The Digital Economy Act passed in the UK, as you know, and it’s pretty terrible. One of the more spicy sections of the law involved peer-to-peer use, and how it basically makes ISPs responsible for what their customers download. So if HBO finds that you’ve been download “The Pacific,” (really good show, by the way, much to my surprise) it can contact your ISP, who’s then responsible for telling you to knock if off. If not, you face a truly horrible punishment: you’re sent to Stoke! (That’s a joke, people!)

Even though we’re a hot eight months away before the ISPs have to be ready, they’re all getting ready right now.

The situation will work like this:

1. You download “The Pacific”
2. HBO finds out, gets mad, contacts your ISP
3. Your ISP tells you to knock if off
4. You refuse
5. HBO contacts your ISP again
6. Your ISP tells you again to knock it off, if not it can throttle your connection or disconnect your line

That’s the gist of it.

So there’s that, and the impending death of Usenet, and your days of downloading TV shows and movies illegally are coming to an end.

Flickr’d

To answer our own poll: no, I will not be buying an iPad. It’s not that I’m “anti-iPad,” which sounds pretty silly (“look, I’m against a piece of plastic~!”), it’s simply that I have no need for it. Why would I buy something that I don’t need? That makes no sense!

The fact of the matter is, I already have a perfectly functional desktop PC, laptop, and phone—where does the iPad fit in my wold? My desktop, which I built for myself at Christmastime so I could play World of Warcraft at 900 frames per second, is my main computer, and by “main computer” I mean something that’s on 12+ hours per day. I use it to write all of my wonderful CrunchGear posts, play games, and cruise around Wikipedia all day long.

I have an old MacBook that I’ll whip out when I’m on-location somewhere, and I’m not about to switch, you know, functionality for a device that’s fairly limited. Will the iPad run Photoshop and Premiere Pro at the same time? Will I be able to download whatever from Usenet in the background while managing my auctions in WoW? I don’t think so.

The iPad simply isn’t for me.

But maybe it’s for you? If so, great! Maybe you merely want something to browse the Web while sitting on the couch? Great. Maybe you want a fancy e-book reader? More power to you, but that’s not me. (The lastest two books I started reading, The History of White People and Max Gallo’s Napoleon series, aren’t available for Kindle or nook, so I assume they won’t be available for the iBooks store. E-book readers tend to work best when the books you want to read are available for it.)

Or you can try to sell it to me—why should I need and iPad? I’m not the type to want the latest thingamajig simply because it’s shiny and new—I’m cool with what I have right now, thank you very much!

Again, I’m not “anti-iPad,” I just have no need for it, so I won’t be buying it.

That’s not a crime, right?

Thus begins the countdown to the Death of Usenet. It’s capitalized because it’s important. The High Court in the UK has ruled against famous Usenet index site Newzbin, saying that the site can be held liable for the copyright infringement of its users. Hear that? That’s the sound of the world’s Usenet users screaming “OH DEAR GOD NO!” You knew this day was coming.

For the unfamiliar, Newzbin and sites like it store NZB files, small text files that point the location of actual files. These sites are easily searchable, so you can look for “the wire s01″ and all of The Wire’s first season episodes would pop up. You can sorta think of NZB files as torrent files: there’s nothing in the NZB file itself other than directions of where to get actual files.

Doesn’t matter, says the High Court, that constitutes copyright infringement.

No details of the court’s ruling have been publicly released just yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Newzbin will be forced to shut down till it no longer offers offending files. Since that’s pretty much the raison d’être of sites like Newzbin…

Incidentally, when I spoke to a lawyer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation at CES last January, he said Usenet as we know (knew?) it had two years to go before lawsuits would kill it. This Newzbin ruling looks to be step one in that slow death.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Photo

By Binverse Staff

[ The following article is a paid advertisement, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of OhGizmo.com or its staff. Ed. ]

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Verizon has a bunch of new FIOS packages that may interest you. The top of the pile is the Ultimate package, which gives you “90 or more” HD channels, plus an Internet connection of 35/35, which is 35 mbps download, 35 mbps upload. The upload speed is impressive, but I still have triple the download speed. (I seriously run at 11 MB/s when downloading from Usenet. It’s almost unnecessary how fast it is.) This top package is $149 per month.

There’s two other new packages, modestly titled Extreme and Prime. Prime, the cheapest, runs at $109 per month, and grants access to 40 or more HD channels plus a 15/15 mbps Internet connection. Extreme? That’s $124, with 65 or more HD channels, with a 25/25 Internet connection.

And while I have no problem with the Internet speeds, especially if FIOS is the only game in town, the thing about the HD channels is, there’s nothing on TV worth watching. The initial HD buzz dies pretty quickly, which means you can only watch nature documentaries so many times before you’re like, “OK, I get it.” That’s for the average person, of course—maybe you’re a big nature mark?

I mean, outside of live sports, what else in TV is worth sitting through? Maybe Top Gear, and only because it’s shot so well (and the hosts are pretty cool).

Sorry for beating the Newsdemon horse, but I just noticed they had a few deals for bloggers, students, and other animals. Usenet is really nice.

Bloggers get free months when someone buys a sub through them (we don’t partake in the deal) and students can get 25% off with a .EDU account. While we don’t condone the use of Usenet, it’s nice to know it’s there, like a nice old sweater.