Friday, 1 August 2008

Secret G8 Agreement: Airport Searches Begin For Pirated Music, Movies.

A secret treaty called the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the G8 developed nations is coming into effect with searches at Canadian and Australian airports of laptops, MP3 players and cell phones for pirated music and movies.
The draconian law seeks to impose the strict enforcement of intellectual property rights, resulting in fines or jail time for pirates.


It does not stop at the mere possession of pirated tracks either. The U.K. government last week began tracking internet users through the nation’s ISPs who will flag users that exchange copyrighted material. These users will receive a warning direct from the government and if the activity is continued, users can expect a complete denial of service.


The U.S. has also adopted the treaty but is safe for the time being as it must first be ratified by Congress. There is another threat, however. According to a report today for Reuters, federal agents in the U.S. now have the power to seize electronic devices and laptops for unspecified periods without suspicion.

The treaty was also adopted by the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea so we may see a similar kind of enforcement in these countries soon.

Apart from the obvious violation of personal freedoms and privacy, there does not seem to be any way to detect whether your music collection is legit or not. The same goes for movies ripped from a DVD. This leads me to believe that this crackdown is merely for show, at great expense to the taxpayer and the inconvenience of travelers.

Sources:
News.com.au
PC World
DVICE
CoolestGadgets

Monday, 19 May 2008

Torrent site ‘The Pirate Bay’ cracks Alexa 100

The file-sharing torrent portal ‘The Pirate Bay’ has cracked the list of the most visited sites on the internet – the Alexa top 100. They are not alone either – fellow torrent site Mininova sits at number 52.

What’s even more surprising is that these underground sites managed to top well-respected destinations such as About.com at number 78 and LiveJournal, just behind at 56.

Whether it be games, music, software or movies, file sharing is clearly a huge business despite its illegality.

There seems to be five distinct attitudes that divide file-sharers.


The first attitude is based on services we are used to receiving in-store. People in this group want to sample a product before purchasing it to make sure it’s something they like – much like sampling a CD at a music store listening station.

The second attitude is quite arrogant – people in this group feel that they should simply be getting everything for nothing.

The third attitude is a justification, especially when related to hugely expensive software titles such as Adobe Photoshop, that they could never afford to buy it anyway – so it’s not a lost sale, and their download cost the company nothing.

The fourth relates to products like music, where the person feels an artists’ record is just a promotional tool for a live concert, for which they will purchase expensive tickets to.

The fifth group uses file sharing as a method of distributing their own works and are not in any way acting illegally.

Clearly, piracy will not be going away anytime soon. With the current climate of financial uncertainty coupled with easy access to fast, unlimited broadband connections, there may soon be even more people turning to less-than-legal sources for their goods.