Files are not for sharing is a crazy little webcomic spoof.
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Month: June 2006
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World Cup: Group E
Two really outstanding matches in Group E today.
Ghana v Czech Republic
Bloody hell what a hell of a match that was. Following the Czech’s first game I thought they would beat their African opponents relatively easily. How wrong could I have been? I had underestimated Ghana totally and they were simply wonderful on the pitch today and ripped open the Czech defence in a way that the US just simply didn’t manage in the first match.
USA v Italy
The US really held it together with only 9 men and deserved the draw for definite and I was hoping one of their attacks would result in a goal and they won it.
The effort they put in today was great.
The group really is wide open which is rare and anyone can qualify. Unfortunately no chance of both USAS and Ghana going through though as based on their respective matches today they both deserve to.
BBC News: Billie Piper to leave Doctor Who
Actress Billie Piper is to leave Doctor Who at the end of the current series, the BBC has confirmed.
But the corporation refused to comment on reports that her character, Rose Tyler, would die in the final episode.
“It has been an amazing adventure and I can confirm it comes to an end, for now at least, as series two climaxes,” the former pop star said.
Not really that much of a surprise as I’m pretty sure it was said that Billie would only be staying on for the second series back at Christmas. It has also been heavily hinted at that something dark and sinister is to befall her character, but I bet she doesn’t die and will make cameo appearances in episodes of future series.
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World Cup: Volzy
German footballer Moritz Volz has a great sense of humour and his own website.
Plus being German he has devoted a section of his site to The Hoff.
Being German, I love David Hasselhoff. It’s actually the law back in the Motherland. For me the Hoff is almost like some kind of higher spirit. Hoff-ness is everywhere. The Hoff is a big inspiration – in times of trouble I often ask myself “how would the Hoff deal with this situation…?”
See the old stereotype about Germans is not true. I hope he has a good World Cup it’ll be a shame that his team will probably lose to Argentina in the Quarter-finals.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Colleen Graffy has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a “good PR move to draw attention”.
Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause”, but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
But lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.
A military investigation into the deaths is under way, amid growing calls for the centre to be moved or closed.
The suicides may have brought the Guatnanamo Bay detention camp back into the news but I don’t think that any rational person could believe that the suicides were designed to draw attention. It’s not like the camp is not an albatross around the neck of the US government in any case.
It has probably been the greatest tool for recruitment to the ranks of Al-Qaeda ever. It undermines the reputation of the US around the world amongst nations friendly to it and feeds it’s enemies by giving them a talisman of propoganda about how the US hates Muslims and mistreats and tortures them.
What makes the notion that the suicides were just “a tactic to further the jihadi cause” even more sickening is the news that one of the three detainess was due to be released but hadn’t been informed yet by the American officals.
Seriously if he was considered to be of such a low level of threat that he would be released is he really likely to commit suicide as an “act of asymmetric warfare”.
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World Cup: USA v Czech Republic
There were some good points to the US team’s game today but they were well and truly outplayed by an outstanding Czech team and the amazing talent of Rosicky.
Rosicky is the player to watch this World Cup I think.
Eddie Johnson looked dangerous and with a bit of luck and some better delivery to him a win against Italy is possible I think. The US face a hard task here but it ain’t over yet.
BBC News: Guantanamo suicides ‘acts of war’
These are the first suicides at the base, despite dozens of attempts
The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says.The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were “committed” and had killed themselves in “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us”.
That’s just sickening isn’t it.
How dare they commit suicide. Think of the poor US soldier that had to discover their dead bodies how he must have suffered to see such a sight, that must surely be a breach of his human rights no soldier should have to experience such horrors. The sooner the detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay is closed the sooner these US servicemen can return home and no longer have to suffer at the hands of the terrorists.
Who knows if these were indeed members of Al-Qaeda committed to destroying the US through their own suicide or if they were innocents picked up by the Northern Alliance and sold to the US military who through despair took what they saw as the only possible route out of their unending detention.
I don’t think the line given by camp commander Rear Adm Harry Harris that
I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.
really stands up to analysis.
Martyrdom is only effective if the outside world and one’s followers are aware of the sacrifice. But the detainees have no contact with the outside world they could not possibly know that their deaths would be reported. Would they really make such an empty sacrifice as an act of war against the United States.
