Copyright project.

I've been unwell for the most of this last week, but I've had a look around at some interesting articles to build an understanding of where to go with this project into copyright. Because it's becoming such a serious matter does this mean the content will have to be directed formally towards an audience to achieve a desired effect? Well lets find out. The video above takes on some interesting points about how copyright is becoming more and more strict.

Now the project itself is directed towards the area of file sharing, something the government has decided it will be cracking down on (funnily enough since the recession came), copyrighted material being transfered peer to peer, or file shared. I find some interesting articles on the front of one of these sites that supply material on their server.

I found an article here (http://isohunt.com/ - Sunday 18th October 2009) describing, in full, a new torrent and file sharing system, developed by this highly illegal file sharing site.

"With a short review at Torrentfreak and a mention in my interview with BBC, I'm excited to finally announcing a public preview of our spinoff project Hexagon.cc ! We have spent 2 years developing this, and I assure you this will change the way you think of a BitTorrent site and file sharing.

How is Hexagon different? The biggest conceptual change is everything is shared within groups you can join and create yourself. These groups can be public, based on interests or made by independent bands, film makers, game studios, etc. for promotional purposes. They can also be made private, so you can very easily and comfortably invite your friends to a private group for sharing your private videos and such. You can do this on Youtube and similar sites, but with BitTorrent, you can share any type of file and not only video, and there's no restriction on file format or size (as much as you can seed). In Hexagon groups, you can also share both torrents as well as flash videos so you get the best of both worlds. This blend of BT and flash video sharing is an unique first.

Another big feature of Hexagon is organization. We've seen through the rise of sharing on BitTorrent, volume of spam rises with its popularity. We've addressed this on isoHunt with comments and rating powered by you, but on Hexagon we've taken organization and spam control to a whole new level technically. Hexagon is (currently) invite only, so if a spammer gets in somehow and start inviting other spammers and creating other accounts, we can chain ban such with relative ease. Hexagon have also taken a very sophisticated approach to files organization. Besides tags now commonly found on many sites, Hexagon did away with the traditional "Videos", "Audio", etc. general categorization and instead, you can label or link your torrent posts with Semantic Web resources. For example, a firefox 3.5 torrent should associate to the Firefox resource, and under the Firefox resource you can easily browse all torrents in association for different versions of Firefox. This is a definite first for any social media site, and goes a long way in organizing the huge volume of torrents being shared.

Hexagon.cc is currently open for more users to stress test the system. We would very much appreciate your feedback as we continue to add new features and improve the site!"

From the bold points outlined, Hexagon appears to be a legal and intellectual way of sharing LEGAL files over the Internet. My worry is, through the recent court cases of its sister site and route of this article Isohunt, there may be another file sharing site on its way which has more powerful capabilities, meaning the Government will again have to update their systems to tackle - resulting in more tax consuming technology.

If you want to check out more on isohunt and there cases look on there twitter - http://twitter.com/isohunt

Also we were required to visit the site Piratebay and find out about how they have been cracked down upon since the stricter regime on filesharing.

"A trial began in Norway on Monday in which the entertainment industry wants a major service provider to block access to The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine.

Norwegian operator Telenor refused to block access to the site in June after it received a petition for a temporary injunction from a group of copyright holders, including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Telenor maintains it will preserve access to The Pirate Bay barring a court order. Under Norwegian law, a service provider is not responsible for illegal activities enabled by providing Internet access, Telenor contends. The trial, in the district court for Asker and Bærum, is expected to last five days, according to a court official.

The Pirate Bay is a search engine and tracker for torrents, which are small files that enable the download of data from multiple sources on a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. The content is not stored by The Pirate Bay but instead on individual users' PCs around the world.

After legal trouble in its home country of Sweden, The Pirate Bay's operators have now distributed the servers that run the site around the world, although ISPs are easily able to block access to the domain.

The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular BitTorrent sites -- has been a frequent target for the entertainment industry, with lawsuits filed other countries such as Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.

In Denmark, some operators block The Pirate Bay while others don't, while in Italy efforts to block the site failed. A Netherlands court recently fined three men associated with The Pirate Bay for failing to block access to the site, but the case is on appeal.

(Mikael Ricknäs in Stockholm contributed to this report)" - http://www.pcworld.com/article/173468/in_norway_group_takes_the_pirate_bay_to_court.html