Click here to view the embedded video.

Early reports from Torrentfreak that the verdict has already leaked (ironically, many of the charges against The Pirate Bay have to do with leaked copies of copyrighted movies and music), and that the Pirate Bay has lost, were true. Torrentfreak has gotten the info with site founder Peter Sunde, who he has heard the verdict early from a “trustworthy source.”

“Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file-sharing whatsoever,” he assures us, but this is definitely a big blow to all BitTorrent trackers around the world, and it might set a precedent for all similar cases in the future.

Update: the official verdict is out, and all four of The Pirate Bay’s founders are found guilty in ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström all receive one year in jail; they also must pay $3.6 million in damages.

Of course, this is not the end of this story. The Pirate Bay will appeal to the court, and there is a possibility that the verdict is reversed later. But the fact that the court has bought into the entertainment industry’s reasoning, which have at times been odd and unclear, is definitely not a good sign for The Pirate Bay.

On the other hand, even if The Pirate Bay loses the battle altogether and is forced to shut down further along the line, the entertainment industry has to understand that a thousand new pirate bays will sprout up everywhere. Can they sue them all? Or should they finally consider changing their business model and adapt to how Internet – the place that gives them previously unimaginable opportunities for reaching out to their customers – really works.

Tags: copyright, file sharing, piracy, the pirate bay, trial

source: The Pirate Bay Trial: Guilty As Charged

If it seems like Twitter is growing faster and faster each day, that is because it is. ComScore has released its March numbers for the U.S., and it estimates that unique visitors to Twitter.com grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors. No wonder Twitter is more popular than Britney.

Not only did Twitter more than double the number of people that go to its site in a single month, but it accelerated its growth from the 55 percent rate it experienced in February. These numbers do not include international visitors, nor do they include all the usage on desktop and mobile clients, which is significant in Twitter’s case. But it is a useful proxy.

So to just to give a sense of the type of growth Twitter is going through, here is the month-to-month growth in U.S. unique visitors so far this year:

March, 2009: 131%
February, 2009: 55%
January, 2009: 33%

In February, comScore estimated that Twitter.com had worldwide 9.8 million visitors worldwide and 4 million U.S. visitors. If that 41 percent ratio of U.S. visitors to total worldwide visitors still holds (in January it was about the same), it would mean that Twitter.com attracted more than 20 million unique visitors worldwide. ComScore releases international figures later in the month.

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Here is the original:
Boom! Twitter More Than Doubles Unique U.S. Visitors To 9.3 Million In March

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The new requirements for web sites were rushed into legislation after the death of a popular Korean actress, Choi Jin Sil, who was driven to suicide after a series of online rumors and threats. Since people now have to submit their real name when uploading content, the government hopes this will cut down on the problem of cyber-bullying in the country.

Or perhaps that’s just what they want you to believe, say critics. The Korea Times, for example, notes that it’s more likely that the government is simply continuing its crackdown on free speech. Already they have been “repeatedly attacked by bloggers,” the paper reports, “first over the controversial decision to resume U.S. beef imports, and more recently for its ineptitude in economic policies. The watershed moment came in January when police arrested Park Dae-sung, a blogger known more widely as ‘Minerva’ and a frequent critic of the government’s economic polices, on charges of ‘deliberately’ undermining public interest by distributing fraudulent information.”

Google Provides an Alternative Method for Uploads

In response to the new legislation, Google has decided they would rather prevent uploads and comments instead of requiring YouTube users to submit their real names and national ID number – a number similar to the United State’s Social Security Number and yet another requirement of the new law.

“We have a bias in favor of freedom of expression and are committed to openness,” said Lucinda Barlow, a spokeswoman for YouTube in Asia. “It’s very important that if users want to be anonymous that they have that chance.”

Another Google spokesperson, Rachel Whetstone, vice president of Global Communications & Public Affairs at Google, was quoted in The Hankyoreh newspaper as saying  “we concluded in the end that it is impossible to provide benefits to internet users while observing this country’s law because the law does not fall in line with Google’s principles.”

In addition to blocking uploads and comments, Google informed Korean YouTube users via their Korean Google blog that they can change their preference setting to a country other than Korea if they want to continue to upload and comment on videos.

An Easy Way for Google to Look Good?

