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UK MPs Blast “Extraordinary Lobbying” to Quickly Enact “3-Strikes”
Several members of the House of Lords criticize “extraordinary degree of lobbying” by copyright holders to get “three-strikes” legislation passed as quickly as possible, but the MPs warn it’ll only mean years of trying to the fix “deficiencies of the present bill.” The UK govt’s controversial plans to disconnect file-sharers from the Internet is coming under increasing fire from members of the House of Lords, due in part, it seems, to claims of a concerted effort by copyright holders to hurry the Digital Economy Bill’s passage into law. Lord Puttnam is one of the critics, angry that some would even consider hurrying to enact such sweeping legislation without proper debate, and notes that a poorly written bill will just mean they’ll wind up having to revisit the “deficiencies of the present bill” in the future. “What will end up leaving this chamber… and going to the Commons is a bill that none of us is particularly proud of,” said Lord Puttnam.
Continue reading »Oscar Pirates, Fewer Films Leak Online This Year
Waxy’s Andy Baio has been collecting detailed piracy stats for every Oscar-nominated movie since 2003. Much to the delight of the MPAA, his most recent statistics show that, compared to previous years, fewer Oscar nominees have leaked online. The statistics for all 2010 nominees , except documentary and foreign films, show that 27 of the 34 films were available on BitTorrent in DVD quality last night.
Continue reading »Feds Charge Three with Comcast.net Hijacking
Three alleged members of the hacker gang Kryogeniks were hit with a federal conspiracy charge Thursday for a 2008 stunt that replaced Comcast’s homepage with a shout-out to other hackers. Defiant, in an undated photo from his MySpace profile last year. Prosecutors identified Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black, Jr, 20, as the hackers “EBK” and “Defiant,” known for hijacking Comcast’s domain name in May of last year — a prank that took down the cable giant’s homepage and webmail service for more than five hours, and allegedly cost the company over $128,000.
Continue reading »Garry Fung about Isohunt and Hexagon.cc
Networkworld has an interesting , albeit a little ill-formatted interview with Isohunt.com founder Garry Fung, who offers a few interesting details about his site. Isohunt is currently getting around 30 million visitors per month, according to Fung, and its MySQL index is a whopping 30 GB. That’s a lot of torrent data right there.
Continue reading »BitTorrent Meets IMDb on Files24
The best description of Files24 is a mashup between IMDb and BitTorrent. All the movies listed on the site have a plot description and list of cast members, the film’s director, year it was produced and the genre it falls under. In addition the site lists the IMDb rating of each film with a direct link to IMDb.
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