This is a post in response to a friend of mine and a post he made at his site. Gomez I spent a few hours last night reporting post about the HD-DVD keys as spam. The reason I did this is not because I though that the keys where wrong to post, but because I didn’t want to see Digg be taken over by ass holes thinking that anything is covered by free speech, and fall under the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment states

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.“

This would include me saying there is no God, or saying the the Pope is gay, or that President Bush should be impeached (maybe I shouldn’t have said that at work). This doesn’t include copyrighted material. Yes the copyright system is fucked up, I understand that. But this still doesn’t give anyone the “right” to post copyrighted material. Digg did what it thought was best for the company. A cease and desist letter means absolutly nothing. All it says is that if you don’t quite doing what ever we tell you then we “may” get legal on your ass. So when Digg received this letter they said “Ok for the good of the company we may want to take this information down”. This wasn’t “censorship” as some put it. This was information that some party (HD-DVD) beleived was copyrighted and told another company (Digg) to remove or possibly face leagal actions. But because some people thought of this as “censorship” Digg had to turn the other cheek and once again say “Whats best for the company?” This time it was letting ass holes post the keys, and taking the fallout if there is any from HD-DVD. Because again cease and desist doesn’t really mean a damn thing.

Someone did a study about pirating movies from this years Oscar nominees. Here are the results they came up with.

• Academy members received screeners for 30 out of 34. (Everything except Click, Monster House, Poseidon, and Black Dahlia.)
• 31 out of 34 films were released online in some form, including camcorder footage. (Everything except Letters from Iwo Jima, Notes on a Scandal, and Venus.)
• 24 screeners were leaked online. (In several cases, they were leaked months before Academy screeners were mailed.)
• The average length of time between a film’s USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.
• 9 screeners appeared online before they were mailed to Academy members.
• On average, a screener appears online 24 days before it’s received by Academy members. (Excluding these early leaks, the average time is 13 days.)

I think the Pirates need a hand. They have done some fine work. They are able to release movies right after they hit the theater. They rip DVD’s and compress them (you know who you are). They put them up for download. All that for what reason?0 None other then for personal use and fun. So I say let us stand and give a hand to those individuals that keep breaking the DMCA a big round of applause.

They are finally going to do what everyone of us have dreamed about. They are going to buy their very own country. I know I have thought about this many times. I only wish I had the money to do it. The one question I have is how does The Pirate Bay plan to get fast internet to there country? If someone know please explain it to me. I will be donating tonight. Although I just did a little conversion and found out that 500 Million Pounds is 968.25 million Dollars. So I have to say I don’t see The Pirate Bay raising that much money. But hey it is still a great idea.

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My friend strages over at strages.net throws some get together he calls “Bring Popcorn” It is basically a drive in movie except its on the side of a building, with the chance of getting in trouble. Although we have yet to. Anyway, I thought I would let you all know about it. Stop by his site every once and awhile to get times and directions, then show up with your popcorn and watch a movie. Fun times are had by all.

Also if anyone would like to come to a Lan party, Snapl.org is having one on the UAH Campus this Saturday. It’s free, so bring you computer and join us. You might find something you can’t live without. It starts at 6pm on Saturday.

Come Join Us and watch a huge movie, or scan hard drive for informations, which ever you like.