In a private demonstration to the governors of higher education recently, the RIAA revealed their “methods” to catch pirates – using the same software.

LimeWire, KaZaA, eMule – just some of the program names mentioned in this little seminar. The RIAA claim to have a list of copyrighted songs which it passes on to their dog (MediaSentry) who then search within programs, such as LimeWire, to find how many people are sharing the file in question. Then, they “right-click on the music file and browse the host” to see which copyrighted media they have, this method also shows the host’s IP address, which they then take, track, and send an angry e-mail.

And so they go – round colleges, universities, and high schools to catch out young crooks. However, feel safer in knowing that the companies can take no action. The RIAA even said themselves, they must have proof that distribution is taking place. To do this through LimeWire, they would have to have the host’s computer while distribution is taking place.

The automated takedown notice program we have right now is solely university-focused, we’re trying to make universities aware that they have an issue with peer-to-peer file sharing on their network, and so we don’t send automated notices to commercial ISP’s, I think because they are generally aware that there’s a problem.

says the RIAA.

Well, we as pirates are actually fully aware of the RIAA’s stance on students and universities – if they’re fans, sue ‘em.

A New law in Spain (which sounds like something straight out of a record label’s world domination plans) makes it illegal for any ISP to “facilitate” filesharing.

With the law comes a new tax – to compensate for piracy. The tax will apparently go into a fund to be shared among copyright holders.

This sounds like complete bollocks to me, the spanish are going to be paying their government to pay the record labels. What about the innocent people? Sounds like the world is calling out for a robin hood, to be honest.

For the first time in three years the number of businesses in the UK using pirate software has fallen by 1% which drops the amount of businesses using pirate software to just 26%

The BSA (Business Software Alliance) holds a survey every year to ask businesses many questions, one of them being if the business uses pirate software. The BSA claims the fall is due to “educational efforts and programs which tackle the hotspots of pirate activity”.

The UK isn’t the only one with percentages slightly dropping, 66 other nations reported a drop in pirated software. The average global rate of piracy now stands at 38% – up by 3% from 2006.

“It’s encouraging that we’re making progress in the battle against software piracy, however there’s a huge amount yet to be done. The fact remains that an unacceptable level of UK organisations still flout software licensing regulations”

says Julie Strawson of the BSA UK Committee

The BSA also states that Armenia is the country with the most pirated software, with approximately 93% of software used in the country from a pirate source. Suprisingly, the USA has the lowest rate of only 20%

Today is a good day for the guys over at Microsoft. Today, they launch “Messenger TV” a new service where messengers can send their favourite TV clips to friends, complete with content from the likes of MTV and BBC (iPlayer in MSN, anyone?) and being able to chat while their show is playing.

This comes after many YouTube URLs were blocked on Friday night to Saturday morning. Microsoft spokesman Dharmesh posted

“Could it happen again? We don’t know, we still don’t know what caused it. We are still investigating the reason our partner made these incorrect blocks and we will work with them to improve their process for detecting harmful URLs while not blocking safe ones”

Obviously this service is going to be cram-packed to death with advertisments, UK’s Island Records have already snatched up an advertising contract through the service.

It’s a little hard to make sense out of this story, but you remember when the EU threatened to cut off pirates from the internet? (based on the three-strike system), yeah?, well the first caught pirates have been cut off. “Who!? Who is the first to be cut off!?” I hear people cry, “The Finnish Government!” I cry in return.

That’s right sports fans, the first ever pirate to be cut off from the Internet is Finland’s own government. However – it wasn’t just another pirate like you would see in their bedroom searching in vain for a decent movie or video game – it was a finnish government representative sharing music videos.

Anti-piracy company “Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (CIAPC)” in Finland have used and abused a copyright law which was introduced January 1st 2006, the process has been harshly criticized by Electronic Frontier Finland vice chairman Ville Oksanen, who claims it to be “one of the dirtiest he has ever seen”. CIAPC is a non-profit organization financed by its members, MPA and the Finnish Ministry of Education

Another step in proving their “Freedom Of Information” banner on their website, the Ministry of Defense has released documentation of UFO sightings, from reports all across England.

Some of the reports include hand-drawn images showing alien spaceships, and quotes and stories detailing

meetings with aliens and sightings.

The MOD receives a large number of requests each year for information relating to UFOs, and so has introduced a system to meet this demand by releasing these historic files in a structured way.

says the MOD website. The files will be free to download for the first month, after which users will be charged.

The files are available from here.

It’s about time this happened. Real world vs. Virtual world. How close could it be?

Well, over at Flickr Matthew Johnston decided to bring it to reality…

Click Me Before I Steal Your Mouse

The similarities are unreal… check out the picture of Lady Liberty for a truly awe-striking comparison.

(And by the way, the game images are the ones on the right)

The MVGroup is a site well-known by torrent downloaders, mostly for it’s reputation as the authority for documentaries. Today, the site is in mourning for it’s founder, Merrin, who passed away at the young age of 32. A special web-banner has appeared on the site to commemorate the founder.

Merrin had been having health problems, the extent of which were unknown to his friends and family. A message awaits any users of the site…

“It is with a heavy heart that I write this, Merrin the founder of MVGroup.org passed away suddenly on Monday 5th May. He had been ill for sometime but the extent of his illness was not known to the staff , his family or his personal friends. His passing will leave an enormous void at MVGroup.

I was asked me to write something here about Merrin, but to be honest I just can’t face it, the thought of doing so is just too painful. So I’ll simply add an abridged version of a post Merrin made at MVGroup some time long, long ago, it will give you a much better insight into who he was and what he was all about than anything I could have written.”

(A written history of the MCGroup follows)

A close friend of Merrin explains the site is NOT going to be having any downtime as a result, and the MVG will go on strong.

You can leave your respects and messages here.

The ever-popular Xbox 360 will be undergoing a diet, rumours say.

Fans of the console are to see a new, slimmer, and apparently with new specs version of the Xbox 360, due for release in 2009. The Prince wonders if it will be the console being slimmed on its own, or if they will take a few chunks out of the controller too! This one thinks the power-pack should be inside the 360 instead of adding a brick to the brick…

So recently Ubisoft managed to pull a few strings and get all the internet watchers buzzing at the sound of a new Prince of Persia game – but we still wonder, what’s it going to be about? Recently a French games magazine boasted screenshots and storylines, so I took a peek…

Firstly, and foremost, the Prince has a new costume. He has some sort of shawl covering his face, and plenty of cloth just hanging randomly from his costume.

And fair enough, we like little changes, but what’s this? No time travel? No – the Prince is just as athletic as ever (except we’ve been promised a new gadget which enables the Prince of Persia to “slide” along walls, and here goes for the storyline – the Prince of Persia supposedly unlocks a box which pours out with evil, and corrupts a world the Prince of Persia must then save. Sweet, but my £10 is already riding on the title “Prince of Persia: Pandora’s Box” unless they want to keep it away from the Splinter Cell title.

The story will also be set before the Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time release, a whole new series set before the sands of time are unleashed.

We sit and wait patiently.

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