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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If you’re a fan of Guns N’ Roses, it’s more likely than not that if you aren’t the guy signing Axl Rose’s non-existent checks then they hate you. They all hate you. Yes, even Slash hates you. Remember that blogger who leaked their latest suckfest, Chinese Democracy? That was an honest mistake any fan could have made. Well, now he faces a long term of jail time for simply being a fan and helping to promote Guns N’ Roses.

They sure needed it according to Eric Garland of BigChampagne, a company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland brings to light the fact that no file sharing of Chinese Democracy ever took place until Kevin Cogill leaked it and then got arrested. Since his arrest, Chinese Democracy has become the whore of torrent downloading.  The question on my mind is why is the FBI wasting time with this and what does the band think of Kevin? Scratch that, no one really cares what Guns N’ Roses thinks.

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See this monstrosity above? That’s my new pal, Bonerfart. I created him with the Spore “demo” Spore Creature Creator. There’s a free trial and some bullshit $10 full version with more body parts to mess with. The full game is out in September and after spending 10 minutes with this little sandbox mode, I’m very pleased.

Hit the link to get the demo for Windows or Mac OS X.

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