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Emilio Estevez: Man at work
I was wondering whilst watching a video of the movie Men at Work, which my brother had bought for £1.99 at Oxfam, what the hell is Emilio Estevez up to these days?
Well apparently he’s working on a movie which like Men at Work he’s written and directed.
Bobby is the story of the assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, on June 6th, 1968, which centers around 22 people who were at the Ambassador Hotel where he was killed.
I’ve been fascinated by this assassination to an even greater extent than that of his brother.
But unlike Men at Work it does not appear to star his brother it does however star his father amongst many others.
It really is an amazing cast list. Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy and Christian Slater.
Plus teen favourites like Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf and Lindsay Lohan possibly seeking a bit of prestige by starring in a serious movie like this.
This is an amazing coincidence that my brother finds a cheap video of a film we enjoyed as teenagers and it leads me to look up what Emilio Estevez is up to only to discover he’s doing a movie about a subject that really interests me.
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China bans Da vinci Code
According to BBC News the movie The Da Vinci Code has been withdrawn from cinemas in China.
Officials in the country said the move was to make way for local Chinese films to be shown during the peak summer viewing period.
But others say the ban may have been implemented because of the religious content of the film.
The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing said there had been speculation that the film was proving too popular with Chinese Christians.
Bizarre that a movie that has been attacked by Christians in the West is banned by China because it is too popular with Christians.
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The legality of AllofMP3.com
Read the following article in today’s Guardian which read just like a press release from the BPI.
Keep off cut-price music site, downloaders told.
A website for music download fans offering chart albums at a fraction of their usual cost looked like it was too good a deal to be true, and now legal experts are warning that Britain’s second-biggest download service probably is.
Thousands of internet users download music tracks and albums from the Russian-based website AllOfMP3.com which poses as a legitimate online store but actually sells pirated recordings.
Has The Guardian become the mouthpiece of the BPI?
What legal experts have made this warning about the legality of the service I wonder? Alice Gould of Wedlake Bell apparently. Wedlake Bell being a commercial law firm and Alice Gould being the partner who has expertise in intellectual property law and who seems to have been quoted again and again by news sources in recent months in articles concerning filesharing and the associated copyright infringement.
Why I wonder do I get the feeling that Wedlake Bell is the law firm that represents the BPI rather than being an independent firm offering their expert advice.
Having then checked the BPI’s website it does look like that in fact the BPI had released a press release today about them suing the site AllofMP3.com in the UK courts amongst many other things (including yet again the argument that term of copyright for sound recordings should be extended but I’ll address that issue in a different post) following an address to a House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee. The story has been covered by many other news sources including the BBC and The Register.
AllofMP3 claim that they are a legal service under Russian copyright law and that claim seems to stand up however much it dismissed by organisations like the BPI and the IFPI.
This seems to me to be nothing more than blatant scaremongering by the BPI. Regardless of whether AllofMP3.com are selling the files illegally or legally it is not I believe illegal under UK copyright law to purchase and import into this country any article which is, and which one knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of a copyright work if it is solely for ones private and domestic use.
The relevant subsections of UK Copyright law are subsection 107 and subsection 22, the former is regarding Secondary infringement: importing infringing copy and the latter is regarding criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing articles.
The BPI claims that users are making copies of the works themselves when they make a purchase which could indeed be an interpretation of the law.
UK copyright law states that
Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form.
This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.
This might necessitate a court to clarify the meaning of this. But if you take the BPI’s line then any music file you download and store electronically is a copy that you the user has made even if you download it from a legal site such as iTunes, MP3.com or Tesco and surely such copying is an infringement unless licensed by the owner of the copyright.
Presumably the case is that these sites have acquired the right from the copyright owners for their users to make copies and the licence that AllofMP3 claims is has doesn’t cover this. At what point can it be said that the work is in the process of being stored electronically? Is the act of downloading the infringement or is it just the state of having a work in an electronic format stored on a medium.
Is an MP3 stored on your hard disk defined as being a copy of an artistic work, or is it defined as being the act of making a copy of an artistic work? If the former then the importation of that MP3 for personal use is not infringement if the latter then it is.
This would appear to me to be a legal grey area and a question of metaphysics.
There is clearly a moral issue to be highlighted here also as musicians are being deprived of any royalties they may have accrued if their works were purchased in the UK rather than via the AllofMP3 service.
AllofMP3 have released a statement in reply to the various accusations levelled against them. [via]