Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Crime’ Category
Jail verdict for Pirate Bay founders
20 April 2009
As reported on the weekend on ABC News Online:
Four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest file-sharing sites, say they will appeal against their convictions and have refused to pay any damages for breaking copyright law. A Swedish court sentenced the four Pirate Bay founders to one year in jail for their involvement with the website. Said to have 25 million users, The Pirate Bay indexes and tracks BitTorrent files which allow users to download films, music and computer games from others. The men were ordered to pay $5 million in damages to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures. Throughout the trial, the four men denied the charges saying because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
Read the full article online and Elizabeth Jackson also reported on the result on ABC Radio’s Saturday AM program as well. For more analysis of the verdict and ramifications I would recommend Nate Anderson’s article on Ars Technica which gives some background; Greg Sandoval on CNET asks whether internet piracy has reached a tipping point; and Wired magazine reports on how file sharing may have saved Hollywood and the music industry. Fascinating and timely reading.
Its Conficker, you Fools!
3 April 2009
Listen and download: MP3
The Conficker computer virus (or worm) has been infecting computers across the world since November 2008. It was supposed to unleash itself on April 1st, but the day came and went with little evidence of widespread destruction or mass chaos. In some parts of the media people wondered whether it could have been an elaborate hoax?
IT security analysts certainly took the threat seriously, in fact Microsoft offered a quater of a million dollar bounty for information on the people behind the virus. A majority of infected computers are in Asia and in the last couple of days experts have noticed increased activity as the virus instructs terminals to call home… but the cataclysmic effects just didn’t materialise.
IT journalist Patrick Gray presents the Risky Business security podcast and is the managing editor of Risky.Biz, an information security news outlet. He wrote an interesting opinion piece for ABC News Online prior to April 1st and spoke with me late yesterday about the media hype around Conficker leading up to April Fools Day. You can listen to the interview via the MP3 link at the top of this post.
The PM program on ABC Radio also covered the story, on Tuesday 31st of March and then on the evening of April 1st.
