Top Items:
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty — While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were 'assisting in making copyright content available …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, 9 to 5 Mac, New York Times, BBC, CNN, Reuters, The Register, Music Ally, MediaMemo, Hardware 2.0, Electronista, TechSpot, The Local, Guardian, Download Squad, Mashable!, iGeneration, GMSV, Gamasutra, Kotaku, p2pnet, Boy Genius Report, paidContent, the Econsultancy blog, paidContent.org, Boing Boing, dot.life blog, TheNextWeb.com, Michael Geist Blog, TG Daily, bit-tech.net, Net Effect, Google Maps Mania, Ars Technica, AppScout and CNET News
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Threat Level:
The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome — Oscar Swartz reports. — Four men connected to The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in prison.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Pirate Bay Loses A Lawsuit; Entertainment Industry Loses An Opportunity — Well, the verdict has come down in the trial against The Pirate Bay in Sweden, and it appears The Pirate Bay has been found guilty and each of the defendants has been sentenced to a year in jail and told to pay $3.6 million in damages …
Discussion:
PaulStamatiou.com, TorrentFreak, Telegraph, TeleRead, Threat Level, paidContent, hypebot, The Register, Guardian and Music Ally
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Twitter's big day? Here comes Oprah — The official answer's in regarding Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams' teasing tweet Thursday about Friday being a “very big day”: @Oprah. — Oprah issued her first tweet around 7:10 a.m. PDT Friday—the same day Williams and Twitter's top celebrity …
Discussion:
Bits, Network World, Silicon Alley Insider, Technology Review, Gawker, TechCrunch and p2pnet
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Kutcher Plays His Pied Piper Flute And Gets A Million Twitter Followers — The first man in space. The first man on the moon. The first man with a million Twitter followers. Yes, this is one of those great achievements in human history. Congratulations Ashton Kutcher.
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Documents: FBI Spyware Has Been Snaring Extortionists and Hackers for Years — A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show.
Discussion:
Threatpost Blog
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Sidekick LX 2009 is a Lean, Mean Twittering Machine (With a Better Screen) — T-Mobile's new Sidekick LX 2009 isn't a radical new departure from past models, but it brings a beautiful, 3.2-inch, 854x480 screen to the table along with Twitter integration. It's also the slimmest Sidekick to date.
Discussion:
BetaNews, eWeek, IntoMobile, Crave, Electronista, Gearlog, Engadget Mobile, Obsessable, SlashPhone, Boy Genius Report, MobileCrunch, Tech Beat, CrunchGear, Brier Dudley's blog and Softpedia News
Renai LeMay / CNET News:
Ubuntu 9.04's final test version released — The Ubuntu project has published a release candidate, or final testing version, for the upcoming 9.04 version of its popular Linux distribution. — “We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable and suitable for testing by any user …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Snow Day, Employee Arrest At Fox/MySpace — Los Angeles tech companies may not be able to stand up to their northern California neighbors when it comes to technology clout, but they sure do seem to have a more interesting and varied work life. While Silicon Valley based Facebook …
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google CEO Schmidt Wants A Twitter Search Deal — During yesterday's earnings call, Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt talked up the benefits of a search deal with Twitter: — “Without commenting specifically about Twitter ... you could imagine that ... it could be a channel for product information …
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
New discoveries turn up in betas of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software — Developer sources familiarizing themselves with betas of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software have uncovered a handful of additional tweaks and improvements to the system in recent weeks, including changes to Safari's window handling …
Discussion:
The iPhone Blog
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Dan Nystedt / PC World:
Google's CEO Predicts Strong Year for Android — Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted good times ahead for Android, the company's mobile phone OS and software. — “Overall, it looks like Android is going to have a very strong year,” he said during the company's first quarter investors' conference.
Gabriel Madway / Reuters:
U.S. video games sales fall 17 pct in March: NPD — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Overall U.S. video game sales fell 17 percent in March to $1.43 billion, research group NPD said on Thursday, a revealing figure for an industry that had so far shown resilience in the economic downturn.
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Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Take-Two's ‘Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars’ Bellyflops — Take-Two's (TTWO) Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is dying on the shelves. — We noted earlier this week that analysts were split on how well the game would do when the NPD Group reported US videogame sales for March.
Discussion:
Electricpig.co.uk, Kotaku, The Latest From www …, Joystiq and GamePolitics News, Thanks:ekrangel
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
NBC Universal Earnings Sliced In Half, but There's a Bright Side — The bad news for NBC Universal: The TV and movie powerhouse saw earnings drop 45 percent in the last quarter. The good news: The GE unit says that if you stripped out one-time costs, charges, etc., it would have only been down something like 15 to 25 percent.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Kindle owners find out about DRM's ever-present threat — Some Kindle users are angry because Amazon blocked them from their Kindle accounts, thereby blocking them from accessing their already-purchased media. Even if these stories are exaggerated, they once again highlight the caveats that come with DRMed media.
Discussion:
Techdirt
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Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:Surprise! If Your Amazon Account Dies, It Takes Your Kindle With It
Discussion:
Engadget
Agence France Presse:
Sony Ericsson to cut 2,000 jobs after losses — Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday said it would cut 2,000 more jobs after it swung to a loss of 293 million euros (384 million dollars) in the first quarter of the year. — The group, which experienced losses in the third …
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Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
A Look Back At Some Prescient Predictions On Copyright — Via Michael Scott, we are alerted to a blog post by Thomas O'Toole, where he looks at two separate papers from the pre-DMCA era, both presenting incredibly accurate predictions of what was about to happen in the world of copyright and content.
Variety:
Best Buy plans downloads — Co. hatching digital movie biz — Stung by falling DVD sales, Best Buy is on the verge of launching a digital movie service that could debut as early as this summer, according to studio insiders. — The chain is in talks with CinemaNow and other online movie services …
