Nobody is ever going to admit to downloading a Bittorrent file publicly, but most people are aware of the Pirate Bay - a tracker that allows people to download music, games, software and more for free.

Since it was first put online its been pretty upfront about what it’s been doing, treating letters from the companies its been pirating with sometimes humorous disrespect, together with an portraying themselves as having an almost revolutionary attitude.

But the jailing of the Pirate bay founders as well as their failed appeal looks to have finally crushed their battle against the big companies, as it was revealed today that the Pirate Bay was sold to a private company.

Most people will immediately think of Napster. Napster had similar battles over copyright and finally backed down to the record companies, and now it is a paid-for service.

Pirate Bay can’t be the same as it was with private ownership, which has already said that content providers and copyright owners will “receive compensation.”

To me it just sounds like the Pirate Bay founders have given up the ghost with their likely imprisonment and are trying to make as much money as possible before it happens.

It’s disappointing because the founders made big sounds about not making a profit and being all about “sticking it to the man”.

Unless they invest the money back into something similar to the Pirate Bay or pro-piracy politics I’d call it taking the money and running - although admittedly, its likely they will have a few legal fees needing paying off!

Thing is though, in the files sharing scheme of things, this will make no difference. There is a multitude of torrent sites such as Torrent Reactor and MiniNova which are capable to rising up to take this place.

They won’t have the in your face attitude of the Pirate Bay owners, but they will do exactly the same thing and probably less likely to be caught.

So when you think about it, this whole Pirate Bay copyright case was a big waste of time. The organisations bringing the case may have won the battle, but the war is still being fought - and unless they find a way to embrace people getting content for free - they will lose.

Before I started working as a journalist, all I knew about Apple was that I liked its stuff. They had persuaded me to spend hundreds of pounds on iPods and Macbooks, and the reason why was its equipment was quality - it still is.

Though not much has changed with the Apple 3G S - it’s an object of desire and is one of the best smartphones out there.  Then I became a tech journo, and my opinion has hardened to the company even though they are still coming out with some quality products. Why?

It’s because of its secrecy. It’s got to the point where they will say nothing unless its a press release or the device launch. The Apple Press hotline? Useless. The company might as well write a disclaimer saying “We will never say anything ever, because you smell.”

In terms of my beat my biggest issue with the ‘cult of secrecy’ is in the fact that with computer security - secrecy will probably be a very bad thing and something they won’t be able to  continue to do in the future.

As the Mac becomes more popular and increases its market share, the sooner or later they’re going to have to work with the security vendors as well as the public to make transparent what the actual threats are on a Mac device.

At the moment, nobody knows, because Apple never ever says anything about it.

But generally, the ‘cult of Apple’ works. Just seeing the look of joy when an Apple user gets a device like the new iPhone shows it does. The expectation and the hype is a proven winner.

Thing is, that’s the Apple way. It’s all about the products, and the constant expectation for new ones makes people overlook the fact they are paying more money for products which are generally less powerful.

Shame that they can’t be a little bit more transparent though. The fuss over Steve Jobs and his liver transplant at some point reached parodic levels as Apple people feared saying anything about it. A clear press statement would have probably have made the shareholders a little bit happier anyway.

It was getting late and I was surfing around the web on my Macbook as I usually do, and suddenly i picked up a few tweets that concerned Michael Jackson…

It was probably the first time I’ve really been involved in using social networking to see up a news story progress to such a degree. I’ve written before on the power of social networking when it came to events in Iran, I’ve used Tweetdeck to pick on the odd news story, and I’m in charge of looking after our Twitter feed.

But yesterday was different. It was TMZ.com that first picked up on Michael’s death at 5.20pm, and it took a while for the internet to fully comprehend and confirm that he did indeed die.

Of course it was Twitter that had the buzz as people tried to figure out what was going on from various news tweeters,and Twitter users used each other to find out what was actually going on.

As confirmation and more info came out then Facebook started to get buzzy as people I knew suddenly came out with real-time status updates about how they felt about what was going on and commented one each other’s statuses.. Exactly what Facebook was looking for when it first implemented real-time.

