The Pirate Bay Returns – Buccaneers or John Paul Jones?

In the rapidly changing world, our information based societies are now faced with questions that demand greater public debate to set the standards as pertains to this developing internet medium and our actions and interactions thru it.

From a widely dug post on Torrent Freak The Pirate Bay Returns With Guns Blazing, I learned that the notorious Pirate Bay was back online after Swedish authorities pulled their plugged Monday August 24th.

Unlike Google or Wikipedia who have positioned themselves as the guardians of information on the interent, The Pirate Bay takes a bold and unique approach to standing their ground in their defense.

The Pirate Bay is, was, now again “is” theworld’s largest BitTorrent tracking service.

Pro-Privacy or Pro-Piracy

Their story underlies the argument of whether file sharing is a legal activity protected by privacy laws or is it a matter of blatant piracy of other’s copyrighted material.

A highly charged and largely followed story, the case for and against The Pirate Bay is not yet over.

Although some internet voices call for TPB to go quietly into that good night, others see this as a battleground over the freedom of expresson and information.

In The Lobby, a blog about European affairs, they write,

“Ironically however, much of the technology that is being hailed as tools of freedom of expression and for allowing cheap global access to culture (for example the use of Twitter in Iran and Google books etc) is under attack by regulators. Wired magazine reports that President Obama’s top anti-trust official is gunning for Google, something The Lobby thought the EU could do in the future, Twitter is attracting attention from the US Federal Trade Commission, and over here in Europe we’ve already seen a lot of debate being generated over the pros and cons of the EU Telecoms Package.“

Freedom of expression, of cultural and information exchange?

These questions demand greater public debate as we set the standards that pertain to this developing medium and our actions and interactions thru it.

Follow The Pirate Bay story on Google News here.
Read my previous post on The Priate Bay here and here.

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Amos White is an Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 or his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.

Back from the Dead: Tr.im Resuscitates Business – Rises from Ashes

URL shortening service tr.im restarts operations after closing the company for 48 hours.

Okay, I already post the death notice of the URL shortening service tr.im just two days before this post.

So I get a tweet from @_snarl telling me that Tr.im is back from the still hot ashes of the declared dead internet company heap to “Resurrect” its url shortening service “due to popular demand.”

Tr.im still claims, maybe justiffiably so, that twitter is practicing what looks like unfair url service switching in renaming url shortening services like tr.im with bit.ly.

Might be a fair gripe, though talk about a Cinderella story! (<–Sorry, had to.)

Maybe now tr.im can figure out a sustainable business model in asking its user base what they would be willing to pay for to support the company’s continued growth?

Read Tr.im’s explanation on its revival here.

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Amos White is an Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 or his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.

Beware: Facebook to Ban Users Who Profit Off Status Updates

Realtors and businesses beware. All Girl Scout’s be forewarned.

Facebook’s new policy change prohibits users from profiting off their status updates.

No joke.

So, who owns my words in my status updates? Do I own the right to solicit, promote, or to profit from my status to generate personal income?

According to Facebook,  No. And the repecussions are banishment from access to Facebook.

User Protection or Overreaction

So is Facebook protecting the user or is there a fear a loss of in not monetizing a potential revenue stream (my status update channel) here?

In a recent post, blogger Nick O’Neil’s says, “it’s pretty obvious what Facebook is trying to prevent: companies from launching get rich quick services through your Facebook profile and to prevent people like Jeremy Schoemaker from abusing the system .”

Yes, some spammers can ruin a user’s network reputation if they hijacked their status update. But ask yourself, is Facebook’s policy a bit draconian in “overprotecting” users from pay-per-tweet companies?

Online “Rights of Ownership” Undefined

What is not defined is whether users own the right to promote their’s or another’s business or commercial  product or service through their status update and receive commercial gain from that promotion.

Perhaps Facebook and other social network utilities and services should devise policies to enable users to responsibly “own” their own status update content and to do what they please with it.

The social experiment of the Internet’s Web 2.0 phase is a mediate collaboration between corporate online utilities and services and users’ social participation and content generation with and within them. The “terms of service” and privacy statements raise many questions that need to be discussed and decided upon: content ownership, user participation rights, user generated content, just to name a few.

Whose Intellectual Property?

Who “owns” the product of our ideas and content as generated within, from and across these online services on this public utility: the Internet? Do I own my pictures, my videos, my words as comments and definitely as status updates? Do I have a right to solicit my network thru my status to come to patronize my company or to buy my friend’s book or to support?

Perhaps its time to draft the Netizen’s Bill of Rights.

What do you think?

Leave a Comment with Facebook here.  Or read Facebook’s full policy here.

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Amos White is an Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 or his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.

TR.IM Discontinues URL Shortening Service – Closes

URL shortening service tr.im to cease operations.

Tr.im, the URL shortening service, announced that it was closing shop and discontinuing service. Their website posted a brief announcement about the immediate discontinuation.

Tr.im cites a failure to competitively monetize URL shortening compounded with a lack of user desire to pay for the service, and bit.ly dominance in the twittersphere as reason for ceasing operations.

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URL Shortening Services – Domain Redirects – URL Forwarding
According to Wikipedia, URL redirection, shortening or forwarding are techniques for “making a web page available under many URLs.” URL Shortening enables a web page to be available under a very short URL in addition to the original address.

URL Shortening services enable web users and web services to reduce a long url website address down to a very short one. This enables links to be quickly and easily shared, distributed and integrated to social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and more.

Other Shortening Services
If you were a user or tr.im and want to find a new service, or just want to try a URL shortener service for your website, blog or social sharing, explore these below:

http://Adjix.com Shortens and tweets URLs, tracks granular user detail, optional embedded ads for revenue generation.
http://awe.sm Shortens URLs, sharing.
http://bit.ly Shortens, shares and tracks links with real-time traffic data.
http://buzzup.com User submission, publishing and ranking portal.
http://chilp.it Shortens URLs, analytics.
http://cli.gs Shortens URLs,  analytics, monitoring, geotargeting.
http://Digg.com User submitted content link rating service; sharing.
http://dot.tk Shortens URLs, customized free domains, previews links.
http://idek.net Shortens, track clicks, tweets, url migration.
http://kl.am Shortens URLs, statistics, targeted internet marketing campaigns.
http://krz.ch Swiss-German language website: Shortens for Facebook /Twitter.
http://Migre.me Brazillian Portuguese language URL shortening service.
http://POPrl.com Aggregates the latest “web buzz.”
http://SnipURL.com Shortens URLs with personalized naming.
http://short.ie URL link shortening community, account history and recommendation engine.
http://shortna.me Shortens URLs, tracking, without account registration.
http://tinyURL.com Shortens and redirects URLs.
http://trim.li/nk Url shortener service; monitors with statistics.
http://Tweetburner.com Shortens and tracks Twitter and Friendfeed URLs.
http://urlb.org Shortens URLs, analytics, link history, preview and discussion.
http://urlShort.com Shortens URLs.

Which URL shortening services best serve your needs?
Share your comments below on which services you use and why. What are the benefits for you?

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Amos White is an Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42 or his blog http://amoswhite3.wordpress.com.

MidWest Corps “Get Closer” with Social Media

The St. Louis Business Journal reports major corporate brands investing in social media to respond to consumer need for connectivity through conversation and to enrich marketing effectiveness.

Read the full post here.