A bit of technology

Here in Latvia we have an organization which "fight" for artists' rights called AKKA/LAA. They are analogous to american RIAA/MPAA. And now they are dismissed by their own wish. And this is GREAT! Because people working in this agency were not correct (let me be polite) to artists and end-users. Basically they were taking all the money to themselfes simply because no one signed contracts with them. Just imagine - you have a caffee and a band. You want to play your own music in your own caffee. And guess what? You needed to pay to AKKA/LAA! For fucking what?

At last! They do not exist anymore!

I would like to congratulate Piratpartiet with getting a seat in EU parliament! I hope it will make our world better!

And if you still does not known anything about that, read The Register article on the matter.

As you may remember Sweden now has a new law called IPRED, which will send internet end-users involved in piracy directly to jail without affecting service providers. So many users were worried and guys from The Pirate Bay created a special VPN named IPREDator to protect those who wants protection.

But TPB are not the only ones who care about end-users. Earlier this month Bahnhof, a Swedish internet service provider, has begun deleting customer identification information in order to prevent it from being used as evidence against its customers. And now Tele2, one of the largest ISPs in Sweden, joins Bahnhof.

The good thing about such decision from ISPs is that in some countries businesses do really care about their image and their customers. Yes, they want to earn more money with such policies, but instead of threating their users, like ISPs do in other countries (google for it!) they protect their clients. Tele2 and Bahnhof - you are great!

More information can be found on TorrentFreak, but I would like to note that it is good, that French Parliament listened to EU instead of USA. Of course RIAA and MPAA will try to refactor this law and propose it one more time, but I hope French government will think twice before playing under USA.

One of the points on the TPB trial was that they have a very small percentage of illegal torrents. And looks like TPB guys are upto protect theese few (: Idea is simple - IPREDator is an encrypted VPN without any logs. Yet in closed beta stage, then for 5EUR/month. More information here.

I think this is a great service and very cheap indeed. We totally lack any privacy theese days and privacy is very important for everyone, not only for pirates. I hope this service will be really useful and won't be closed by any stupid court decision.