From Phandroid, a site for fans of Google’s mobile-web phone, Android.
When TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld suggests, “We have to talk about Android,” at the Mobile Web Wars Roundtable, some village’s idiot whined, “Why? Why do we have to talk about Android – nobody cares.” Then Michael Arrington popped a squat on his pitiful one man parade lecturing, “That’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous. As soon as it launches you’re going to be kissing Google’s ass.”
Sweden just passed a controversial law allowing all communications going out of the country will be tapped, and that information can be shared with agencies outside of the Swedish government, including the U.S. National Security Agency. I’m sure this is done under the veil of making everyone “safe.”
The Pirate Bay plans to offer encryption services to people who use the BitTorrent tracker site in a direct attempt to combat a new controversial snoop law passed in Sweden last week.
Peter Sunde, who is one of the men behind the notorious tracker site, said in a blog post yesterday:
“Many people have asked me what we’re planning to do – and the answer is ‘A lot!’. We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law,” he said. “This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption – both for your hard drives and your net traffic.”
Sunde said that The Pirate Bay also plans to lower the price for a system that runs VPN-tunnels and that it will be opened up for international use too.
He also called for ISPs to boycott Sweden. “More stuff is planned – together with other people that work against the law we’ve talked about asking the international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden,” Sunde said.
“Yes, that’s right! We want Sweden to be banned from the internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”
The Pirate Bay, which isn’t located in Sweden, hopes that wrapping SSL security around its site will add a layer of protection for anxious Swedes worried about having their internet activities snooped on.
Sweden’s parliament ushered in its contentious wiretapping law last Thursday after the proposal was amended earlier that day.
Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America’s National Security Agency.
On Friday Sweden’s Pirate Party, which strongly defends the BitTorrent site, said it will take Sweden to the European Court of Human Rights because the law is a clear breach of the European Convention for the Bay bitchslaps Swedish law with SSL
The ongoing saga regarding the Recording Industry Association of America and what is classified as sharing music has taken another interesting twist as the group has refiled one particular lawsuit.
It was late last year when the RIAA got stricter about file-sharing, claiming the act of making files available for sharing (via a “shared” folder) breaks copyright laws and is available for prosecution.
The pending lawsuits about this unique file-distribution models were shut down after U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake said that making copyrighted material available via a shared folder does not warrant a copyright infringement lawsuit and that the RIAA must prove that the material actually changed hands.
The recent news is that the RIAA has dropped a case that strongly pertains to the “making available” clause, and refiled the case. Rather that directing the lawsuit at the same defendants as before, the RIAA directed it at John Doe (a defendant to be identified later), therefore obtaining a new judge … who may not be so strict about the “making available” clauses.
Nice move, RIAA.
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