The Great Geek Manual News

Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty - backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

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Source: Torrent Freak

After delaying its plan to test capping subscriber bandwidth usage, Time Warner has opted to retreat from the approach altogether.

In a statement today, Chief Executive Office Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.”

Organizations which stood in opposition to the trials, such as Free Press, claim this as a major victory for consumers. Campaign director for Free Press Tim Karr said, “We’re glad to see Time Warner Cable’s price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition. Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path. Consumers are not going to stand idly by as companies try to squeeze their use of the Internet. This is a major victory, but the fight for a fast, open and affordable Internet is far from over.”

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Source: Beta News

EBay Inc. said Thursday that it expects to remain a “significant” shareholder after spinning off its Internet communications service Skype.

During a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said the online marketplace operator intends an “ultimate full separation of Skype.” The first stage will involve the initial public offering announced Tuesday, after which eBay initially expects to stay a “significant” Skype shareholder, he said.

Beyond that, eBay will determine the best plan to fully separate Skype, he said.

Chief Executive John Donahoe said that if the company receives an unsolicited offer to buy Skype, it will evaluate it against how it thinks it can fare through a public offering.

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Source: The Globe and Mail

Google Inc’s YouTube said on Thursday it has reached a deal to post Sony Corp films and TV shows and was talking with other big studios to ramp up content and attract more advertising dollars.

YouTube also announced deals with 11 other partners including the Anime Network, Shout Factory, Telenext Media, Documentary Channel and First Look Studios, bolstering its licensed content offerings from dozens of movies and hundreds of TV episodes to 700 movies and thousands of TV episodes.

YouTube also recently announced a partnership with Walt Disney Co to get shortform excerpts of content from ABC and ESPN, reflecting its aggressive efforts to thaw a chilly relationship with Hollywood, which had criticized it in the past for posting unauthorized content.

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Source: Reuters

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has taken control of her own Twitter name, @oprah, she announced on her Facebook page today. And tomorrow, she’ll start using it, on her show.

Apparently, her guest tomorrow will be the man she calls “the King of Twitter,” Ashton Kutcher. I’m sure he’ll be talking about his race for a million followers on the service (he should be there by then), and presumably about his pledge to help fight malaria in Africa if he crosses the million mark before CNN.

Knowing this, Twitter CEO Evan Williams tweet from earlier today makes a lot more sense. “Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser — more later.),” he wrote. And it should be a very big day indeed. Oprah is known for her loyal (some may say “rabid”) following, as she can turn any book or product she talks about on her show into pure gold. And Twitter will likely be no different. I suspect Twitter may see its biggest one day jump in new sign ups tomorrow — certainly, it will be the largest influx of women of a certain age group into the service in one day.

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Source: Tech Crunch

A Swedish court handed down a guilty verdict and a year in prison on Friday to all four defendants in a copyright test case involving The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing websites.

The verdict could be a step toward helping music and film companies seeking to recoup millions of dollars in lost revenues from filesharers, though analysts said they doubted it would stem the tide of illegal downloading.

“The Stockholm district court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws,” the court said in a statement. “The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison.”

Companies including Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI were also asking for damages of more than 100 million crowns ($12 million) to cover lost revenues.

The court also ordered the defendants to pay just over 30 million Swedish crowns ($3.58 million).

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Source: Reuters

ACTOR Ashton Kutcher has become the first “Twitterer” to have one million followers on the popular micro-blogging website after a hotly-contested race against news network CNN.

Click to see Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter page

Kutcher cracked open a bottle of champagne as he announced his victory live on Twitter and UStreamTV moments after he passed the one million mark.

”Victory is ours”, Kutcher tweeted, describing the moment as a “changing of the guard”.

“We have shown the world that the new wave is here, it is present and it is ready to explode.

“You guys are all of it because I can’t follow me, so I don’t even count.

“We can and will create our media. We can will and edit our media. We can and will broadcast our media. We will censor our own media ourselves.”

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Source: New.com.au

The first plug-in hybrid to be sold in the United States will likely be the Fisker Karma, which is due out in November. Fisker Automotive, which unveiled the concept version of the Karma in January, recently raised $87 million to help put it into production. A number of other plug-in hybrids, including models from GM, Chrysler, and Toyota, are scheduled to come out in the next few years.

The Karma, a luxury four-passenger sedan, can be recharged by plugging it in; it can then be driven on power from a battery alone for 50 miles. After that, an onboard gasoline generator kicks on to recharge the battery, extending the range by 250 miles between fill-ups. Power from optional solar cells on the roof will be used primarily to cool the car when it’s parked, but they could also partially recharge the battery. The car will run on a lithium manganese oxide battery made by Advanced Lithium Power, based in Vancouver, BC. The battery is similar to the one selected for the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid due out in November of 2010.

Henrik Fisker, a car designer and cofounder of the company, said at the New York Auto Show last week that the car is part of his effort to show that environmentally friendly cars need not be small and underpowered. To go with its performance, the car carries a hefty price tag of $87,000.

