LIVEdigitally

The war on internet piracy is about as dramatic as America’s ‘War On Drugs’. P2p filesharing is nothing new, but there’s constantly new spins to this concept. BitTorrent made a huge splash in the downloading pool for pirates. Produced as a “free speech tool” BitTorrent would rely on ‘trackers’. Web sites would host these trackers which were simply small files needed to download any specific file. These sites that host thousands of trackers are sought out and shut down by anti-pirate groups.

Evolve or Dissolve is a cliché that I rip off now and then, and BitTorrent has done the evolution this time around. The beta-version of BitTorrent does not rely on the need for trackers anymore. This tracker elimination is a huge wave that rocks the boat of the anti-pirates.

I can’t say I’m for or against either of the sides on this coin. I feel that this situation is similar to when your brother and sister start fighting, you just sit back, lay low, and see who wins.

Yesterday I went to see the new Will Farrell movie, ‘Kicking and Screaming’. While walking to the theatre from the ticket booth I noticed a line of people sitting on the floor playing card games, PSP, and even children with plastic light sabers hopping about. “Star Wars is out, that’s right!” I thought to myself, and wondered why I hadn’t seen something on the internet about a bootleg download running around.

Today I visited TechDirt and my vision came true. Star Wars Episode III is on the net and shiver me timbers there’s people pirating it as we speak. No need for alarm, I’m certain that anyone who downloads the movie has either already seen it, plans to buy the DVD, and has invested thousands of dollars in Star Wars paraphernalia already.

I used to sit in lectures and play ‘snake’ on my Nokia 3390 phone. I could pass a few boring minutes of anthropology with my trusty Nokia game. I could have brought in my old Nintento Gameboy for a round of Tetris, but the fact of carrying a game only addition to my already full pockets was too far of a stretch for me. Today I don’t find myself buying a PSP or Nintendo DS simply because I’d need a purse to carry everything that I have. I do carry a mobile phone around with me everywhere, and according to some, that’s a game console in itself.

“People have a gaming machine in their hand whether they want a gaming machine or not,” says Greg Ballard, CEO of Sorrent, a mobile gaming developer and publisher.

I can see downloading games to your phone mimicking today’s downloading of ringtones, what do you think?