Then it was the news websites like Guardian and BBC, which you couldn’t help notice seemed very behind, as of course it’s easier to come out with a one-line statement than to confirm and write copy, especially that late at night.

Being the security hound for IT PRO I also noticed that the security tweeters were also coming out with their usual ‘beware of Michael Jackson spam’ - before they actually came out with confirmation of his death!

I’m not naming names and I’m not your biggest MJ fan, but I thought that was a little low. Maybe wait a bit longer to push your anti-spam agenda? In my head it seemed they were doing exactly the same thing - trying to promote themselves on the back on somebody’s death.

Anyway personal feeling? I felt sadder when Heath Ledger died because he was young and it was like potential was snuffed out. Michael Jackson had his time and we will always have his legacy. Of course, any death is tragic.

I wasn’t there to see the first statements of the new Cyber Security minister Lord West, but according to reports he admitted that the government has hired a team of former “naughty boy hackers” for its new Cyber Security Operations Centre.

The BBC quotes him as saying: “You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff… If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they really enjoy stopping other naughty boys.”

OK -  first up these are fine words for a Cyber Security Minister. Naughty boys? - I’ve only been writing on security for the last year and a half, but I already realise that many of the criminals he’s talking about aren’t ‘naughty boys’ - they are hardened criminals fully intent on making as much profit as possible.

I get the feeling he’s one of those people who don’t think that cyber criminals are ‘real’ criminals because they play on the computer. And this is somebody the government has employed to oversee its cyber security. Great.

And he’s employed hackers with criminal records? This is all well and good in a movie, but as security expert Rik Ferguson notes, the government has actually hired a team of people who have committed criminal acts and given them jobs.

He also makes the point that if you’re going to hire hackers to stop hackers, then why employ the naughty crap ones who managed top get caught? - or ’script-kiddies’ as Ferguson puts it -  the laughing stock. Yep, Lord West - good choice!

Even if this is just misquoting or taken out of context, it’s a little worrying that the Cyber Security Minister himself seems to be so inept at understanding the real problems of IT security.  Last week I wrote a feature on what the basic qualifications a Cyber Security Minister might actually need - I don’t think Lord West ticks any of the boxes.

Maybe it was the case that none of the ministers around Gordon Brown had the technological expertise or IT training for this role. In this case they really should have simply found one. I mentioned John Suffolk, government chief information officer, as somebody who had the technology knowledge for the role.

It might be the case that Neil Thompson, the prospective new director for the Office of Cyber Security, might be the person who really will shape the cyber security of Britain. As security expert Graham Cluley said in my feature, maybe its good to have an unknown person in the role who will knock heads together and do what’s needed.

But hopefully he won’t be listening to the ‘Cyber Security Minister’ Lord West. He may be all well and good when it comes to knowledge of actual physical warfare - but cyber war is a completely different beast. Hope you know what you’re doing Gordon.

The vast majority of Twitter’s growth - 93 per cent of it -  occurred this year, according to research from Hitwise.

UK Twitter traffic has increased 22-fold over the last year, and in May Twitter was ranked as the 38th most visited websites, and fifth most visited social network.

In May 2008, Twitter was the 969th most visited website and 84th most visited social network - quite a bit of growth then!

Robin Goad, director of research at Hitwise, said: “Media coverage of the site has escalated significantly this year and high profile celebrity endorsements, by everyone from Stephen Fry to Ashton Kutcher - has occurred during 2009.”

He also said that these figures could be the tip of the iceberg - it doesn’t have data on people accessing Twitter accounts through mobile phones and third party applications.

Hitwise also said that Twitter is becoming a key source of traffic for websites, but media ones rather than online retailers. Over half is sent to content-driven online media sites, but only 9.5 per cent is sent to transactional websites.

Goad said: “Given that Twitter has yet to settle on a business model that will take advantage of its huge, loyal user base, this is an issue that needs to be addressed by those running the company if they are to make the service a financial as well as a popular success.”

