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A blog post covering the Pirate Party UK and the recent launch of it's manifesto. The Pirate Party is fighting to reform 'intellectual property' law but also covers freedom of speech on the Internet an other web related issues. After winning seats on the European and German parliament, could they also be successful in the UK?

A German court has granted an injunction against torrent site The Pirate Bay (TPB) brought against it by Hollywood film studios. The injunction means that TPB's bandwidth provider cannot connect it to internet servers, meaning it is unavailable. Of course, getting one torrent site shut down is just the tip of the iceberg - there are thousands of torrent sites out there and many may originate in countries where the service providers or site owners can't be prosecuted. TPB originates in Sweden. In 2009, TPB's four founders were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay a $US3.6million fine.

Anyone interested?

Jail for cyber pirates? (In Spanish, I'm looking for an English version) 

Four Corners and Q&A are covering the mandatory ISP filter debate tonight, should be a great double bill. Now its off the agenda till after the election, so the Government clearly misjudged the public reaction. Thanks to widespread media coverage on the inherent flaws of the MISP, coupled with the activism of protest movements such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Pirate Party, its fair to say that the general public have moved beyond the Government's black and white positioning of the proposal.

Thanks for the reminder!

Before it was google book and now with the popularity of ipad and all the other ebook devices rised the ebook piracy issue. Now with almost the same format, ePub downloading and file sharing become easier.

Voltage pictures, production company of the oscar winning movie, The Hurt Locker has joined with the US copyright group filed thousands of lawsuits against people who have downloaded the movie through torrent sites. Magnitude of this is much larger than any prior legal action taken before for illegally downloaded movies.

A lad from washington dc, aged 22 was sentenced to jail for 29 months for selling copyrighted movies over the INTERNET. He has been managing USAWAREZ.COM since 2006. This is a sign where of the pathway that we are paving for Copyright policies.

The Digital economy Act in all its glory. There was a LOT of debate over this Act. It was introduced by Lord Mandelson of the Labour party, tossed back and forth between houses with amendments that were argued to the minutest detail, then finally spat out for the public to revile. All ISPs are now required to monitor their subscibers use of listed sites and warn them when they enter a site that enables pirating. They must then record every such warning, giving every subscriber a number, then make the list available to the government when they get a warrant to look for excessive downloaders. Only the government like this idea, because it makes their job easier. I wandered onto one of the listed sites recently in my quest to find Dr Who episodes before they aired in Australia. The message was like driving down the highway and suddenly seeing a police car parked on the side of the road. You might know you haven't done anything wrong (yet) but you still get a scare ...

The manifesto, further discussion and information regarding the Pirate Party in the UK

Copyright is big news over there right now. This party sprang up during the election, in direct response to the new copyright laws. Given the UK's voting system, they never really had a chance, and managed just over 1000 votes nationally. Still, the important thing is that they tried - yes?

As a response to lobbying from entertainment industry, the UK has become the second country to approve laws to punish piracy, where offenders can face temporary suspensions of their internet accounts

Evidence that it really isn't hard to bypass an ISP filter. This provides a walk though so if you didn't know how - now you do

What do technologies which main function provides a platform for the illegal sharing resort to once the crack down starts? Even though these companies did not directly share the copyrighted sources, they did provide the technology for their users to do so. In the case of Lime Wire, they seem to be choosing plain ignorance of the law to continue their open networks. They have countless years of promises to music executives to create filters, and screening for pirated downloads, but have constantly chose to not follow through. Once again they seem to be choosing the, "we will do it now," stance, but it seems it may just be empty promises once again and the ultimate end to the most popular site for illegal music sharing.