pirating

Hans Pandeya, the man who tried to acquire The Pirate Bay last year, has purchased controlling interest in a tiny U.S. company that makes and sells wall calendars, according to records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pandeya paid $325,000 for Business Marketing Services, a printing company that trades its over-the-counter stock on the OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB), according to the SEC filing.

In January, Pandeya took control of 15 million shares, or 78 percent of the company's stock, records show. Business Marketing Services didn't report any revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, … Read more

A vast number of people will be seated Sunday evening, desperate to hear a good joke while the movie industry pats itself on its behind.

I am sure you have your favorites. For myself, I only hope that the divinity that is Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar, as she would then complete the most coveted double of winning an Oscar and a Razzie (which she picked up in person Saturday) in the same year.

The fine folk over at Torrent Freak have their own hopes. However, they have created a wonderful prelude to the big event, far more interesting than … Read more

NEW YORK--Hans Pandeya, the Swedish businessman whose attempts to acquire The Pirate Bay last year collapsed amid controversy, is giving digital media another try.

Pandeya, who attended this week's Digital Music East Forum here, said Thursday he's busy creating a base in Boston for his U.S. operations. Asked whether he was still interested in The Pirate Bay, Pandeya said, "I have a lot of secret plans I'm working on."

As for why he was at a digital music conference, Pandeya would only say that his plans include digital media. Last year, Pandeya, CEO of … Read more

Months after Verizon Communications began issuing warnings to accused file sharers, the company has acknowledged that multiple offenses could result in a service interruption.

"We've cut some people off," Verizon Online spokeswoman Bobbi Henson told CNET. "We do reserve the right to discontinue service. But we don't throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing. Verizon does not have bandwidth caps."

What this means is that Verizon, one of the country's biggest broadband providers, appears to have adopted an approach to illegal file sharing that sounds very similar to one promoted and pushed heavily by … Read more

Illegal activity can sometimes be an excellent barometer of a society's soul.

You might, therefore, either leap dangerously close to your chandelier or bang your forehead against your winkle pickers in despair when I reveal to you the list of most pirated e-books of 2009.

I am grateful to the hardened aesthetes at Freakbits who have obtained this list from someone they met on a street corner. Wait, no. This list actually comes from BitTorrent's tally of nefarious downloads.

You will, no doubt, be expecting that the pirates of the Nook and Kindle would have reached for novels … Read more

Microsoft cancels its family licensing program and Molly decides it needs a lesson in economics. Stop focusing on dimes, Microsoft! We also plea for some common sense in the case of the woman jailed for recording some of the new "Twilight" movie at a birthday party.

Apple buys Lala service http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/12/apple-buys-music-streamer-lala-but-whats-it-getting.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10410206-261.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/07/apples_lala_purchase_could_bring_browser_access_to_itunes_content.html… Read more

The Disney Company is always so good at accessing one's inner child. The hope, the joy, the glory of absolute love, family goodness, and everything that sails in it.

So I am thrown a little off course when I hear that Disney may have falsely accused an 11-year-old boy of hacking the Pirates of the Caribbean video game and disabled his account.

The account I have read comes from the boy's dad, Brian Guy. Guy is a manager of MySQL's hardy pirates at Sun Microsystems. He also has a blog, which was positively fulminating with frustration Tuesday, … Read more

If you've ever sat around with friends and mourned the death of the mixtape, you'll certainly appreciate the first half of today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. While Jeff was at home for the break, he stumbled upon a a collection of old cassette tapes including the Cool Side/Awesome Side mix you see up there. It's got a solid collection of '90s hits including "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and, of course, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

I spy "Crazy" and something that starts with "Livin...," which I can only assume to be Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. Just kidding, Jeff, but seriously--we've all pulled some pretty embarrassing stunts in a pathetic attempt to win a girl's heart, so stick around to witness the humiliation.

Speaking of death, we're (kind of) sad to see the demise of the CrunchPad. The brainchild of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and Fusion Garage, the CrunchPad was supposed to be an aluminum tablet computer with a 12-inch LCD screen running Ubuntu Linux and Webkit browser. Unfortunately, Arrington reported today that the CrunchPad project is officially dead. We're disappointed that we'll never be able to test the product ourselves, but we're sure that Arrington has something else up his sleeve.

We imagine that a lot of you guys will be traveling by plane for the holiday season, but what if you were forced to hand over your iPod to security agents to check it for pirated music at the airport? Sounds like a nightmare, but Wilson tells us that the Australian government is apparently proposing a plan to search iPods and other MP3 players for illegally downloaded songs, punishable by heavy fines or even jail time!

From a technological stand point, we're not even sure how the government plans on checking for purchased vs. bootlegged music. At the end of the day, it's always comforting to know that you'll NEVER get busted for listening to The 404, and isn't that the most important thing?

No, no, fellow residents of southern Illinois, not tractor pulling--tracker pulling! The Pirate Bay has pulled out the trackers, but that doesn't mean you can't download anything. The site's still up for now using a different technology. Also, Google's book deal seems to have been changed, but not enough to satisfy its opponents. And Natali and I get into a philosophical argument.

Google book settlement revised, criticized http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/11/google-offers-revised-book-settlement-but-critics-unappeased.ars http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10398995-93.html… Read more