Music file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has been sold.
It is set to be transformed into a legal music site that sees artists and record labels get paid for the downloads they provide.
The Sweden-based website - whose four founders and hosts were sentenced to a year in jail and fined for copyright infringement offences in April - will be acquired by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB in August.
The Pirate Bay has been sold for 60 million Swedish SEK (£4.7 million), Global Gaming Factory X AB revealed in a statement.
Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factory X AB said that another new change would be faster downloads and increased sound quality for users.
"In order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary," he explained.
"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it," he added. "File-sharers need faster downloads and better quality."
In their own statement, The Pirate Bay chiefs claimed that the ethos of the site would not change despite its new legal status.
"A lot of people are worried," they said. "We're not and you shouldn't be either! The right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site.
"It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die.
"The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internet – quite the opposite."
(Via 'NME')
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Story That Takes 1,000 Years to Read Is Antidote to Media Whirlwind
San Francisco conceptual artist and journalist Jonathon Keats is trying to rejuvenate literature in the age of hyperspeed media by writing a story that will take a millennium to tell.
The catch? The story, printed on the cover of the recently released Infinity issue of Opium Magazine, is only nine words long.
“I’m interested in exploring deep time,” the thought experimentalist and Wired contributor explained in an e-mail to Wired.com during a visit to Europe, where he is probably concocting a scheme to wormhole Paris or something.
“Like most people, I live my life in a rush, consuming media on the run,” said Keats, who has copyrighted his mind, tried to pass a Law of Identity and attempted to genetically engineer God.
“That may be fine for reading the average blog,” he said, “but something essential is lost when ingesting words is all about speed. My thousand-year story is an antidote. Given the printing process I’ve used, you can’t take in more than one word per century. That’s even slower than reading Proust.”
The printing process in question is a simple but, as usual with Keats, pretty clever idea. The cover is printed in a double layer of standard black ink, with an incrementally screened overlay masking the nine words. Exposed over time to ultraviolet light, the words will be appear at different rates, supposedly one per century.
“The precise quantity of ink covering each word is different, so that the words will appear one at a time,” Keats said. “Provided that your copy of Opium is kept out in the open, and regularly exposed to sunlight over 1,000 years to be read progressively by the next dozen or so generations. Or very, very slowly if you happen to be Ray Kurzweil.”
The odds are very good that Keats’ brainy game will outlive print itself, at least as far as magazines are concerned. But will the pages of Opium last long enough for his story to be told?
“The high-quality acid-free paper on which Opium is printed will certainly last that long,” Keats answered. “Whether humankind will, of course, remains an open question.”
Iran update - Revolution 2.0
A placard displayed during a demonstration opposite the Iranian embassy in London last Friday.Neda, Obama and the Power of Pictures
As Nico put it: "More video emerges of the brave government security officials who roam around attacking inanimate objects."
3:37 PM ET -- Suspicious ballot photos posted by Iran state media? A reader writes, "I believe this is well worth reporting: many interesting photos are being put on the web as I write, a good number of them published by IRNA itself (see here). These are images from the recent Guardians Council TV broadcast session where they 'recounted' some ballot boxes and found out that indeed Ahmadinejad's votes were higher than previously counted. These pictures show two things very clearly: 1) that a whole lot of the ballots that are being recounted are fresh, crisp, unfolded sheets - which makes no sense, given that people typically had to fold these sheets before they can slip them into the ballot boxes, and 2) that the handwriting on so many of the sheets which are votes for 'Ahmadinejad' are the same handwriting (and very clearly so)."
Via HuffPo
After the Crackdown: Iran's Opposition Down but Hardly Out@Time
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Michael Jackson - Coroners Report
(From the Glasgow Herald)
The LA Coroners Department has reported that the cause of Michael
Jackson's death it at this point uncertain.
They cannot decide whether to blame it on the sunshine, blame it on
the moonlight, blame it on the good times or blame it on the boogie!!!
(Thanx Paul)
The LA Coroners Department has reported that the cause of Michael
Jackson's death it at this point uncertain.
They cannot decide whether to blame it on the sunshine, blame it on
the moonlight, blame it on the good times or blame it on the boogie!!!
(Thanx Paul)
Iran update - Revolution 2.0 (Refresh page)
Iranian regime’s State Security Forces are suppressing Tehran residents in Park Laleh (central Tehran). A number of people have been wounded in sever crackdown by regime’s SSF, according to eyewitnesses.
“They are beating up people everywhere, drivers are blowing horns of their vehicle to protest the brutal repression” one eyewitness said.
