Well, this could get interesting. Following the leak of MediaDefender's emails, the folks behind The Pirate Bay now believe they have enough evidence to sue many major entertainment firms for "infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming." Basically, there's evidence in the emails that a bunch of firms, including Universal, EMI, Sony, Paramount and others were using MediaDefender to try to mess with The Pirate Bay's system. Whether or not the lawsuit actually goes anywhere may depend on a lot of factors (including Swedish laws, which I am totally unfamiliar with). There may be some questions about how the emails in question were obtained. And, of course, the entertainment companies will likely counter that they were just trying to protect their own materials -- which could find a sympathetic ear in a courtroom. Either way it would be quite a lawsuit.

The Australian government has had a long and storied history of trying to block porn on the Internet. But, this Thursday, a bill was introduced in Australia that would take this censorship even further. The bill would allow the federal police to alter the blacklist of sites currently controlled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. With this, the federal police are empowered to blacklist any site that "encourages, incites or induces," "facilitate(s)" or "has, or is likely to have, the effect of facilitating" a crime. This brush is incredibly broad, and without proper checks and balances, it seems likely to be abused. Australian Police would be able to block any site they don't like, and claim that it is "likely" to facilitate crime. Australia's censorship trip down a very slippery slope takes a big second step here. First porn, now "criminal" sites. With this power, Australia is but a tiny step away from censoring valid free speech. Maybe Australia should just route all of its traffic through China's "Great Firewall" first -- that might be easier.

For many years, there's been a pretty big debate over whether or not cable and satellite TV providers should offer "a la carte" options, where subscribers could just pick and choose the channels they want to subscribe to. At a first pass, many people think this would be great -- believing that it would save them money because they wouldn't be paying for all those channels they get but don't watch. However, this is short sighted. Studies have actually shown that in most cases a la carte offerings would end up costing more.

There are a variety of reasons for this. First, the pay TV providers would need to revamp their systems to support this, including their marketing and customer service setup, which would almost definitely raise costs. Second, what the current bundles do is allow certain popular channels to subsidize other channels. When you switch to an a la carte system, many of those subsidies are lost, and it would likely drive up the prices for many channels, rather than the other way around. So, while some people think it sounds like a good idea, it probably would likely result in a higher cable bill for many people.

However, that won't stop the class action lawyers from getting in on the action. A new class action lawsuit has been filed against the major cable and satellite providers, claiming that it's a violation of antitrust law that they don't offer a la carte channel selection. You can certainly see why some people would want it -- but it's unclear why pay TV providers should be forced to offer it. Either way, with the pace of change, it won't be all that long before this doesn't matter anyway -- and the entire concept of the channel is dead. We're reaching a time when people will simply subscribe to shows, and no one will worry about channels any more.