Awards season, mini phones and Pirate Bay drama
This week, our ol' chaps from over the pond (that is what they're called, right?) check in to speak of the unspeakable drama going on at The Pirate Bay. Not unspeakable because it's dramatic, scary or obscene, but it's just unspeakable because... well... explaining the situation gives us a bit of a headache. We'll let Duncan expound on how pirate visitors to The Pirate Bay actually might have a better shot at getting away with it.
Also, Dan chimes in on a notable trend, specifically the trend toward creating a "mini phone." In essence, the netbook / laptop relationship has extended to the mobile space, where less expensive smartphone handsets are starting to roll out in tandem with their bigger brethren. Phones like the Pixi and the Palm Pre, among others. What's with the fad, and is it worth buying into?
Lastly, it's award season over at Pocket-Lint, and besides the requisite champagne dreams after winning a Pocket-Lint-ie (that's not what they're called), the guys explain some of their favs including a piece of software getting some U.K. buzz that soon could be coming stateside.
Also, give us feedback if you've got it. pocketlintshow@techvi.com. We'd love to hear what you think of the show.
Guests:
- Dan Sung , Pocket-Lint
- Duncan Geere , Pocket-Lint
The Pirate Bay returns from the dead as Open Bittorrent
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The Pirate Bay hasn't officially been sold, but a new project aims to keep one of the most relevant parts of the site alive. A "tracker" is a part of BitTorrent where all the information about files is stored, but doesn't actually transfer any data. The Pirate Bay's tracker is seen as a vital part of the bittorrent community, as it is one of the largest trackers around. Since the site is being sold, there's mounting speculation about what'll happen to the tracker. Open Bittorrent's new tracker aims to be a tracker for anyone, and instead of hosting .torrent files, it allows any bittorrent file to be inserted into its tracker, but won't provide original .torrent files; an approach the people behind the company hope separates them from legal threats.
The Pirate Bay: Holes in the sale?
We find it kind of odd, to say the least, that The Pirate Bay, the most notorious and belligerent BitTorrent tracker and site on the planet, was sold to a Swedish video game company for around $7 million dollars. Call us skeptical, but looking in the past with sites like Napster, piracy-to-legit transformations don't often work out the way the founders' hope, but you never know.
We talk to Doug Aamoth from CrunchGear and JG Mason from Gadgetell.com about the situation. They're as perplexed as we were. Doug maintains the game maker is buying The Pirate Bay to simply gain a marketing foothold with the piracy-friendly 18-34 gaming set. JG thinks it might just be one big shell game, wherein the founders sell off the current company just to prep another on the side. Whatever the case may be, the situation is odd, and it seems like the average pirate's go-to destination is going to be extinct soon enough.
Guests:
- Doug Aamoth , CrunchGear
- JG Mason , Gadgetell.com
T-Mobile G1 hits a million, and Pirate Bay fans and fanatics
There's no disputing Apple's current public perception as king of cell phones, but today a report from Deutsche Telekom, parent of T-Mobile, says the company has sold one million T-Mobile G1 phones. Does the G1's perceived success mean its a worthy iPhone competitor? We ask Joshua Topolsky from Engadget and John Falcone from CNET Reviews. They both feel like sales numbers alone aren't enough to decide when a phone or platform is a worthy competitor, but instead it does show that T-Mobile has had some success. John points out that the more important number for Android fans will be 2, as in having a second Android phone to extend the operating system beyond a one-off device and into a true platform.
Also, we heard today that The Pirate Bay's lawyer claims the judge who sentenced the four founders of the file-sharing monolith to a year in jail and a $900,000 fine was actually associated with copyright enforcement groups. As such, the Pirate Bay's lawyers are demanding for a full retrial. Heading to various comment forums around the internet, it's clear that internet commenters feel like the Pirate Bay was wrongly accused and didn't deserve the punishment. Why are commenters so supportive of The Pirate Bay? What drives them to think that someone who named their site "The Pirate Bay" didn't actually think their actions helped copyright infringement? Our panel pushes out the obvious idea: Commenters like free stuff, but both delve into some of the potential ideas behind "fighting the copyright man" in the Pirate Bay's case.
Do you think The Pirate Bay's trial was fair? Did they get a fair shake? Sound off in OUR comments, so we'll know what our extremely informed and well educated viewers think.
Pirate Bay trial mirrors US effects
While the Pirate Bay verdict was laid down on Friday, it left many people wondering what it meant for U.S.-based file sharers. We talked to Charley Brown, an intellectual property lawyer at Ballard Spahr, who says that since the case is in Sweden, obviously there's no precedent set in the US or that US lawyers could turn to. Instead, he pointed out that this case essentially mirrors what would happen if a U.S. based entity were to create the same scenario as The Pirate Bay. We'd wager, though, that if a company were to try those schennanigans in the U.S., it'd happen much sooner with the full force of the RIAA and MPAA's nastygram squad.
The Pirate Bay founders sink in court, and Sidekick LX launches
The four founders of the infamous BitTorrent site were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail, plus paying a $905,000 fine (less expensive, might we add, than some of the threats leveled against lone American file sharers.) The four are definitely complicit in copyright law, but is this one case where the punishment might actually fit the crime? TechVi contributor Greg Schultz and Synched Up Show's Rich DeMuro both agree that this is one situation where these guys deserve it, but for every Pirate Bay, there are 10 other sites, so media industries need to figure out another model which gives consumers the choice and access they want, without illegal means.
Also, T-Mobile relaunched one of its flagship devices, the Sidekick. The latest model sports a slimmer figure, and extras like a better camera, but our panel thinks these bottom of the barrel devices hold little technolust, and the Sidekick is in danger (pun!) of the low-class status, while other more sophisticated phones, like the iPhone and Android devices, take over the teen market.