Find some time to follow the IT PRO Twitter feed - Just past the 6,500 follower market.

I’ve already written on the joys of Spotify, and its been going from strength to strength recently - hitting a million users - although its still has its troubles.

However, news and features editor Nicole Kobie asked the question on how Spotify was going to make money, and it seems to have hit upon what I think is a pretty intelligent idea.

According to a report in the Telegraph, it intends to give a near CD quality sound upgrade for users who are willing to pay for its premium service.

This seems like a good move. It doesn’t leave existing users of Spotify listening to it for free short-changed, but it did provide an avenue for it to make some money out of a service that I think some people would actually sign up for - which might mean a bigger and better catalogue.

It also came to my attention that Top 40 bosses were considering offering to incorporate songs from music streaming sites, which also made sense. The days of free content on the internet may now be with us.

For instance - I haven’t bought a CD or bothered to download music for ages now, simply because wherever I am - be that work or home - I can stream all the music I need. And although it may not be of CD quality - its fine for my purposes.

It’s maybe funny and sad that one of the sites that popularised music streaming from band websites in MySpace, is completely going down the other direction as it loses traffic as well as workforce.

However as I said in March - there are ten very good reasons why Rupert Murdoch’s little baby is going down the drain.

In April I wrote a news story based on a talk by data encryption company PGP Inc founder Phil Zimmermann at Infosecurity, which revealed his feelings about Britain heading towards becoming a surveillance state.

But compared to countries like Iran and China, I guess we’re lucky. Both have been known to monitor citizens for years. Shockingly though, tech countries in Europe don’t look like they have any qualms in providing this surveillance technology to countries that are willing to use it in this way.

The Wall Street Journal and the BBC  both reported on how the Nokia Siemens Networks (which has just bought some wireless tech from poor old Nortel) provided sophisticated technology for Iran to examine the content of online communications.

It’s not just for blocking traffic - the technology is supposed to see what information is passed back and forth. A Nokia Siemens spokesman is quoted as saying: ” Western governments, including the UK, don’t allow you to build networks without this functionality.”

It’s kind of scary. But would you expect anything less? Tech companies sell to the public as well as private sector - and very often governments around the world want to keep track of their citizens.

However, at least there are still ways to be anonymous and organise demonstrations without being tracked  - as the events in Iran and the use of Twitter shows.

Even Google has to bow down to government power. Google has very quickly complied to a direct command by China to remove pornography from all its sites, even though all it is doing is linking to the content rather than having anything involved in distributing it.

But China is a big market, and there’s a lot of profit to be made. This need to make money can also be seen with the fact that the Chinese government can get away with shipping surveillance software with all of its PCs.

It’s the price we have to pay for better technology. The networking tech that makes communication on devices like mobiles so easy and useful can also be used in ways which we don’t necessarily want. Companies are there to make money - they are not our moral guardians.

As a citizen I guess the only power we have is that of the vote - and is why the Iranians are so furious that the elections over there weren’t as fair as they should be. But in the UK we still have that vote - and hopefully we can use it properly.

At the ENISA / Reuters event I attended this morning, there was a very interesting talk with BT chief security technology officer Bruce Schneier and International Security Forum (ISF) president Howard Schmidt that surprisingly switched from business security and into the presidential events in Iran that have been taking place.

Schneier said that the events were very interesting when it came to IT and IT security because it was the “coming of age” for citizen journalists.

The real journalists were under house arrest and not able to report, and the information that was coming out was from people - mostly through Twitter, as the Iran government forgot about it when trying to block things for the election.

Schneier said: “We’re seeing stories and images coming out that are unable to be blocked by the government, and the only thing they can do at this point is to ‘take down’ the internet. It’s possible and governments have done that.”

“Hackers around the world are helping,” he added. “If you have a Twitter account we’re all being asked to change our location to Iran and change our timezone, because that makes it harder for the police to find the real twitterers.”

Schneier also said that people around the world were setting up proxy servers to allow Iranian information to come out, and that there was even a proposal to use the Opera browser and turn it into a massive anonymous network to help the Iranian citizen journalists.

