I was reading an article on Musical Independece Revolution about how a number of bands are skipping past the record labels and selling directly to the fans. Basically doing what has been said they need to do for decades now.
Looks like Radiohead’s latest independent approach to album promotion and sales, basically giving away [...]
Continue reading about Now will the Record Labels pay attention?
Now, I don’t advocate piracy per say. But I think that Big Media in the form of some music and movie companies, have really messed up and should get in trouble for some of the illegal things they have done in “protecting their members copyrights.”
TPB files charges against media companies
Thanks to the email-leakage from [...]
Continue reading about The Pirate Bay files charges AGAINST big media
A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia’s commitment to fighting piracy.
The allofmp3.com Web site angered Western music companies by undercutting the price of downloads in deals they said breached copyright law.
Denis Kvasov, head [...]
Antigua and Barbuda - a nation of 70,000 in an area roughly half the size of San Francisco - has formally requested that the WTO allow it to suspend its intellectual property obligations to the United Statesallow it to suspend its intellectual property obligations to the United States, AP reports.Although many in the US [...]
Continue reading about Antigua calls for pirates to return to Caribbean
Before P2P, we had to resort to :ahem: alternative measures.
Well its been a while, but Digg actually had something entertaining on.
read more | digg story
ACFI is a group of people working for the peoples right to it’s Internets. We have made progress in Ladonia and are now working on the Micronation of Sealand.
Recently it was made clear that this country is for sale. To make sure the owners will be kopimistic and that the country won’t be governed by [...]
Continue reading about The Pirate Bay to buy Sealand? Is it possible?
P2P Art at Torrentfreak
Mixed media artist and filmmaker Anders Weberg created a piece of P2P art. The experimental movie “Filter” is about by the emotional rollercoaster he went through when his son almost died.
“Filter is fully based on the emotions that I experienced in the beginning of 2006when I woke up one night and found [...]
iPods at war : Page 1
DJs in the desert
One of Mikhail Woltering’s strangest experiences in Iraq came when he helped a US unit fix a problem with their satellite TV hookup. One of the soldiers in the unit had hauled an amazing array of electronic gear into the desert with him: expensive computer, turntables, speakers. [...]
Continue reading about America and it’s technology travels to war
The Pirate Bay is back, sporting a new logo. Search feature will be online later. Searching for now gives the message “no hits due to politics”
I posted just an hour or so ago… and they’re already back up (mind with database errors). I think the errors you may get now is the fact it’s [...]
MPAA Offers To Settle (Again)
by Shawn @ 4:17 pm · filed under Movies, Law
There is an “Early Neutral Evaluation Conference” on May 23, 2006 to determine if this matter can be settled. Personally, it seems like an utter waste of time because at this point about the only thing I would settle for is if they dropped the case, paid my attorney fees and then dissolve their whole organization.
They offered me an initial settlement of $2,500 (before they decided to take it to court), which was rejected on the basis of principal. Then today I talked to my attorney and they are offering a settlement of $3,500.
Bahahahahahaaha! So if I refused your $2,500 out of principal, what exactly makes you think I’m going to give you $3,500 now? That’s comedy. 
From everything I’ve read online, the MPAA (and RIAA) has been pretty much extorting everyone simply because they can’t afford to fight it. This certainly will give me something interesting to blog about. I just pray it goes to a full trial, where they will lose and then give everyone else that is being sued a nice lawsuit they lost as a reference for their lawsuit… “MPAA vs. Shawn Hogan” That has a nice ring to it. Maybe this loss will be the start of their demise. (Hmmm… I seem to have quite the aspirations, eh? haha)
From a purely business standpoint, I think all the lawsuits that the MPAA and RIAA are throwing out are only hurting them in the long-run. From everything I’ve read, it does not curb piracy at ALL. I would even argue it increases it because all of a sudden people that weren’t aware you could download music/movies now realize you can (and some will start). Then you are going to compound this by everyone talking about it and reading other’s blogs. I’m a perfect example… from talking my attorney and then researching stuff online as a result of that, I now know that if you have the proper software installed, you can download pretty much any movie (or anything else) you want.
Not only that, but you would think they would be wiser about who they choose to extort.
For as big of an organization they are, my website gets roughly 10,000 times more traffic than theirs (hell, this stupid blog gets more traffic than their site). Then again, digitalpoint.com more traffic than buy.com or adobe.com.. hehe
So what just happened? Well now a few hundred thousands people per day were just educated about 1. about their general extortion and 2. they also now know that you can download whatever you want. I’m starting to think maybe the MPAA might actually kill the movie industry (which this dude shares my viewpoint). If they were smart, they certainly would choose their racketeering targets a little wiser (like maybe someone without the resources to fight and a captive audience of 80 million people per month that will read my viewpoint). This could turn out to be some good/interesting reading though. Reminds me a bit of the Winn and Sims fiasco.
Wanna see something else funny? Check Google’s top 10 results for “MPAA”… It seems I’m not the only one that thinks the MPAA is looney.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mpaa
Oh, and just as a side note, they are utter liars… They told me they identified the specific computer that did whatever they claimed and they traced it back to me (of course I knew that was a lie since it never happened). But now they are saying they don’t have any such information (MAC address basically). {rolls eyes}
Continue reading about MPAA vs Shawn Hogan (The fight they did not want)