In Tajrish square (northern Tehran) and nearby streets anti-riot units are stationed every few meters on both sides of the streets. They stop and check every passerby.
CNN: Violent protests have broken out in Tehran after Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election. #iranelection
No Velvet Revolution for Iran/Fareed Zakaria
When we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. Then, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?
When we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. Then, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?
It's possible but unlikely. While the regime's legitimacy has cracked -- a fatal wound in the long run -- for now it will probably be able to use its guns and money to consolidate power. And it has plenty of both. Remember, the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel back in 1989. It is $69 now. More important, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out, 1989 was highly unusual. As a historical precedent, it has not proved a useful guide to other antidictatorial movements.
The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion and nationalism. In 1989 in Eastern Europe, all three were arrayed against the ruling regimes. Citizens hated their governments because they deprived people of liberty and political participation. Believers despised communists because they were atheistic, banning religion in countries where faith was deeply cherished. And people rejected their regimes because they saw them as imposed from the outside by a much-disliked imperial power, the Soviet Union.
The situation in Iran is more complex. Democracy clearly works against this repressive regime. The forces of religion, however, are not so easily aligned against it. Many, possibly most, Iranians appear to be fed up with theocracy. But that does not mean they are fed up with religion. And it does appear that the more openly devout Iranians -- the poor, those in rural areas -- voted for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
There is one way religion could be used against Iran's leaders, but it would involve an unlikely scenario: Were Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to issue a fatwa condemning Tehran from his base in Najaf, Iraq, it would be a seismic event, probably resulting in the regime's collapse. Remember, Sistani is Iranian, probably more revered in the entire Shiite world than any other ayatollah, and he is opposed to the basic doctrine of velayat-e faqih -- rule by a spiritual leader -- that created the Islamic Republic of Iran. His own view is that clerics should not be involved in politics, which is why he has steered clear of any such role in Iraq. But he is unlikely to publicly criticize the Iranian regime (though he did refuse to see Ahmadinejad when the latter visited Iraq in March 2008).
Nationalism is the most complex of the three forces. Over most of its history, the Iranian regime has exploited nationalist sentiment. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power by battling the shah, who was widely seen as an American puppet. Soon after the revolution, Iraq attacked Iran, and the mullahs again wrapped themselves in the flag. The United States supported Iraq in that war, ignoring Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Iranians -- something Iranians have never forgotten. The Bush administration's veiled threats to attack Iran over the past eight years allowed the mullahs to drum up support. (Every Iranian dissident, from Akbar Ganji to Shirin Ebadi, has noted that talk of air strikes on Iran strengthened the regime.) And it is worth remembering that the United States still funds guerrilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic. Most of these are tiny groups with no chance of success, funded largely to appease right-wing members of Congress. But the Tehran government is able to portray this as an ongoing anti-Iranian campaign.
In this context, President Obama has been right to tread cautiously -- for the most part -- to extend his moral support to Iranian protesters but not get politically involved. The United States has always underestimated the raw power of nationalism across the world, assuming that people will not be taken in by cheap and transparent appeals against foreign domination. But look at what is happening in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki boasts that U.S. troop withdrawals are a "a heroic repulsion of the foreign occupiers." Of course Maliki would not be in office but for those occupying forces, who protect his government to this day. A canny politician, though, he knows what will appeal to the Iraqi people.
Ahmadinejad is also a politician with considerable mass appeal. He knows that accusing the United States and Britain of interference works in some quarters. Our effort should be to make sure that those accusations seem as loony and baseless as possible. Were President Obama to get out in front, vociferously supporting the protests, he would be helping Ahmadinejad's strategy, not America's.
RT Police and plain clothes forces were settled across the Valiasr street to disallow the protesters to make a human chain #iranelection
!!!US forces attempt to hijack Iranian oil field@IRPressTV
the recount took at least 3 hours. Original full count took 2hrs? #iranelection takes time to make truth even more TRUTHY
RT Iran Iran’s GC declares #IranElection results valid. Pigs fly. Planets revolve around earth. Earth's flat. Sail ocean & fall off edge.
Karoubi, repeats call for an annulment of the poll, saying it was "the only way to regain people's trust" #iranelection
Iran Council confirms Ahmadinejad election victory@Reuters
1:35 PM ET -- Reaction to the Guardian Council's election ruling. Iranians on Twitter say people have begun protesting news that Iran's main election body had affirmed Ahmadinejad's victory. People have "come out on the streets... [they] are in the various city squares," one writes.@HuffPo
What is going on in the silence of Evin prison?@ReportersSansFrontieres
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