Today more than ten major movie companies issued a subpoena to the Stockholm District Court demanding it put an end to the activities of The Pirate Bay. The companies, including Disney, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Sony, NBC and Paramount also want the court to force the site’s ISP to shut down the site.

Despite losing in court against the music and movie industries, The Pirate Bay continues to operate, a clearly unacceptable situation for the plaintiffs in the case. The verdict is subject to appeal and that could make the whole thing drag on for years yet.

Back in May the music industry plaintiffs - Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner - indicated they’d had enough and through their lawyer Peter Danowsky, applied to the court requesting it starts imposing additional fines on three of the defendants - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi - for as long as they continue to infringe their copyrights. In addition the plaintiffs demanded that the Pirate Bay’s ISP ‘Black Internet’ stopped providing services to The Pirate Bay.

Now just a couple of months after the record labels handed in their request, it’s the turn of the movie and TV industry to join in.

Today a whole batch of companies including Columbia, Disney, NBC, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner are suing the same three individuals in Stockholm, demanding that the court stops the site from continuing to infringe their copyrights. In common with the music industry action, they also name The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet AB.

Through their legal representative Monique Wadsted, the group named over 100 movies and TV shows they claim the site infringes copyright on, including Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons, 24, X-Men Origins:Wolverine, Batman, Watchmen and Harry Potter.

“It’s another day in the whole soap opera of TPB,??? Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “They’re suing us in Stockholm where none of us live.???

But the problems with the action don’t end there. After also incorrectly stating that the site is running on the Hypercube software, the movie companies seem to have a problem with their perception of who owns the site. The Pirate Bay hasn’t been owned by the three since 2006, when it was acquired by Seychelles-based company Reservella.

“They’re suing us over something which we don’t own,??? Peter told us. “I think the most funny part of the whole suit is that they just write: ‘Reservella is a company run by Fredrik Neij - out of 40 pages of paper that’s all they have to say, and it’s so wrong. They have no paperwork to back it up even,??? he told us.

Peter is of the belief that the music and movie industries are well aware that the site is being sold and simply want to make that as difficult as possible.
[Submitted by Synthetic_Darkness]



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News of pop star's demise caused an icky mess on the internet

Some called in the "King of Pop" others called him less favorable titles, but many have followed Michael Jackson's capers over the years. In death, as in life he proved colorful and larger than life. When Mr. Jackson passed away at age 50, the news shook the internet world.

Within hours of the story breaking millions had flooded online reading the news. The LA Times recorded 2.3 million page views in just one hour -- more than many sites have in a month. The incredible traffic strain acted like a denial of service attack, overloading ABC, AOL, LA Times, CNN Money, and CBS servers and leading to longer load times, or, for some users, timeouts.

AOL spokespeople commented that they had "never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth. Historically, celebrity news prompts a worldwide outpouring with several key consumer behaviors -- searching, sharing and reacting to the news followed by online tributes has become the modern way to mourn"

AOL's Instant Messenger, scheduled for routine maintenance, struggled under the traffic, causing service outages. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, saw its number of Tweets double almost instantly. And market tracker service Akamai reports that overall internet news traffic temporarily spiked over 20 percent due to Mr. Jackson's death.

Still other telltale signs greeted users. On iTunes Michael Jackson's albums accompanied the top four spots on the iTunes 100 top albums sold. Meanwhile, on internet encyclopedia Wikipedia users engaged in a war of edits that resulted in admins locking up the page until things cooled down.

This kind of an occurence wouldn't seem like tech news; in fact its seems about as far removed from it as possible. But his death proved to be one of the most impactful internet events of the year and offered a intriguing view of how web 2.0 takes on, processes, and deals with a traffic-driving event of unprecedented scale.

Michael Jackson in death, as in life, was larger and more colorful than life. He test the limits of the internet when news of his death broke. Many news sites received record traffic, resulting in problems. (Source: BongoNews)


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]



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Microsoft defends the search engine's pornographic results, saying it gives users the tools to block them

When Microsoft's new search engine Bing debuted last week, some received a surprise. Turning off "safe search" they began to notice pornographic videos popping up as search results – which is really nothing new to users of Google’s video search.

However, simply moving your mouse over the videos would set them to motion, complete with sound. Some expressed outrage; Microsoft, meanwhile, has defended its actions according to InformationWeek. Bing general manager Mike Nichols says that by default Bing is set to "strict" SafeSearch, which he says is a more conservative approach than Google or Yahoo’ take.

He writes, "This is a bit more of a conservative approach than others in the industry. If you set SafeSearch to strict, you will not see any explicit text, image, or video content. If you turn SafeSearch off, which requires you to change the setting and then click again to acknowledge that you are over 18, then explicit content may appear."

Microsoft has added a tool to help network administrators enforce strict SafeSearch. By adding "&adlt=strict" to the end of any search query, only strict search results will be returned. Mr. Nichols insists it’s all about user choice, stating, "We think our current search safety settings are solid, but at Microsoft we are always working on pushing this stuff farther."

One key difference between Google's traditional search and Bing's is that Bing will actually start to play the clips you move your mouse over. Some experts warn that this will likely open Microsoft up to more suits from adult entertainment providers. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all been sued for including still pornographic images in search results.

Some countries have begun blocking Bing's pornographic results and are angry with Microsoft. China and certain Muslim countries are among those to implement nationwide blocks on the content.

Microsoft's search engine has drawn a lot of attention, but has failed to surpass Yahoo in hits, according to reports. Market researcher Comscore states that Google owns 64 percent of the U.S. search market, Yahoo owns 21 percent, and Bing is in third with 8 percent. Microsoft spent over $1.5B USD to develop Bing, chiefly with the acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer.


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]




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