streams.
They can either be uploaded directly using a dedicated email address or can they can be tweeted from Flickr using the ‘blog this’ function.
The tweets will show a special short Flic.kr URL and the user will have 116 characters left to tweet any additional info.
It’s about time Flickr got official with Twitter. Services such as Twittergram have demonstrated that linking from Flickr is an easy thing to do.
(via Flickr)
China still surfs free as Green Dam is halted
There were parties in the street late last night in Beijing as Chinese students celebrated the last-minute halt of the Green Dam plan.
The meet up was originally planned to discuss censorship, debate other studenty matters and generally fill in time while the web went down for 24 hours to apply the Chinese government’s much criticised content filter.
The students, in the green protest t-shirts, arrived at the event instead to find an unlikey partial victory over their leaders with the news that the roll out of the project has been pushed back – at least for now. It’s unclear how long it will be before Green Dam does come into action, or if indeed it will be moth balled perminantly, but, at least for now, the students of China have the result they were looking for.
MPs to investigate Britain's broadband speeds
The Digital Britain report, published earlier this month, proposed that all homes would have access to broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.
Now for a country that has Virgin advertising up to 50Mb via their cable network and O2 advertising up to 20Mb on the existing phone-line network that doesn’t really sound very ambitious. It seems that some MPs may also be thinking just that.
So, MPs who work in the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee are to open an inquiry into broadband speeds in the UK. They will also look into whether the proposed 50p broadband tax is fair or not – the charge would be added monthly to anyone with a fixed telephone line.
Their concern is that by not aiming higher, the UK will fall behind the rest of the world in terms of broadband speeds. This handy chart courtesy of the BBC shows just how far we are behind already:
Even the French are beating us – sacre bleu. Also, South Korea has set a target of a minimum of 1Gbps for all homes. That kind of blows our target out of the water.
(via BBC)
YouTube to help citizen journalists with dedicated channel
YouTube has launched a new channel – The YouTube Reporters’ Center (yep Center, American’s are more important than us, everybody knows that).
The channel aims to take advantage of its unique position in terms of user content when it comes to world events. The current situation in Iran has highlighted its importance in terms of showcasing first-hand events – particularly with the tragic case of Neda Agha-Soltan whose death was captured on video and posted onto YouTube.
The channel’s aim is to improve the citizen journalism currently on show on YouTube. There are plenty of instructional videos from the experts such as learning how to prepare for an interview with CBS’ Katie Couric, tips on how to be an investigative reporter from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward or how to report on a humanitarian crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times.
The service sounds like a great idea for budding journalists or just ordinary folk who are interested in reporting on news-worthy events in their community. As usual with Google the timing is spot on as well.
(via Google Blog)
The Pirate Bay sold for £4.7million
It’s been a busy few weeks for the Pirate Bay. Firstly it was announced that the founders had been heavily fined and sentenced to prison in their court case in Sweden. Then the Pirate Party wins two seats in the EU elections. And yesterday we told you about their Video Bay project.
But today’s news trumps the lot – the Pirate Bay has been sold to Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB for 60million SEK (£4.7million).
Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya stated that they would “like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site”. So copyright owners will be compensated? That’s not really the ethos of the Pirate Bay is it?
The Pirate Bay is keen to stress that the site will not change under the new ownership – their blog states that the buyers are the “right people with the right attitude”.
However, the relatively small fee paid – this is one of the 100 most visited websites in the world remember – suggests it may be somewhat of a fire-sale. Given the timing and the revelations of the huge fines they face it isn’t difficult to imagine that this sale is more a case of the founders cutting their losses and getting out whilst they can.
The Pirate Bay is saying otherwise though: “The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!”
It’s hard not to worry though isn’t it? It’s going to be fascinating to see how the Pirate Bay evolves under the new owners.
