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12:25 PM ET, April 17, 2009

Techmeme

 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 …
RELATED:
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 …
Erik Palm / CNET News:
Copyright holders cheer Pirate Bay verdict
Discussion: Softpedia News
The Local:
Pirate Bay guilty
Discussion: p2pnet, Music Ally and Gizmodo
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 …
RELATED:
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.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Should Twitter Remove Its Follower Count?
Discussion: PC World and Hi Tech
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.
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 …
Discussion: Ars Technica and Download Squad
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 …
Discussion: AppScout and The Equity Kicker, Thanks:atul
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 …
Discussion: eWeek and paidContent.org
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.
RELATED:
Hiroshi Suzuki / Bloomberg:   Nintendo Shares Fall After U.S. Wii Sales Drop for First Time in 14 Months
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.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
NBC Universal Earnings Sliced In Half, But There's a Bright Side  —  The bad news for NBC Universal: The TV & 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% - 25%.
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.
RELATED:
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 …
RELATED:
Bloomberg:   Sony Ericsson to Cut 2,000 More Jobs After Third Straight Quarterly Loss
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.
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 …
Discussion: NewTeeVee, Electronista and Engadget HD
Joseph Galante / Bloomberg:
Twitter Posts on Paint Projects, Ear Infections Start to Irk Some Users  —  Rachel Gard, who started using Twitter two months ago to keep in touch with friends, says she may stop using the site if companies keep contacting her.  —  Already Home Depot Inc. has wished her luck painting her room …
Philip Lam / Your Source for Palm Pre News:
Palm Pre available from Chinese Accessories wholesaler?  —  An anonymous tipster and treocentral forums have pointed out that new Palm Pre photos had surfaced on a chinese treo forum.  The photos were taken by Ludle International, a wholesaler company in China that produces and sells electronic accessories and parts.
 
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 More Items: 
Guardian:
Gordon Brown backs broadband for all
Discussion: The Register
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Interview With Automattic's Matt Mullenweg: “Blogging Is Not Slowing Down”
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
EBay's Donahoe Says Changes Could Take Three or Four Years
Discussion: paidContent.org
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Role of Bush NSA Plan Under Review
Discussion: New York Times
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
NBC Hits 1B Full Episode Streams
 Earlier Items: 
QuickPWN:
Jailbreak iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 3
Jon Fortt / Fortune:
Yahoo's taskmaster  —  Carol Bartz is shrewd, strong-minded, blunt, and disciplined.
Thanks:marissac
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Facebook Public Profile Statuses Officially Become Public
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
It's a Socialthing: AOL's Plan To Take On Facebook Connect …
Discussion: VentureBeat, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Sources: NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Bonnie Hammer plans to leave the company at the end of the year; she has been with the company since 2004

Anja Karadeglija / The Canadian Press:
Meta clashes with Canada's CRTC over the Online News Act by declining to publicly release information about its measures to block news content on its platforms

 
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