'Pirate' music site allowed 21 million downloads, court told

Alan Ellis, 26, was the founder of the Oink website which had around 200,000 members and allowed 21 million downloads before it was closed down in 2007. Teesside Crown Court heard that the site was free to join, by invitation only with members able to propose a friend, but users had to pay a donation of at least £5. Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, told the jury it was not a case against “some poor minnow who has taped a record one night and circulated it to their friends”. The site was set up in May 2004 and hosted in Norway, but switched to Amsterdam eight months later after the music industry asked it to cease. Mr Makepeace said when the website was taken down, there were approximately 200,000 active members with access to around 200,000 audio files. Police found donations from around the world in several of Mr Ellis's Paypal accounts, amounting to almost 300,000 US dollars, the court heard.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6946708/Pirate-music-site-allowed-21-million-downloads-court-told.html

Google Introduces Nexus One, Its Rival to the iPhone

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google stepped up its attack on the smartphone market on Tuesday, introducing a new touch-screen handset called Nexus One that is widely seen as a rival to Apple’s iPhone. Google also said that it would sell the Nexus One, which it called a superphone, exclusively through a new online store. Google, which earns the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, said it was dipping its toes in the direct retailing business not to reap profits from the sale of phones but to broaden the availability of handsets running its Android software. “There is an opportunity to make some margin on the unit sales, but that’s not the objective here,” Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering in charge of the Android technology, said during a press conference at Google’s headquarters here. “Our primary business is advertising.” Consumers will be able to buy the Nexus One for $529 unlocked or for $179 with a two-year calling plan from T-Mobile. Google said that the Nexus One would be available on Verizon Wireless in the United States and on Vodafone in Europe later this year. It said it hoped to add other devices and carriers to the direct-to-consumer program in the future. Some analysts said they were impressed by the speed of the Nexus One and by some of its capabilities. Google has voice-enabled all text boxes in the device, so a user can, for example, compose an e-mail message by speaking into the phone rather than typing. But they expressed disappointment that Google had not done more to shake up the industry by, for example, subsidizing the phone through profits from advertising.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/technology/internet/06google.html?ref=technology

Canada: Internet Piracy Haven

Internet piracy is rampant in China, right? And Russia is known to be a hotbed of infringing activities as well. It may come as a surprise to some that the current No. 1 site for BitTorrent file-sharing -- often of the copyright-infringing kind -- is Canada-based Isohunt. In fact, the Obama administration put Canada on its blacklist of shame, a "priority watch list" of intellectual property laggards. With all of the legal pressures against the first- and second-ranked BitTorrent sites, "Canada has earned a dubious distinction as a world hub for illegitimate file-sharing websites and a leader in Internet piracy," according to Globeandmail.com's Barry McKenna. Further, Canada is in the "embarrassing position of harbouring 5 of the top 8 remaining unauthorized BitTorrent sites including the new number 1 ranked site, Isohunt," wrote technology attorney Barry Sookman. Isohunt was founded in Vancouver by Gary Fung. Isohunt is not just popular in terms of BitTorrent sites, with as many as 100 million unique visitors going to the site every year; Isohunt also ranks among the 200 most popular Web sites of any kind on the planet. Earlier this year, the Obama administration put Canada on its blacklist of shame -- a "priority watch list" of intellectual property laggards including the likes of China, Russia and Venezuela.

Source: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/68969.html