Author: Jonathan Riggall

Pirate Bay trial: Guilty!

This morning in Sweden the founders of popular torrent seeking site The Pirate Bay, have been found guilty of “assisting the distribution of illegal content online”. They face a year in prison and a $3.6 million fine. As with most big court cases, the decision will be appealed – so it’s not entirely over yet. Moving the case to the high court will mean an even lengthier process.

The cavalier attitude of The Pirate Bay’s defendants, and the errors made by the prosecution has helped to give many the impression the judges decision would have been the reverse, so this result certainly comes as a surprise to a lot of people.

Who knows what knock on effect this will have? It could trigger more court cases against websites that allow users to find illegally copied material, or maybe worry people into downloading shared files less. According to a post on The Torrent Freak, the judge in Sweden also said that using BitTorrent file sharing at the Pirate Bay was illegal, although it’s unclear whether this has any broader implications or not.

The debate about sharing files is sure to rage on regardless of this case, and it’s worth remembering that it was not the web site that was on trial, rather the individuals who ran it.

Scary Girl: The biggest, best browser game so far?

If you’re looking for high production values for nothing, check out Scary Girl. This free online game is one of the biggest, and slickest efforts I’ve ever seen.

It can take a while to load up, but once it has, it’s a great looking cartoon platform game that wouldn’t look out of place on a console. It’s a bit simple, perhaps, and mostly revolves around finding and collecting things, but it’s really well done so that can be forgiven!

Check out the Scary Girl site, and click on “game” (requires Flash Player 10)! She’s not really scary at all….

Does the cloud kill privacy?

Andrew Brown, writing in The Guardian, thinks Facebook, Google and cloud-ish based information applications like Evernote are posing major threats to our privacy.

While I quite understand people worrying, we’re not living in (George Orwell’s) 1984 just yet. Facebook keeps information about its users to direct advertising at them, but I can’t see why that’s so bad. I have no problem with companies that I choose to use using my behaviour with their product to advertise at me. They have to make money, after all, and those adverts keep Facebook free for me.

In Europe, a great deal of information about citizens is publicly available without the internet.  Andrew Brown says we should try to conceal our real selves from the cloud, to maintain our privacy, but I think he’s seriously exaggerating the problem. If I share documents with Google Docs, the fact that Google might one day turn round and “Be Evil” doesn’t worry me a bit. If I had a really sensitive bit of data or information that I wanted to keep away from big brother, I certainly wouldn’t store it in the cloud.

But for non-top secret stuff, the development of cloud based applications and social networks has been fantastic. They make working together on the net a ton easier, staying in touch a ton easier, and sharing a breeze. People might think Twitter is silly and Facebook walls egotistical, but they are great ways to share things you like, and some people even have interesting thought to share.

All of these things are tools, and like any tool you have to learn how to use it. If you saw a lawn mower for the first time, you might rightly worry that such a device might be a threat to your arms and legs. Eventually, someone would show you that with due caution and care, this threatening looking machine could be used for lawn based good (unless you are made of grass). The Internet is the same – you are in control of what you share about yourself, and as long as you are sensible, it won’t chop your legs off!

I will join the “the Internet is threatening our way of life” crowd the moment Google announces its psychic G-mind-reader tool, but I believe it is some years off.

Thursday timewaster: Effing Hail

Whenever I have five minutes to spare, it’s always nice to play at being an angry and vengeful god! You can too with Effing Hail. It’s a great mix of weather and destruction: You control the wind, and use it to blow hail around and make it grow to ridiculous sizes before hurling it at your chosen target. There are houses, planes, skyscrapers pedestrians and more to dispatch. The game is timed, and there are online scoreboards so you can prove who’s really the baddest weatherman out there.