This week in tech...
- In what some are calling a "big win against illegal file-sharing," the four founders of Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to violating copyright law; and, each were sentenced to one year of jail time and a collective $3.6 million in fines.
Pirate Bay, the largest BitTorrent tracker site on the Internet, was raided by Swedish police in 2006 and it has taken three years for the Swedish courts to reach the ensuing verdict. The founders plan to appeal and it is thought that it could be several years still before a final verdict is reached against the Pirate Bay founders, who are considered the "most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright - pro-piracy - movement."
- Like Ashton vs. CNN wasn't a big enough hint that Twitter has reached it's tipping point: After crowning Ashton Kutcher the "king of Twitter," the great Oprah made her first tweet today from her show. In typical n00b fashion it was an all caps generic "hey Twitterverse" message.
The big question is, who is Oprah following on Twitter? PCMag.com guestimates: Jimmy Fallon, George Stephanopoulos, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher... along with five other mystery Twitterers. Though she follows few, Oprah has racked up over 100K in Twitter followers in her first morning of micro-blogging. Impressive.
-Oh no, Steve Jobs! The first ever Mac zombie botnet has been discovered by two researchers, as reported in Virus Bulletin. The botnet comes from a Trojan horse embedded in trials of iWork 09 found on file-sharing networks. While this discovery is sure to spark a new debate over the security merits of Mac vs. PC, it should be said that Mac users can avoid compromising their systems by practicing "safe computing" and refraining from downloading suspicious files from the Net. We wonder if this will spur a new set of commercials staring Justin Long and John Hogdman...
- Are video game geeks are starting to feel the burn of the current economic crunch? According an article in The Wall Street Journal, March saw the sale of video game titles drop by 17% and Wii sales drop by 20%. A spokesperson from Electronic Arts stated that the drop was more likely due to a tough comparison than the weakening economy, as March 2007 saw the release of three big titles that sold in the multimillions, each, in the first month they were on the shelves.
Image via Sirnadroj's Flickr