<IT
WORLD>
Pirate holds law at bay By Martin J
Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - The Pirate Bay, a
huge peer-to-peer file tracking website, sailed
into a storm this week and showed every sign of
weathering it, as Swedish prosecutors attempted to
put the founders on trial for copyright violation.
The site, launched in 2003, has ascended to infamy
by establishing itself as the world's largest
file-sharing platform, with an estimated 22
million simultaneous users recorded this month.
Instead of offering files and copyright
content direct, the website collates lists of
BitTorrent files, which are essentially trackers
to the real content, be it a movie, music,
software or game, located on individuals
computers. By downloading the tracker, or torrent
file, a small client program installed on a user's
computer can then get information on the file
they're interested in from "peers", or other
people, who have already downloaded it partially
or in full. They can then download the file
themselves whilst sharing the
data with other peers
looking for the same content.
The site was
founded by a Swedish file-sharing advocacy group
called Piratbyran (The Piracy Bureau) and was
setup in the country due to its lax copyright
laws. Over the past five years, the site has
continually defied threats from the big players
such as EMI, Warner Bros, MGM, and the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA). Its "Robin
Hood" ethos - take from the rich and give to the
poor - is backed by it not actually providing or
distributing copyright material; it is simply a
search engine for torrent files, enabling people
to find the required files themselves. In a
similar way, Google offers search results to
content, much of which has been copied from the
original source and pasted onto other websites for
profit. Asia Times Online is among numerous
victims that have fallen to this practice hundreds
of times, but we don't see anyone suing Google for
it.
The first day of the trial this week
resulted in a victory for the brazen founders, who
stated that prosecutors had misunderstood the
technology. Co-founders Frederik Neij, Gottfrid
Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and site
sponsor Carl Lundstorm were facing a large fine
and up to two years in prison if convicted at the
trial in Stockholm. Half the charges relating to
"assisting copyright infringement" were dropped. A
digital media analyst at Forrester Research
rightly stated "after every victory, file-sharing
has got bigger. I see no reason why the same won't
happen this time." The trial continues this week
as the prosecutors attempt to dig up the digital
dirt on the defense.
Since the demise of
Napster in July 2001, plenty of websites have
followed in its footsteps by offering peer-to-peer
file-sharing services, and the practice has shown
no sign of ending. The more pressure that these
recording industry behemoths pile on, the more
ways people will find to share data across the
Internet, be it copyright protected or not.
Gaming Nintendo is sitting
comfortably at the top of the gaming tree in terms
of console sales, according to market research
firm NPD. The company accounted for 57% of market
share in January by shipping 679,000 Wiis, ahead
of Microsoft, which shipped 309,000 Xbox 360
units, and Sony, which shipped 203,000 PS3s.
Overall console shipment numbers now stand at
18.38 million for the Wii, 14.17 million for the
Xbox 360 and 6.99 million for the PS3.
It
seems like Sony will continue to lose out unless
the company can come up with a more innovative
sales and marketing strategy. Microsoft is also
suffering a little with a 35.84% market share,
down from 45.61% in January 2008. There is no
stopping Nintendo, as the Wii surpassed the Xbox
360's market share in May of 2008 and continues to
take more of it into 2009.
Telecoms Apple's success with
its AppStore for the iPhone and iPod, is
encouraging rivals to get in on the action.
Microsoft and Nokia have announced their own
online market places for mobile device application
software and Blackberry's Research in Motion is
reported also to have something up its sleeves.
Nokia's Ovi Store will be launched in May
and will offer multimedia apps and location
specific content. At the end of the year,
Microsoft will offer new Windows Phones, Windows
Marketplace and cloud-based data synchronization
services. The software giant is hoping that
current Windows users will transfer their
allegiance for the platform into the mobile-phone
market place just as Apple aficionados have done
with the AppStore.
LG has made a
commitment to produce Windows Phones, this week
unveiling at the Mobile World Congress show in
Barcelona a 3D interface for its top-end phones.
The two companies have committed to ship at least
10 models of LG Windows phones this year and up to
26 in 2012. With Samsung and HTC churning out more
Google-powered Android units, there will be a
baffling array of mobile phone, software and
online store options for the consumer - long gone
are the days when you used a phone to talk to each
other!
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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Gaming
