They say “one” is the loneliest number. Luckily for Sharman Networks, the FastTrack network has nearly 2 million individuals online at any given moment. Slowly, FastTrack’s numbers continue to slide as internal and external forces chip away at the once mighty Kazaa.

At its peak in the summer of 2003, FastTrack was a bustling network of over 4.5 million users. The official Kazaa client produced by Sharman Networks was still disliked by many file-sharers, but this wasn’t a terrible concern. Alternatives such as Kazaa Lite, which greatly enhanced the original product and eliminated third party software, faded any ill-memories of the official Kazaa Media Desktop.

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This is a court case from Virginia where officers searched a man’s car because they saw what appeared to be home made cds on the seat of the car. They then found marijuana and arrested the man. He appealed the decision and the eveidence of the marijuana was thrown out because of the unlawful search. What I find very interesting is the officers had “training from the recording industry in recognizing pirated cds.”

What if the guy was a musician and it was his music? Talk about guilty until proven innocent. Where does the recording industry’s influence stop? They are conducting raids in foreign countries, training police here, what next? Their own terror squad?

According to an Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) news briefing, on May 29 a home in Pengang, Malaysia was raided for piracy of optical discs. The raid was carried about by ten Malaysian enforcement officers, accompanied by Motion Picture Association (MPA) represenatives.

The raiding party arrested a 42-year-old man, seized 200 DVD burners, 83 CD burners, as well as 15,800 blank DVD-recordable discs. The MPA estimates that the DVD burning lab was capable of creating 8,760,000 DVDs per year, yielding a revenue over $28million USD.

Of course, this is just a fraction of what the MPA would make if all discs were purchased legally for an average price of $20USD per disc, that would result in a $175,200,000USD payout.

Former head of the RIAA, Hillary Rosen, says she regrets the RIAA’s decision to sue individual downloaders, noting that it the policy simply ignores the reality of an evolving technological landscape.

She’s say that people regularly accuse her “…of suing college students and other “innocents” in my past role as Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America The lawsuits against individuals initiated by the RIAA was (were) started after I left.”

In a blog posting on “The Huffington Post,” she makes plain her opinion that the RIAA’s strategy is altogether wrong and irrational as it fails to address the root causes of the problem or even address the future of technology and media sharing that they have long watched pass by them from the sidelines.

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Microsoft is cutting the cord on its antipiracy tool.

The software maker this month plans to update the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications program so that it only checks in with Microsoft once every two weeks, instead of after each boot-up, a company representative said Friday. By year’s end, the tool will stop pinging Microsoft altogether, the representative said.

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Korean record companies got a major boost a few days ago when the association of P2P service providers decided to block the transfer of MP3 files by their customers.
P2P service providers in South Korea like Soribada and Purna had been charging 50 won, (0.0522545 USD), to download an entire album with the actual copyright holder receiving “nada,” nothing.

Though the activity was ruled illegal by South Korean courts last year, the practice apparently continued unabated as a deal between the P2P service providers and record companies could not be agreed upon. Apparently the charging price per song was the major sticking point. Though isn’t some money charged per song better than none at all? I think they must be using the same playbook as those brainiacs at the RIAA here in the United States.

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The members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel have been trying to wipe AllofMP3.com off the Net for some considerable time. It is, after all, competition.
For its part, AllofMP3.com hasn’t had a lot to say. Until now. In an email statement we received this morning, it declares:

The US government officials and politicians have been demanding lately that the Russian authorities shut down allofmp3.com, alleging the site is pirate. Otherwise, they threaten Russia with sanctions, including blocking its entry to WTO.

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Peter Jamieson, chairman of the British Phonographic Industry, said consumers would only be penalised if they made duplicates of songs for other people.

Currently anyone transferring music to portable devices breaks copyright laws.

The music industry has traditionally turned a blind eye, however, in favour of targeting “professional” pirates.

“We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties,” said Mr Jamieson, whose organisation represents the UK’s record labels.

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According to Tiscali, the European recording industry [read the Big Four] is, “virtually impossible to work with”.
Either way, Juke Box is offline, says the BBC, going on, “Mercora, which was a partner in the Juke Box service, had been running the same service in the US for more than a year.”

But, “the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said Juke Box had offered a level of interactvity that breached its licence,” says the story, which has Tiscali.co.uk editor Richard Ayers saying it’s all very disappointing.

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The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that the Apple iTunes service breaks the law, and has given the company two weeks to fix the problem.

In January, the Consumer Council asked the Ombudsman to look at iTunes because of concerns that it breaks consumer protection law.

Today’s decision backs that complaint.

According to the ruling, iTunes breaks section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act. The regulator said it was not reasonable that the consumer must sign up to a contract regulated by English law, rather than Norwegian law. It also said iTunes must accept responsibility for damage its software may do, and said it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold.

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A Sony executive in charge of the company’s technology strategy believes that the music industry is not making headway against music pirates, despite the industry’s extensive efforts to halt piracy. In a heated debate at the Digital Media Summit in Los Angeles Wednesday, Sony executive Albhy Galuten said that he does not believe the music industry is winning the battle against pirating, in any palpable way.

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We reckon this will appeal to anyone who’s trying to organise a wedding reception and is dreading the obligatory “yeah, well, the map you sent was bloody awful so we ended up driving the wrong way up the M1 for three hours” - a smart new initiative which allows you to mark a spot on Google maps, stick a pin in it with added text details and then email the link.

Yup, try Pin in the map, developed by Winchester-based software outfit Eden Development. Company supremo Chris Parsons explained: “Pin in the map was designed for the simple reason that we discovered we needed it. Before this, we were forever printing out maps to write on, and or marking the exact location on a map in a paint program.

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The US now has its very own Pirate Party. The party is founded by Brent Allison, a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia, inspired by the Swedish pirate party “piratpartiet”.
The pirate party has three issues on its agenda, one of these is to reform copyright law:
The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance between the interests of publishers and consumers, in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.

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Microsoft has admitted that Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) will phone Redmond every day - something it neglected to tell users before they installed it.

WGA is designed to detect pirated copies of MS software but is also creating some false positives - two UK dealers have contacted the Reg to report customers complaining that WGA had branded their software as an illegal copy.

The software checks what is installed on your machine and then reports back to Microsoft - it sends your IP number and information on your software set-up. If your software is dodgy you will start receiving pop-up reminders from Microsoft.

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The majority of young people who will be allowed to vote for the first time this September during national elections are in favour of file downloading - despite the fact that it is illegal.

The youngest voters, those aged 18-20, say the law prohibiting file sharing is wrong and is a cultural phenomenon, according to a May poll conducted by the Swedish paper Sydsvenskan and Temo Synovate survey.

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