344235
submission
Stony Stevenson writes:
British and Dutch police have shut down one of the world's largest sources of illegal pre-release music on Tuesday and arrested a 24-year-old man. The raids in Amsterdam and the northeast English city of Middlesbrough followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.
An estimated 180,000 members paid 'donations' via debit or credit cards for OiNK's catalogue of music and other media.
343607
submission
QuietR10t writes:
Scott Gilbertson from Wired raises an interesting point: "However, there is one interesting quote in the IFPI's press release. Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI's Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, says in the press release: "OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online." (emphasis mine)
The IFPI seems to be making a distinction of scale between professional piracy groups and friends sharing files, even if, so far as I know, copyright laws in Britain (and the U.S.) make no such distinctions."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/10/oink-is-the-lat.html
There are also rumors of investigation into users, but with 180k users I'm not sure they would know where to start.
343559
submission
tMav writes:
Today, eager music lovers all over the world woke up to discover that the popular BitTorrent tracker OiNK has been shut down. The BBC News is reporting the raid and the site now responds only with the increasingly familiar message:
"This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.
A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users.
343515
submission
James in Chicago writes:
NBC as subsidiary of General Electric, is hosting a debate at Drexel University October 30th. They have set arbitrary funding requirements such that they exclude Senator Mike Gravel from the debates. Whether or not you agree with Gravel's politics he has been the most outspoken candidate concerning the war and the military-industrial-complex. GE on the other hand has over 2 billion dollars worth outstanding military contracts. When military contractors such as GE get to decide which political candidates are heard what does that mean for this Democracy?
343373
submission
jagermeister101 writes:
Bad news for pirates. Torrent sharing network OiNK has been shutdown by British and Dutch police. A flat belonging to a 24 year old IT worker in England and servers based in Amsterdam were raided.
281349
submission
OldJavaHack writes:
If you could start a website (with MySQL for persistence) from scratch and you had a choice of PHP5, CakePHP, or RubyOnRails (RoR) — which would you choose and why?
Things to consider in your decision:- 1. Maturity of solution
- 2. Features
- 3. Size of community of skilled users (to build a team)
- 4. Complexity/ease of use (for neophytes to master)
- 5. Greatest strength of your choice, and the greatest weakness for the other 2 non-choices.
Thanks for your feedback!
See comparison of capabilities here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_app lication_frameworks
281347
submission
Fishead writes:
As the fight heats up between HD DVD and Blu-ray, and as consumers seem to care less and less, a new contender has entered the fray.
Next month, New Medium Enterprises will be selling a 1080p player through Amazon, and stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150.
The difference of this new HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format and HD DVD or Blu-ray is that the discs are created with the same laser as DVD's. Unlike HD DVD and Blu-ray which use a blue laser.
From the article:
"HD VMD discs, which hold up to 30GB on a single side, are encoded with a maximum bit rate of 40 megabits per second; that's within halfway between HD DVD's 36 mpbs and Blu-ray's 48 mbps. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future."
281171
submission
uh oh writes:
A New Zealand police operation to covertly follow a Central Otago man came to an abrupt halt this week when the man found tracking devices planted in his car, ripped them out and listed them for auction on Trade Me. Ralph Williams, of Cromwell, said he found the devices last week in his daughter's car, which he uses, and in his flatmate's car after the cars were seized by police and taken away for investigation.
