The Futility of Fighting Media “Pirates”—How MediaDefender Got Hacked

As if we needed yet more evidence that trying to fight piracy is a futile exercise, just look at the case of a company called MediaDefender. The company acts on behalf of media companies to monitor and sabotage the sharing of movies, music, and video games on peer-to-peer networks. It seeds BitTorrent, for instance, with fake files to try to make P2P file-sharing a hassle and annoyance. Last September, a hacker fought back by uploading to BitTorrent internal e-mails and documents outlining MediaDefender’s tactics, rendering them much less effective.

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Meet Michael Stephens - He Has Quit on Print

I have seen the face of the newspaper industry’s business conundrum, and it belongs to Michael Stephens. Stephens — a librarian, library science instructor, tech enthusiast and blogger — recently posted “An Open Letter to the South Bend Tribune” on the occasion of canceling his print subscription. My discerning friend Tom Billiterri found it while rummaging online for hometown news of Indiana and forwarded it with the comment “a sign of the times.” I could excerpt and paraphrase, but the flavor is best savored by reading the whole thing. Stephens’ item is not particularly long, and it’s stated with some style.

A Radical Option For Yahoo: Out-Open Google

Yahoo is between a rock and Google. As Yahoo’s board decides today whether or not to accept Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy the company, we’ve argued that it really only has two choices: accept the inevitable and go with Microsoft, or outsource search to Google. Both, are in their own way, admissions of defeat and riddled with potential problems. There is another option to consider, though. That is to hit Google where it hurts by truly opening up search. I will explain what I mean below, but first let’s go through the two obvious options.

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NBC Direct launches, everybody still misses iTunes

It's no secret that all TV studios hate writers, puppies and you, so it's really no surprise that NBC dropped iTunes distribution a couple months back -- it's all part of the master plan. Luckily, the new NBC Direct service, which is now in beta, is a tiny breath of fresh air. But by tiny, we mean minuscule. Read more

Books Category Position

This is a test to show which content shows up in which position. This is the Books category.

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