The offending logo, yesterday.

The French have been getting les knickeurs in a real twist of late over internet piracy, with a ‘three strikes’ law now on the statute book meaning that repeat offenders can lose their online access if they’re caught doing the naughty downloads on un deux trois occasions.

The French government have even set up a ‘web police’ department, Hadopi, designed to stamp out illegal downloading, file-sharing and other such jiggery-pokery. Earlier this week, they gave Hadopi a ‘face’ – a logo, presumably designed to strike fear into the minds of pirates.

The trouble was, within a few hours, someone cried ‘Merde!’ when they realised that the logo’s typeface had been half-inched without permission from France Telecom, who had exclusive rights to it. Zut alors!

The design agency behind the logo fessed up, blaming it on some kind of oversight, while the original designer of the typeface is threatening to sue the government, hopefully out of spite more than anything else.

What a beautiful story.

The world’s biggest bit torrent site has gone legitimate, only a few days after delivering its 10 billionth bit torrent.

As of now, Mininova is limiting its activities to a ‘Content Distribution Service’ rather than a seething hub of pirated material. The site’s owners have said that they’re complying with a ruling delivered by the Court Of Utrecht last August.

In an attempt to jazz up their new direction, Mininova have said that their Content Distribution Service has been a huge hit since its launch in 2007. They cite the massive success of the Dutch band Silence is Sexy (pictured right), “who released their complete album on Mininova and received the Interactive Award 2009 for doing so. The Dutch television broadcaster VPRO decided to start using Content Distribution in 2009 in order to distribute documentaries.”

Wow – we’re sure that justifies keeping the tagline “Mininova – The Ultimate Bit Torrent Source” at the top of your browser while you visit the site, which now resembles a ghost town following the end of some kind of digital gold rush.

Will it mean the end of piracy? Definitely not. Will other sites spring up and thrive in Mininova’s place? Almost certainly. Will Mininova wither and die or make it on the straight and narrow path like Napster before it? Time will tell. Are we off to download the newest episode of 30 Rock from a non-Mininova source. No, because doing that would be WRONG.

[Thanks to HUKD member BladeY]

A Cineworld yesterday

In a story that is currently spreading across Twitter like some kind of dark green ooze, it has been revealed that the Cineworld cinema chain have now banned filmgoers from taking laptops into screenings, in fear that they might record the film.

Because, you know, if you wanted to make a sneaky recording of Pixar’s Up to spread all over the internet, you’d choose to do it on a cumbersome laptop as opposed to a mobile phone or a video camera that had been carefully fitted into a secret compartment inside your top hat. Wouldn’t you?

In spite of making a pirate movie with a laptop being the daftest idea since taking boxing gloves to a book signing, TV and radio broadcaster Jeremy Nicholas found himself prevented from entering a screening at his local Cineworld last night because he had his laptop with him. Staff told him he would have to leave it with them and collect it after the film, in spite of the fact that they had no kind of receipt system in place.

Wisely, Jeremy “declined the kind offer to look after my £1500 Sony Vaio that contains all my current work projects, plus some half baked book ideas.”

He and his laptop were eventually allowed in to see the film, after convincing the cinema’s child-faced manager that the Vaio didn’t actually have a camera in it.

In his blog, Jeremy adds: “I often pop in to the movies after work, so I often have the laptop with me and I wanted to check that this was definitely out from now on.  He said after advice from FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Cineworld had brought in the new guidelines.”

“I asked if it would be OK to take my mobile phone into the film as that does have the capacity to record movies.  He asked if I was planning to use it for that purpose. I said no.  He said it would be all right then. Not the most rigorous interrogation and one that a determined bootlegger probably could have passed.”

And the movie that Jeremy saw? ‘Surrogates.’ In the man’s own words, “[POSSIBLE MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILER ALERTS!!!!!!!!!!!] about a future world where people have been replaced by robots. Everything ran smoothly for a while, but in the end it all went wrong because the robots were efficient but lacked humanity.” Hmmm, what does that remind us of?

Bitterwallet have approached Cineworld for a quote but they have yet to respond. We’ll bring you their thoughts as and when we get them.

"I'm going to cut off your bloody interwebs!"

The government are heading for a u-turn on their policy against file sharers – and it’s possibly all thanks to a slap-up dinner involving Peter Mandelson and an American media mogul.

New laws will be announced later today under which people who persistently download copyrighted material will have their Internet connections cut off, something which the government’s recent Digital Britain report judged to be too harsh.

However earlier this month, Lord Mandelson pitched up at a dinner party in Corfu where David Geffen, co-founder of Dreamworks, was one of the guests. Naturally, Geffen is a long-standing critic of online piracy, and rumours have persisted that following the meeting, Mandelson started to put his tough new plan into action.

Under the new proposals, regular offenders could have their connection more or less shut off, leaving them with access to the most basic of online public services. A similar plan was hatched in France recently, but was scrapped after it was ruled to be unconstitutional.

The number of holes that could potentially appear in a law such as this are astronomical, so will it work? And is UK law really being dictated by non-UK businessmen at swanky dinner parties in foreign climes? Well, almost certainly yes – if not in this case then almost definitely in many others. It makes you want to eat your own vest.

80's campaign

In another attempt by the entertainment industry to turn your computer into a television,  it was announced yesterday that the Creative Alliance, made up of representatives from the Federation Against Copyright Theft, (FACT) the Publishers’ Association, the UK Film Council, BPI and more, are going to ask ISPs to ban people who use file sharing programs after three warnings.

This amounts to a tacit endorsement of the idea that all internet traffic should be monitored for content. Currently the ISPA (association of ISPs) claims that it would be impossible to identify who is doing what and with the advent of streaming, many internet users use a large amount of bandwidth and not just file sharers.

UK Film Council head, John Woodward counters that file sharing hurts the industry and threatens jobs. All in all it sounds like the same argument: throw in the magic words “threatens jobs” so it can get some press. At least they aren’t claiming that when we share files, the terrorists win. This time.

[Webuser]

It’s tough being a consumer when the corporate world seems dead set on making you a criminal. The continual attempts at DRM and the subsequent debacle when they shut down the DRM authentication servers (Walmart, MSN, Yahoo!) doesn’t make it easy to be an honest, law-abiding, royalty paying music lover. To pirate or to purchase – in the end you’ll probably still be a criminal.

via boingboing