YARRRRRRRRrr

In what is pretty old new by internet standards, Pirate Bay is in the process of being bought out by Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), in an attempt to make the site's dealings legal and profitable. Pirate Bay is currently the largest hub for torrents, which allow people to share quickly and easily any digital content - including illegal, unpaid for, copies - with one another.

While I can understand the current site owners' desire to sell the site (they are currently, to much surprise, facing increasing legal issues from their native government, Sweden), this deal makes almost no sense from GGF's perspective. GGF touts that they'll implement a new business model that will justify the $7.7 million they're spending on this.

I strongly believe it's going to fail.

First off, if you're talking money, already the business model is more complex than The Pirate Bay's (TBP) current one. You've got legal issues, tax issues, ownership issues, digital rights issues, terms of service, etc etc etc. Even if there is no net cost to the user, this is still inconveniences and legal hurdles that have to be contended with by GGF's and its users.

TPB's current model has none of that - you simply use their site. Once TBP goes, I predict several clone sites will sprout up, offering the same ease and simplicity that TBP did. Which do you think users would prefer?

And this does not address the money issue. While I don't know if GGF's business model will require its users to pay out of their pocket (or be subsidized, say, via advertisements), if there is any cost to its users, already GGF is already behind. People who are looking for free content are going to continue to find free content, and this move will only cause them to look elsewhere. The torrents themselves, which are distributed in nature, are going to still be available. TPB only listed the torrents' statistics.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps GGF does have some kind of mystery model that costs nothing to its users, keeps things simple, and somehow offers more value to its customers than the current model does. Perhaps they can work digital alchemy and produce something from nothing.

I'll believe it when I see it. Best of luck, Pirate Bay.

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News, sans the LOLcats

When I typically go to look for the day's daily events, I find myself on content aggregators such as Reddit or (if particularly masochistic) Digg. As I find myself pretty in tune with the communities on those sites, they serve as a great proxy to the news and goings on of things I'm interested in.

THIS turned up on the first page of a Google Image Search for "news". If it wasn't done by a 5 year old, I'm sad for humanity.
To be sure, there are a lot of great news articles on these sites that relay the important events that are happening in our world. But for every serious article about the economy, I get yet another conspiracy theory around 9/11. For every article about peace talks in the middle east, another professes their unnatural love of Ron Paul. For every death of someone who has shaped and improved our lives in some way, a LOLcat image.

What if I just want the wide-reaching benefits of an aggregation site, focused on actual news of the day written by respected journalists? Well, there's no site that perfectly does this yet. But I am glad I stumbled upon Rayogram's newspaper aggregator.

http://www.rayogram.com/news/

What it is, is a service that takes the front pages of every major newspaper from around the world and puts them on this site. Updated daily*. We're talking most of the major US newspapers, several smaller market US newspapers (Hellloooo, The Oregonian), a few British newspapers, and some Middle East newspapers, all at a glance.

You won't get to read the articles themselves - the font is too small - but you get to see what's pressing in the day's events. Perfect to then take to my regular news haunts (Reddit, Digg) and see if I can pick out articles explaining the situations further.

Equally interesting is to see what's important to whom. The main headline for today's Guardian, for example, is about the possible dissolving of Parliament. Chicago? They're more concerned about any sleeping issues you might have. The WSJ says the world's markets are getting back into the trading game, while Detroit's paper felt the urge to assault me with color.

Something for everyone! Go check it out, it's interesting, at very least.

*DISCLAIMER: When it's actually working. Some days have been a little dodgy, but as of the writing of this post, the day's news are accurately updated.

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