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The last Pirate Bay co-founder has served his jail time
For years, authorities had played a game of cat and mouse with the co-founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. The long game eventually paid off, with Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Warg and Fredrik Neij all being sent to prison within a six month period. Sunde and Warg have since walked free, leaving Neij as the final site founder still serving a custodial sentence. At least until now. TorrentFreak reports that the 37-year-old has been released after serving two-thirds of what should have been a ten-month stretch.
Review: Dark Horse Comics' "The Goon: Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker"
I used to collect comics pretty religiously when I was a kid (after all, there was a comic book store right across the street from the church my parents always took me to), and lately I've been thinking of getting back into the hobby -- there's something really magical about sequential art and word balloons. And while, if the rumors are true, the new product coming from Apple will probably offer up a better way to do it, I was pretty impressed with my first experience reading the funny pages on the iPhone, in Dark Horse's "The Goon: Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker" [iTunes link]. For just a fraction of the price of the actual TPB (trade paperback), you get to flip through a nice set of story and art pages, formatted (pretty) coherently for the iPhone. There's not a lot of flash in the options -- the comic consists of about 420 "pages," which are basically screen-sized panels that tell the story of Eric Powell's hero The Goon, a broad-shouldered fella with ugly mug in the vein of Sin City's Marv, who mixes it up with the bad guys, gets beat up pretty often, and chases after a dame or two. You can either flip through the screens yourself (which I preferred, soaking in the art and pacing), or have them flip after a delay of your choosing. Unfortunately, the art is sometimes cropped a little closely, and the iPhone's small screen doesn't always let epic scenes play out in their original scale (again, something a tablet would be better at). But for $2 for a readthrough, I enjoyed the book a lot. Dark Horse has a nice series of comics available on the iPhone already (including a free sample), and if you're in the mood for a cheap read on your iPhone, they're worth a look. TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page.
Court gives Pirate Bay ten days to scuttle connection to Netherlands
Poor Pirate Bay, all it ever wanted to do was thumb its nose at the music and movie industries, enable software piracy for people all over the world, play cat-and-mouse games with the Swedish authorities, and maybe make a little money along the way. Now, hot on the heels of a verdict that sees four of its founders headed to prison (that is, if they don't win their appeals) three of the group have been ordered by a court in the Netherlands to block all traffic between the site and its country. If this doesn't happen in the next ten days, each of the defendants faces a charge of €30,000 ($42,000) for each day they don't comply. According to the AP, it's "not clear how the court expected the site's operators to block traffic to the site, or whether it can enforce its order if they decline," but soon it looks like the Dutch just might have to learn to buy their Rave Or Die! Mix Series CDs at the Record Exchange like the rest of us. Good luck going legit, guys!
Pirate Bay acquired by Global Gaming Factory, going legit like Napster
It's true, The Pirate Bay has agreed to being purchased by Global Gaming Factory (owner of a network of Internet cafes and gaming centers) for 60 million Swedish Krona or roughly $7.8 million. According to a press release, "GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." In a post on TPB's blog, the rogue file sharing site says that the project has been in the works for many years and should help evolve the site while trying to stay the same. Here's how they put it:If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us.We'll have to wait and see how this pans out but it certainly smacks of a Napster v2 like situation at first blush. Assuming of course the deal closes by August as anticipated.Update: As a hint, perhaps, of what's to come, GGF also announced the purchase of Peerialism, a software company responsible for developing what GGF calls "P2P 2.0" file sharing technology. [Thanks, JOKR Solutions]Read -- The Pirate Bay blog postRead -- Press Release
The Pirate Bay eying Sealand to escape digital persecution
While Sweden (and Russia, to name a few) has long been a country of choice when it came to hosting less-than-upstanding websites, the head honchos around the globe looking out for their precious content have somehow reached The Pirate Bay, and now the popular torrent tracking site is eying the micronation of Sealand as a safe haven for its dubious hosting needs. Sealand, which is loosely claimed as a principality, features its own flag, coat of arms, currency, stamps, passports, and most importantly, a quasi-coat of armor from any nation's laws. Although the background of 5,920-square foot man-made installation off the shore of Suffolk, England is quite remarkable, TPB sees its two massive columns as a perfect place for future hosting duties. Formerly the home of HavenCo, an off-shore hosting company that housed gambling sites, money transferring liaisons, and any other operation looking for internet freedom, Sealand could be a potential sanctuary from the claws of the RIAA, MPAA, and other content "owners." Although a principality can't legally (saywha?) be "sold," the family in possession of it recently began accepting offers "upwards of eight figures" for a transfer of ownership after (quite literally) holding down the fort since 1967, and while we highly doubt a fundraiser can scrape up that kind of loot anytime soon, nor do we believe it'd stop the barrage of content guardians, we must say the location looks like an excellent place to just get away from it all (including lawyers) -- if only for awhile.[Thanks, iamsoinsane, photo courtesy Kim Gilmour]