If Google had implied with the law, it would have represented the first time that the company had ever collected the actual names of internet users.

Still, while many are congratulating Google on taking a stand and protecting freedom of expression on the internet, in this case the company wasn’t really risking that much. That’s because in Korea, Google has a much smaller presence than its domestic counterparts like www.naver.com and www.daum.net. Let’s see how the company behaves in countries where they have a much larger market share.

Image credit: Asiajin

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MySpace has announced that it is planning to launch a new “Editor’s Pick” category in its application directory next week, allowing members to quickly sift through the platform’s best apps. MySpace had previously shown a handful of featured apps as users browsed its Apps Directory, but these rotated and there was no way to browse through them. Now, users will be able to access a stable list of the best apps as determined by a team of MySpace employees who work with the applications on a daily basis (all apps will be chosen by merit, not through paid sponsorships).

MySpace is beginning to accept submissions from developers today, which can be sent in by following these instructions:

If you’d like to be considered for this category, please send an email to developerrelations(at)myspace dot com. Include “Editor’s Pick Category” in the subject line, and provide a reason why you feel your application should be in the spotlight and why your application stands above the rest. Be sure to include the a 200 character description and an 128×128 icon image.

Since social networks began to offer support for third party applications (a trend that began with the launch Facebook Platform in May 2007), one of the biggest issues facing users has been weeding out the best applications from the countless spammy and useless apps available. Last summer Facebook announced that it was going to launch a Verified Apps program that would offer approved applications extra exposure and benefits not afforded to standard apps.

We’re still waiting. In November Facebook announced that it would charge a $375 fee for developers to apply – a fee that we likened to a protection racket. To make matters worse, Facebook is running behind on the program (which was supposed to launch ‘early this year’), and developers are getting antsy.

At this point it’s unclear how similar MySpace’s Editor’s Picks will be to Facebook’s Verified Apps program – the MySpace program is certainly less structured that Facebook’s, and I suspect it won’t be nearly as comprehensive. But it’s still something that lets members know that the applications they’re using can be trusted.

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We were disappointed when a browser script showed us a Magpie redirect behind a shortened link in a Skype testimonial today. Then we used a search on the service BackTweets to find out who else is buying fake Tweets on the service. It’s so revolting and pitiful that it’s kind of sad.

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Each of these companies have more than one campaign running and these are all just from the last 6 hours! Magpie is spewing Tweets through peoples’ accounts all day long. All of the links are obscured by URL shortening service is.gd (hope they are getting a cut!) and the clicker ends up on the advertiser site. Clearly disclosure isn’t mandatory; but even if it was this is just creepy, is it not?

Update: As a number of commenters and at least one of these companies have pointed out, it’s not the companies themselves buying these ads – it’s most likely outside affiliates. So direct your frustration to whoever is in charge of affiliate programs at these companies, not in house ad buyers.

Apple

We thought Apple was able to secure enough mind control with its design prowess that it didn’t have to pay for it! We presume that when most of these people say they bought one of these devices recently, they are flatly lying. Apple is paying them to lie like a robot to their friends on Twitter. Nice.

Skype

We especially like that one of the users here is named “High and Noble.” Uh, yeah.

Cisco’s Flip

The company that makes those Flip cameras just got bought by Cisco for almost $600 million dollars – because everyone loves the Flip.

Box.net

We know and like the people at online storage company Box.net. Their CEO didn’t respond to our inquiry about the use of Magpie, but we’ll give him a hard time about it next time we see him. The last user in this picture is an account that just aggregates other peoples’ Tweets about farting – and then throws in Magpie ads. Classy all around!

StubHub

Ok, so StubHub might not be the kind of company you’d be shocked to find out participates in this kind of thing, but the informal language and appeals to family in this one struck us.

FatCow

Ok, we don’t know FatCow Web Hosting from a hole in the wall but the language here again is really remarkable. Dear FatCow “fans”: you are allowing yourself to be turned into a lying robot zombie for a few dollars a month! Have you no shame?

So there’s the Twitter-sphere for you! Bring on “real time search,” bring on a globally connected community, bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling. It all seems pretty sad to me. And to the advertisers out there – is this cynical scheme the best you can do to engage with all the new ways people are communicating online? That’s pretty bad.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner. We won’t try to sneakily sell you anything!

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