(via Reuters & The Pirate Bay)
Firefox 3.5 out tomorrow
Mozilla has confirmed that version 3.5 of their popular web browser, Firefox, will be released tomorrow – thus fulfilling their promise of a June release…just.
Codenamed Shiretoko – which incidentally is a peninsula in the north-east of Japan geography lovers – version 3.5 is a confusing number jump from the current 3.0.11. Version 3.1 was planned for a December 2008 release but a greater scope in changes, due to numerous bugs, has led Mozilla to jump straight to the 3.5 moniker.
Firefox 3.5 has been available in beta for a couple of weeks now and is said to offer greater performance for the user, although there are suggestions that the beta version of the new Google Chrome release is even faster.
One of the major upgrades of 3.5 is the support for HTML 5 video and audio. Other changes include a private browsing feature, for the more prudent web surfer, and improved add-on features. In all there are over 5,000 changes although the majority of these will be unnoticeable for the end user.
If you can’t wait until tomorrow you can get the beta here. Or, just wait and Firefox will prompt you to update when it is ready.
(via PCPro)
The Pirate Bay launches Video Bay beta
You would think that the guys over at the Pirate Bay might lay low for a little while, given the on-going court case and the possibility of jail-time.
But no, their fight against (or should I say, for) copyright infringement shows no sign of relenting – in fact it is showing clear signs of accelerating with the beta release of the Video Bay.
Nothing actually works on the Video Bay at present apart from a couple of test video clips that are a little temperamental. Visitors are presented with a homescreen that states: “This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site ain’t working properly.”
Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde said it might be a while before the site is launched properly. “It will be done when it’s done, in the future, in like a year or five,” he said.
The Video Bay will aim to rival YouTube with streaming video content. Unlike YouTube, however, there will be no removal of content that may infringe on copyright legislation.
Considering the huge fan base that already exists at the Pirate Bay and the fact that many of these fans are tech savvy – expect the Video Bay to
Britain to set up cyber-security centre
Gordon Brown has announced the creation of a cyber-security operations centre to protect Britain for cyber-attacks. “Just as in the 19th century we had to secure the seas for our national safety and prosperity, and in the 20th century we had to secure the air, in the 21st century we also have to secure our position in cyberspace,” he said.
The team is set to include young computer geeks with questionable pasts. Terrorism Minister Lord Alan West said: “You need youngsters who are actually deep into this stuff. If they’ve been slightly naughty, very often they really enjoying stopping others.”
The aim of the unit will be to protect sensitive systems from spies, thieves, terrorists and other Bond-villains. West has stated that BT’s systems, for example, come under attempted attack at least 1,000 times a day. Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, has warned that both China and Russia are spying on Britain through technology.
In response to this news I’d just like to make it known that I, myself, am somewhat of a computer geek and I do have the required questionable past – I used to copy Amiga games off of my mates. I’d be willing to join the crack team for a £50k salary, company car and Bupa membership.
(via Fox News)
Google to help you plan your city break
It seems that not a day goes by when we don’t have a new Google project to report on. Those guys seem to knock out new services faster than you can say “total world domination”.
This time Google has been working on City Tours – an app that will help when planning city breaks. Enter a city name, a set of dates and duration of your stay and sit back as City Tours plans a multi-day itinerary complete with schedule and walking distances.
Click on a certain attraction’s name and it gives you opening times, a star rating and even suggested stay times – three stars out of three and an hour visit for Madam Tussauds in case you were wondering.
It’s not just the big cities that feature on City Tours – a suggested tour of Southend-on-Sea includes all the big attractions. Yes, Southend-on-Sea has some big attractions – the longest pier in the world, don’t you know?
It’s definitely a work in progress though. It doesn’t seem to recognise water and only seems to measure walking times based on straight lines between points. It doesn’t seem to have a problem making users walk for about six hours a day either.
It’s only in Labs at the moment and no doubt Google will have all these problems ironed out before a full release. Try it out here.
(via Search Engine Land)
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