Tag: twitter
Pirate Bay trial begins in Sweden
The four operators of the Pirate Bay, the internet’s premier Bittorrent tracker, began their trial today in Sweden, accused of 33 cases of copyright infringement. According to charges filed by the public prosecutor, they’re “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws”, a reference to the fact that the site simply links to copyrighted content – it doesn’t actually host anything itself.
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundström face a fine of £100,000 and up to two years in prison, but the real effect will be on the future of file-sharing on the internet. A victory for the Pirate Bay would set back the cause of content-owners world wide.
The Pirate Bay is calling the event a “Spectrial” – a cross between a spectacle and trial. They’re trying to make the reporting of the case as open and transparent as possible, with audio and video streams available in multiple languages.
The Pirate Bay has launched a blog – http://trial.thepiratebay.org/ – though it’s currently struggling under heavy traffic, and it’s encouraging people to use the #spectrial hashtag when discussing it on Twitter. Blogs like ZeroPaid and TorrentFreak are also covering the trial in fine detail.
What I find most baffling about the whole affair, though, is that the authorities think that they can make a dent in file-sharing volumes by shutting down the Pirate Bay. If that was to happen, then 99.5% of its users would just move to another site and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Even if Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundström go to jail for this, it’s highly unlikely that the site will go down for longer than 24 hours or so. I strongly suspect that the operators have backup plans in place just for that very event.
Still, I suppose the Swedish government has to appear as if its doing something to placate the content-owners whose business is crashing all around them. I just hope that they have some sense of reality about the game of whack-a-mole that they’re playing.
Speak Swedish? Speak English? Want to help The Pirate Bay live-blog its imminent copyright trial via Twitter?
Then step right up! The Pirate Bay, the mega piracy portal which always goes to great lengths to point out it doesn’t actually host the files it catalogues, is going to court very soon – charged with, well, you can probably guess. Letting the world watch Quantum of Solace without having to go to the cinema or HMV.
A live audio feed of the Bay’s trial will be made available online, but the problem is it’s all being conducted in Sweden. In Swedish. And with the best will in the world, Swedish could never be described as the language of the internet. We’d imagine it’s only the third most popular language even in Sweden…
Geek Chic: a t-shirt, bag or mug with a mosiac of your Twitter friends
My Twitter followers are important to me. No, really, you all are. But I’m not convinced that they’re important enough for me to want to wear them on my chest all day. Still, you might be closer to them than I am, so for £20 you can stick them on on T-Shirt and look down every ten minutes at your lovely disciples.
Also available are mugs (for £11), bags (currently out of stock) and business cards (£5.50). Just think to yourself before you make your purchase – will you genuinely still be wearing that thing in six months’ time?
Twitter Mosaic (via TechCrunch)
10 reasons why Brits love Twitter
So it is official, Brits absolutely love the microblogging (no, I don’t know what that means either) service Twitter. According to online trend watchers Hitwise UK, internet traffic to Twitter has increased 10-fold over last 12 months.
UK Internet traffic to the website has increased by a staggering 974% over this period. Hitwise also admits that Twitter is probably even more popular than its numbers imply, as Hitwise is only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website, not access via mobile (it’s big on the iPhone, I can tell you) or third party applications like Twitterrific and Tweetdeck.
So why is this? It is obvious why Twitter is growing on the other side of The Pond:
1. The Yanks invented it
2. Culturally, Americans are not afraid of…
UK Twitter traffic trebles in a month
Twitter’s popularity in the UK has exploded since January, after a number of high-profile celebrity Twitterers including @stephenfry, @wossy and @schofe started using it, and talking about it. As a result, the site’s traffic has trebled since ths start of the year, according to Hitwise Intelligence.
All that traffic has catapulted Twitter into the top 100 UK sites, where it now sits at #91, above Expedia, Gumtree and Easyjet. It’s also ranking seventh within the “Social Networking and Forums” category. Of course, this still underrates Twitter’s popularity, because many people don’t use the website to interact with the site. Real numbers would be even higher.
(via Hitwise Intelligence)
OPINION: Twitter is for twits – oh really?
My first Twitter update was “Laughing at Katie’s birdwatching geekdom” on January 16th 2007, on the CatwalkQueen Twitter. I wasn’t an early adopter – Twitter launched in 2006 – but I have racked up a couple of thousand updates since that first one. The only thing that’s changed is that I’ve moved to my own account where my updates are slightly more frequent and a lot more irrelevant.
This week the anti-Twitter brigade have been out in full. Now that celebs like Stephen Fry, Phillip Schofield, Andi Peters and Jonathan Ross are spreading the word away from the geeks and the “social media experts” everyone’s jumping on the hate bandwagon. “Twitter is for Twits” read one (predictable) headline in the Telegraph. Congrats to Bryony Gordon (or her sub) for pissing off 6 million people before even starting the article. That’s a pretty good move, I bet the…
His Holiness The Dalai Lama joins Twitter
The Dalai Lama isn’t the first political leaderto join the microblogging phenomenon Twitter, but he might be the first religious leader. Well, the first real one, anyway.
His Holiness, or @OHHDL as he’s known on the site, has been networking like crazy, sending 46 updates and accruing 20,000 followers in just two days. Some of it is just sending out links to his other web presences, but there’s a smattering of other stuff, too, including the wonderful statement: “I’m sure HH will be just as inquisitive about technology as he has been over the past 14 reincarnations”.
Note: this post nearly contained a “Twibet” pun, but I thought better of it after seeing @natelanxon’s rant this morning.
More posts about Twitter: New INQ phone will have Twitter built in | Celebrity Twitter user Stephen Fry in LIVE LIFT TRAP SENSATION
RUMOUR: Vodafone to launch Android handset with HTC
Perhaps Vodafone’s CEO has had a change of heart since dissing Android last year. There’s a rumour flying about that the network operator is planning its own Android handset, built by HTC.
The rumour suggests that it’ll be launched next Tuesday, the 17th Feb, at Mobile World Congress, which would make sense. I’ve emailed Vodafone about the device, but if they come back to me with anything other than “no comment”, then I’ll be very surprised indeed.
(via @feebeyer)
More on Android: Last.fm releases Android client application | Video surfaces of the Android-based Dream G2
New INQ phone will have Twitter built in
The problem with building an entire device around one service is that when the service becomes obsolete, so does the device. Not that I’m saying Facebook, and therefore the INQ phone, is obsolete, but it’s important to keep things updated.
With that in mind, last night Electric Pig got a nugget of information out of INQ’s CEO, Frank Meehan, about the next device they’ll be releasing. When asked if Twitter would feature in the next INQ, Frank replied: “I think we’d be stupid if we didn’t”. So there you go.
(via Electric Pig)
More on the INQ: INQ1 heading to more networks | REVIEW: INQ1 Facebook phone from 3
Celebrity Twitter user Stephen Fry in LIVE LIFT TRAP SENSATION
Stephen Fry, who has gone from obscure advert voice-over man and trainee Peter Ustinov to become the WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS PERSON thanks to his embracing of the tech world and Twitter in particular, has, once again, done it.
He got stuck in a lift.
Fortunately, there was a mobile signal available…
