Anyone who regularly downloads over peer to peer networks or torrent sites will have heard of The Pirate Bay. But have you heard of The Pirate City?

The Pirate Bay is currently one of the largest torrent tracking sites in the world, with 3 million registered members and over 15 million unique downloaders. I wish the MPAA and RIAA good luck in tracking all of them down.

From Torrents To Streaming?

At the moment, The Pirate Bay only deals in torrents, although the range of content varies from movies, television shows, music files, games and applications, some of which are obviously copyrighted and illegally shared.

However, there was speculation today that The Pirate Bay could be about to launch its own video streaming site, which would basically be YouTube without the DMCA takedown notices.

The Internet is a truly global phenomenon, with every single country in the world being connected to the Web. But, due to archaic licensing systems, video isn’t yet a truly global player.

As anyone outside of Great Britain who has tried to use the BBC iPlayer will know, the service is limited to those resident in the UK. This is partly due to the license fee paid by UK citizens, but more to do with content licensing issues.

Outside Of The US

The problem is even worse for those of us who live outside of the US, with TV and video services such as Hulu, NBC Direct, and The Daily Show archives all blocked to those of us not fortunate enough to be born in the States.

While I understand the issues at stake here, with licensing deals with individual countries making it financially worthwhile for the companies to keep these limitations in place, is it now time for a complete overhauling of the system?

Joost Mark II has arrived. But will the additions of a browser based video viewer and social networking features help the company bounce back from a period of under performing?

The end of the Joost desktop client was rumoured a couple of weeks ago, but it’s now become a reality, with company CEO Mike Volpi outlining the new Joost in an official blog post.

Joost Mark II

So what’s changed? The first and most obvious difference with Joost Mark II is the service now being browser based rather than needing a desktop client to be installed.

For the moment, there is still a download required, but it’s only a plug-in enabling the use of P2P file transferring: designed to reduce bandwidth costs while enabling high quality video.

The Internet is now becoming a place where images and video are as important as text content. So IMDb’s attempt to go Web 2.0 is much overdue but exciting nonetheless.

In a move that should really have been made a long time ago, long-time Internet must-bookmark website IMDb (Internet Movie Database) is now offering video to its legions of users.

IMDb – Now In Web 2.0

IMDb has been in existence since 1990, before most of us were even using the Web, but while traffic has been great, the site has been stuck in some kind of Web 1.0 world of static graphics and text-only pages.

But no longer. The site, which offers information on every film ever made, and every actor who has ever been in a film, now offers full television episodes, full movies, and film trailers… all for free.

Should a site be held accountable for merely linking to pirated material? IsoHunt thinks not, and is taking its case to the courtroom.

IsoHunt does not want to go the way of Demonoid.

Copyright Issues

The issue of copyright is a hot one at the moment, with sites as diverse as YouTube and The Pirate Bay both having to deal with the subject on a daily basis. The two sites may be very different, but are facing similar gray areas in the law.

The main difference between those two sites is that one will immediately comply with a takedown notice over an alleged copyright claim while the other doesn’t care.

Alternative Response

This compliance with media companies wishes hasn’t prevented YouTube from being sued however, with the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit still yet to be resolved. While this case drags on in the U.S, northwards in Canada a ‘potential infringer’ is taking a more aggressive stance.

Networking and engineering degrees have always been a good bet when it comes to ensuring a profitable career after college, but the shift to Web television could mean they’re more valuable than ever.

An Evolving Media

The media business as a whole is changing. Music is going digital, movies are available on more and more diverse formats, and television is now being streamed online more than ever.

The Internet is allowing all of these new forms of entertainment media to really excel. But to make content delivery via the Web possible, there needs to be engineers and technicians behind the scenes pulling the strings.

Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade Of Comedy has finally arrived, and is already proving to be a massive hit. Could this lead to more Web series being commissioned?

Seth MacFarlane is the man behind Family Guy and his new comedy channel has become the most popular on YouTube for this week exceeding 3 million video views.

Google & MacFarlane Team Up

The Cavalcade was announced back in June as a tie up between MacFarlane and Google, which is distributing the original series around the Internet using its Content Network, which in turn is part of Google AdSense.

This seems to be a perfect union for all concerned, as it gives Google original content with which to sell advertising alongside, MacFarlane guaranteed revenue from the time and effort taken in creating the content, and fans of Family Guy some new comedy shorts to watch on the Web.

Burger King Sponsorship

The series started on September 10th, with two new shorts available to watch on SethComedy.com and Burger King’s YouTube channel: Burger King are sponsoring the first ten episodes of the Cavalcade.

It’s already proving to be a massive hit, taking the number one spot on YouTube. MacFarlane’s channel has managed more than 300,000 views in the couple of days since launch. It has also already managed to secure over 51,000 subscribers.