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Source: Technology Review

Google has announced that it will partner with major movie studios to stream a number of full-length films and TV shows for free on YouTube. The studios involved in the launch of this premium content section will include Sony, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, and the BBC. The movies will be ad-supported, and ad revenue will be shared with the content owners. Those who love YouTube’s user-generated video offerings should not fret, however, as those will remain on the site separate from the premium offerings.

Google has been growing its collection of full-length movies as of late, with MGM announcing in November of 2008 that it would begin adding some of its films to YouTube, starting with films like The Magnificent Seven and Bulletproof Monk. Then, earlier this month, rumors spread that Sony was working on a similar deal to add films to YouTube. Now, with MGM, Sony, and a handful of others on board, YouTube has taken a giant step in the right direction to figuring out how to monetize the site.

The premium-content section comes as some analysts predict that YouTube will lose almost $500 million this year due to bandwidth consumption, licensing fees, the difficulty in monetizing content, and other expenses. “In our view, the issue for YouTube going forward is to increase the percentage of its videos that can be monetized (likely through more deals with content companies) and to drive more advertiser demand through standardization of ad formats and improved ad effectiveness,” Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena said earlier this month.

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Source: Ars Technica

Google has recorded its first ever decline in revenue, dropping from £3.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 to $3.7 billion this quarter - a drop of 3%

Its revenue increased compared to the same quarter last year, however, by 6%. Its year-on-year profit is up 8%, to £0.96 billion.

In a conference call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the recession meant the company was in “uncharted territory”, calling the economic climate “tough.” He said that “no company is recession-proof,” and that “Google is absolutely feeling the impact.”

However, he insisted that Google’s long-term future was secure. “Our advertising model is working,” he said. “Google is now well-placed for the recovery when it occurs.”

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Source: PC Pro

A recent draft of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) surfaced on Wikileaks this weekend. Among other things, the draft aims to strengthen the power and rights of the entertainment industry and other copyright holders, by letting them choose how they want to be compensated for copyright infringements.

ACTA is an international agreement that aims to target piracy and counterfeiting globally. The degree of secrecy surrounding the negotiations is astonishing. Many institutions, the press and various individuals have requested that the participating countries provide an insight into their plans, but none have succeeded thus far.

It almost seems they are actively blocking the public from having their say, while in contrast they continue to receive input from anti-piracy lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA. However, as time progresses more details about ACTA become public, largely thanks to Wikileaks.

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Source: Torrent Freak

Time Warner Cable is reportedly having trouble finding submissive test subjects for its proposed scheme of charging US customers by the gigabyte for their internet service.

Additional trials for the company’s new “consumption based billing” regime were slated to begin in several markets this summer, but public outcry has made the cable giant retreat from some of its attempts to stuff the all-you-can-eat internet genie back in the bottle - for now.

The company originally intended to expand tests of metered billing on April 13 to Rochester, New York, Greensboro, South Carolina, and San Antonio and Austin, Texas. But all has not gone according to plan.

After facing a surge of complaints from customers, Time Warner has decided to delay the rollout in both Texas cities until October. Presumably, a few months will make bandwidth caps easier to swallow.

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Source: The Register

The four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay trial face year-long jail terms if found guilty when the verdict gets announced in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday. But even if prosecutors get their way, it’s less evident whether a legal victory would also translate to a broader deterrent against illegal file sharing.

Clearly, this case is being viewed on both sides of the Atlantic as a potentially landmark decision in the heated controversy surrounding unauthorized Internet file sharing. The prosecution accuses the four men standing trial–Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom–of making copyright-protected material available through the Web site thepiratebay.org, one of the most visited BitTorrent destinations in the world.

The challenge for prosecutor Hakan Roswall has been to prove that the site actually can be legally linked to copyright infringement. He got off to a bumpy start. On the second day of the 13-day trial, which began in February, Roswall was forced to drop accusations that the defendants facilitated making illegal copies. Now the prosecution’s case hinges on whether it can prove that the four men were guilty of making the files accessible.

No actual material is stored on the Web site that features a search function for torrent files used for file sharing with the BitTorrent technology–which is legal in itself, but commonly used for illegal file sharing.

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Source: CNet

Yes, Twitter is talking to big Internet companies about forming partnerships with them. No, it is not looking to sell itself.

That is the latest from Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter, the microblogging start-up, and is on its board.

Speculation over Twitter’s possible relationships with various partners began earlier this month, after TechCrunch claimed that Google was discussing a purchase of Twitter. After that report was discredited, a new flurry of rumors began about the start-up’s flirtations with various big Internet and media companies, including Google, Microsoft, the News Corporation and NBC Universal.

In a blog post titled “Sometimes We Talk,” a Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, set off a new round of speculation when he vaguely said: “It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.”

In the interview with me, Mr. Wilson shed more light on the discussions.

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Source: The New York Times Bits Blog