He continued: “The anonymity tools that many Western governments are trying to get rid of are saving lives in Iran. It is the first time that people in other countries don’t just protest in their own capitals - they actually do something.”

Schneier said it was very interesting to see computer security, networks and hacking used in this way.

Howard Schmidt argued the point further by highlighting the fact that mobile devices were being used to get the word out. He said that this anonymity allowed people to use the internet as a real vehicle to create change.

Schneier highlighted the Cyberwar Guide for Iran Elections guide for beginners as a useful starting point, if you wanted to get involved, and mentioned the fact that people were getting involved in denial of service attacks against the Iranian government.

Schneier said: “This is interesting. A lot of what people think as cyber war is kids playing politics - you see this in Pakistan, the Arab states, China. They are not just fooling around - this is serious stuff. We can actually have international politics being affected by these actions.

“I think this is a first. I think this shows the power of social media in a way nothing ever has before,” he adds.

Author Timothy Garton Ash also makes similar points in an article written for the Guardian.

Being a business IT journalist I don’t normally get tech games releases - it would be like throwing paper into a waste bin.

However I recently got a call from a PR who was trying to sell me an online version of Scrabble - I was a touch confused by this - surely she must have seen what IT PRO is -  primarily focused on business IT right?

So I told her to look at the site again, but then she mentioned that I had written on Scrabble before. More confusion. Then suddenly a lightbulb switched on -  I had written on Scrabble - basically a blog on a funny story where the Nintendo DS version of Scrabble managed to beat an eight year old with the word f***ers.

So now I’m writing on it. Yeah, the games cool enough and you can play it with one player, which is good if you’re in the office and you fancy a quick ten minutes of fun (see what I did there? managed to get the business angle in).

It also put me in mind to remember the whole Scrabulous saga, when Scrabble got into a battle with two Facebook app makers for ripping them off with a game which was basically Scrabble.

I remember being quite angry with Mattel and Hasbro, the owners of Scrabble, for their heavy-handed approach. But looking back I realise they had a point - they were getting ripped off and other people were making money out of their copyright.

However it seems to have worked out now. Scrabble has a working Facebook app of its very own and the game seems to be as popular as ever, with console, computer and online versions out for people to enjoy.

But in the end a board game like Scrabble is all about the interaction, the anger and the swearing - as Tim and Daisy from Spaced will tell you.

(I reckon Shazam is a word. Pantene ‘ProV’ definitely not).

If you’ve followed IT PRO for any length of time, you’ll probably know that Twitter has been suffering security wise all year.

The latest attack that became public on the weekend was first believed to be a cross-scripting worm, similar to the worm that a 17-year old managed to unleash on the Easter weekend.

However on closer inspection this isn’t all there is to it, according a post on Kapsersky’s Viruslist blog.

When clicking the link to tweets reading ‘best video’, a connection is quietly made to another server resulting in a malicious PDF being downloaded, which contains several exploits.

However, instead of a worm being downloaded with a successful exploit, a fake program will be downloaded, advertising fake anti-virus software.

The researcher couldn’t find any worm-like component, although the alert made it look like there was worm activity.

An explanation for this could simply be that the criminals behind the attack were using the stolen credentials of accounts which had been phished a week ago.

The blog said : “The attack is very significant. It would seem that at least one criminal group is now exploring the distribution of for-profit on Twitter.

“If the trends we’ve seen on other social platforms are any indicator for Twitter then we can only expect an increase in attacks.”

Twitter seems to be regularly hit with some sort of security scare, ever since January when a teenage hacker managed to take over high-profile accounts, while even celebrity twitterer Stephen Fry fell victim to a phishing attack.

We’ve also seen how a security researcher has said that Twitter’s API, used to make third party applications, is inherently flawed.

IT PRO has constantly tried to get in touch with Twitter simply to have some kind of statement, but has so far just come across a brick wall.

So what’s Biz and co gonna do? You can’t make money on something which is inherently unsafe (or can you?).