ACS 'Treated Like Criminals' by Westminister Council Using ACS Methods

ACS:law have become famous on the internet for their speculative invoicing approach to copyright enforcement, where using an IP address and not much else, they claim someone was infringing nd threaten them to pay-up or else. In an amusing twist, ACS:Law was treated in a similar way by Westminster Council, and ACS:law didn't like it at all.

BETA Browser Benchmarks

Back on July 5th, I benchmarked a few browsers, to see how the new mainstream versions performed. The results came back that popular open source browser, firefox, was kinda crap, and that Chrome did well, but not quite as well as Opera. This time around, I'm testing some old browsers, for comparison, but also the new browsers, AND the betas for the big 4.

US Senators in Big Copyright's Pocket to Ban WikiLeaks

A new bill was introduced into the Senate today. Called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, it's nothing of the sort. In reality, it's a nice, easy way to censor things from the internet if it is troubling for the government, and who does that sound like? yes, Wikileaks - although no doubt they're also thinking of that widely used platform for disseminating videos and free speech that wouldn't otherwise be made public - The Pirate Bay.

Oink Raid Costs Revealed

File-sharing is often portrayed as 'a cost' to the economy and to society, yet the criminal enforcement has similar costs, especially when they fail. A prime example is the oink case where a FOI request has found case costs of over £29,000

BIS = Blithering Idiots on Computers

Yay, I'm kinda famous. Myself, as in Norton P2P Consulting, was the only research organisation that submitted a response to the recent BIS consultation entitled “Online Infringement of Copyright Initial Obligations Cost Sharing” or in other words, “who is to pay for the Charlie-Foxtrot that is the Digital Economy Bill's 3-strikes system.”

CNN's Headline Blunder

Here's proof that the big news orgs sometimes make a mistake, even basic ones. CNN, ran a story today (9/11) at 9:11pm EDT with an 'ambiguous headline and byline.

The raw text,

"6 dead, including gunman, in eastern Kentucky shooting
By the CNN Wire Staff"

Dragon*Con 2010 - Creative Commons and Podcasting

While at Dragon*Con, one of the most interesting panels was on the podcasting track, and was entitled "Creative Commons and Legal Issues" (you can see the track's schedule here). It dealt with creative commons from the point of view of media users who operate in the quasi-commercial realm of podcasting. The audio of it has now been uploaded, vai theCommandLine podcast.

Bittorrents, Seeds, and Distributed Copies

Just a quick one. Had this question pop up in IRC just before.

[22:46.24] * ccd ([email protected]) has joined #bittorrent
[22:47.37] <ccd> I am about to post a 88GB torrent that will be in high demand... is there ageneral rule of thumb to calculate the minimum number of necessary seeds? i have 2 so far... and another 2 on the way...

There's an easy answer to that, based on common sense and a bare minimum of thought, and being tired (from Dragon*con - I'll get the write up done soon, I promise!) and cranky, I didn't put it very delicately.

Dragon*Con 2010

I know I said I'd never go, (mainly because of the robot track but I won't go into that) but this weekend, I'll be at Dragon*Con. I'm starting off with a bang too, as I'm on a panel in the second scheduled spot of the event, at 11:30am Friday morning, as well as representing both the US Pirate Party, and TorrentFreak.com to the crowd in general.