You may remember that the four of the people behind Pirate Bay had copyright violations charges brought against them about a year ago.
Today their trial started with them facing the accusation of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws,” and earning money from advertising on the site.
The representatives of the film, music and video games industry are asking for around 115 million kronor ($13.5 million) in damages.
There’s been a lot of concern in the UK about members of the public and journalists being restricted in where and what they can take photographs of in public places.
Where previously there hasn’t been any significant limitations, there is now much concern that the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 contains a clause that allows for the arrest of people taking photos “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
A definition that broad could lead to any photographer being arrested.
The NUJ arranged a mass-photo taking this morning outside New Scotland Yard, our man Mike was down there and will be reporting back shortly. has now published his Section 76 Photographers Scotland Yard Protest: Report.
Photo: Alberto OG
Here we go, banging on about Twitter again.
We came across another interesting use of Twitter – one that is usurping the mainstream media again.
You’ll be aware of the shocking fire that have been raging in Australia.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months you probably haven’t heard of Twitter.
It’s a service that lets you write and post short messages that other people can read online or on their mobile devices. Some people call it micro-blogging, but that’s only because they don’t know how else to define it. It’s actually a a whole new communications channel, one that’s still firing off innovative uses of itself constantly.
Twestival is an interesting example. Its essence is a meeting of like-minded people, nothing new there, but the method and speed of arrangement is new.
As of today, Scoopt, will stop taking photos from the public and licensing them out.
The site, which received photos from members of the public and offered them for sale to news organisations around the world, was bought by Getty Images back in March 2007.
Project Kangaroo, which was to offer video from a number of UK broadcasters, delivered over the Internet, has been blocked by the UK Competition Commission (CC).
Kangaroo was a joint venture with the BBC through BBC Worldwide, ITV plc and Channel Four Television Corporation.
@StephenFry, UK TV broadcaster and now unofficial poster child/ marketing marvel for Twitter, has passed over 100,000 followers on the service today.
Only a week ago, we joked that Stephen Fry’s appearance at the London Apple Store might cause a riot, because he had 65,000 users at that point. He’s gained over 35,000 followers in a week! (BTW – the Apple event is now off)
His 100,000th follower is Hayley Elliot (@amellioh).
Fry is also the third most followed on the whole of Twitter, easily being the most popular in the UK. only about 25k more and he’ll be threatening cnnbrk’s position.
Another day, another use of Twitter. Today it’s being used to report the levels of snow falls around the UK.
All very useful individually, but the power of a mass of people reporting this information is when it’s brought together.
As soon as Google fixed their misreporting “This Site May Harm Your Computer” search problem, we had reports of another problem with a Google service. This time GMail.
Google has was broken in a major way. (UPDATE it’s fixed now, phew)
If you search for anything on Google search, the warning message “This Site May Harm Your Computer” appears underneath each of the results.
This may be down to every server on the Internet becoming infected – highly unlikely – Or Google and its security messaging having a major melt down – far more plausible.
Thanks to Daniel Harris for alerted us to this, just before we saw a flood of comment appearing on Twitter. It will be worth watching the hashtag #googlemayharm to watch the growth on knowledge on this.