Gearfuse

Fuck the system! Break it down! That’s what a lot of people are chanting today after it was discovered last night that the judge in the landmark Pirate Bay trial is a member of several pro-copyright lobby groups that are in cahoots with the entertainment industry. Judge Tomas Norström belongs to the Swedish Association of Copyright, Swedish Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property, oversees the .SE domain name and then some.

As messed up as this is, the groups this judge belongs to are not only legitimate, they’re something a person of law would become involved with. Now due to members of the entertainment industry belonging to these groups as well, it’s easy to see how Judge Tomas may have been persuaded. Either way, a retrial would be good for everyone in this situation.

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See that? That’s not a smile. Four members of the popular Bit Torrent site The Pirate Bay were convicted in a court of assisting in “making copyright content available.” Found guilty, they’ll now spend up to a year in prison for their crimes and must pay $3.6 million in fines to various companies. TorrentFreak has the whole scoop but this is a landmark piracy case that will surely change how careful people are online…

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So after yesterday’s asstabulous keynote from Apple, iWork ‘09 hit the web faster than you can say “Hack the Planet!” If you’d like to score a copy of the office productivity suite for yourself, simply fire up your favorite Bit Torrent client and grab the torrent off, oh let’s see, pretty much any torrent site on the ‘net and you’re good to go. Unless you plan on buying a new 17-inch Macbook Pro, this is as good as Macworld gets.

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Cracking software and generating serial numbers is nothing new. But what happens when a developer catches on and decides to play fun with you? Such is the case with USB Overdrive X. Enter a stolen or pirated serial number and this message will be displayed by the developer. An excellent point is made here: the little guy is getting hurt. This isn’t Adobe or Apple, this is an independent developer trying to feed his family.

I recently wrote about some software I actually paid out of pocket for. You should too if you’re running Bit Torrent 24/7.

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Adobe today announced the next installment of it’s popular editing software suite that includes Photoshop and Illustrator. The beta has been available on Bit Torrent sites for quite a bit now but today, we’re getting real. There’s going to be tons of new features, tons of performance upgrades and quite possibly tons of coked-out design going on the minute it hits store shelves. Photoshop CS4 is supposed to take advantage of your graphics card but that has yet to be confirmed. Read on, get the skinny then get the torrent. Bon voyage!

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Everyone hates Comcast. Don’t give me that shit that it’s a decent company. Comcast is thisclose to getting shit on by half its customers and as Verizon offers (somewhat) better options and TV, customers will start to defect away from Comcast. Now the FCC is ready to make everyone’s day, by announcing that Comcast knowingly and wrongly fucked with your Internet.

Crack open a Bud. You deserve one. The FCC is expected to levy fines against Comcast on Friday and rule that Comcast cannot interfere with consumer ‘net traffic. This is a win for all of us.

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This is just coming off the wires but it appears the FCC is going to punish Comcast for the way it has been handling its ‘net traffic. As you may recall, Comcast has been at the center of an argument over whether or not it has the right to throttle Bit Torrent traffic. The FCC claims that by doing this, it’s violating the FCC’s principles of protecting consumers access to the Internet.

Remember, this is the same Comcast that sabotaged a public hearing and offers shit Internet service. And look what they’re still spewing:

Company spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice on Thursday denied that Comcast blocks Internet content or services and that the “carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network are a reasonable part” of the company’s strategy to ensure all customers receive quality service.

It’ll be awhile before Comcast is fined and forced to give us back what is rightfully ours (The Internet), so don’t go holding your breath in excitement. This is just one step in the right direction towards freedom on the Internet.

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