Dardoz gets stuck in

Last week I reported how a man called Bardia Persa had made quite the little business investment. Through a broker he had bought a treasure trove of personal belongings formerly own by hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton. I’m sure at the time, he thought that over a year or two he would easily make the €10 million he spent to aquire them.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bardia Persa, a federal court has now slapped a temporary injunction on his website, parisexposed.com. If only Persa had have been a little more selective about which of her items he put online for public viewing he may not be facing the loss of his €10 million investment. Lets face it, no judge was ever going to allow medical records and credit card details to remain online.
(more…)

I was sitting there listening to the Spin 103.8fm news headlines on the way to work this morning thinking to myself, “God!! I miss Colm Hayes and JimJim” when suddenly….BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!

Just 1 day after I blogged about the potential of the Fon Movimiento product, Dublin City Council have announced they are going to give free Wifi access for the whole of Dublin city. They haven’t as yet decided on a provider, but the project is rumoured to be costing them in the region of €12 to 20 million.

Fon Movimiento have released an exciting new poduct which will allow their members to share their broadband with each other. Eventually, they hope this will mean broadband access no matter where you are. All you have to do is buy their modem for about $29.95 and that’s it.

About time someone did this. If it catches on, wouldn’t driving around all to meetings be so much less boring.
(more…)

Speaking from the World Economic Forum, Chad Hurley, CEO of Youtube has revealed that the company plans to financially benefit users who produce and upload their own content. They are certainly not the first to do this, Revver and Brightcove have long offered a revenue-share to content creators, but with their huge user base, they will certainly be the largest and most likely financially viable option for video producers.

It could spell the end for the likes of Revver and Brightcove who were using revenue-sharing as their main marketing ploy to pull users away from Youtube.

If Paris Hilton is your thing, then lucky for you she has this habit of making sex videos and leaving them lying around for people to pick up and broadcast all over the net.

This time, Paris left some belongings behind at a Los Angeles based story facility. Upon leaving the facility, she apparently refused to pay the €208 bill which meant her “private belongings” were sold to an unidentified buyer. Now they are in the hands of Bardia Persa - the brains behind ParisExposed.com.
(more…)

[ratings]
A new senate bill in bill in the US will force any political blogger to register and report quarterly toCongress in a similar fashion to Street Lobbyists. Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. This is definitely a first, all critics of the US government will have to register and go before Congress to explain themselves.

They are sneaking this law in under the guise of any blogger who makes money from politics needs to register. Their interpretation in this case is that bloggers who have a readership of over 500 are making money from it. This isn’t always the case of course, and blogs, considering their readership are usualy quite web savvy, do not benefit much from advertising.
(more…)

[ratings]
Sixteen-year-old Matthew Bandy was a normal 16 year old, living in a small suburban town in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. At least that was until a couple of years ago loud knocking spelled the start of a titanic struggle against the charges laid against him. Charges which could lead to 90 years imprisonment.

The knocking was the police. Matthew Bandy was charged with possession of 9 exlicit pictures of a minor and placed under house arrest until his trial. He was fitted with an electronic tag around his ankle, not allowed to go anywhere where there may be children, and not allowed to even attend his local church without getting written consent from his parish priest.
(more…)

[ratings]
The world’s leadin file-sharing/piracy website The Pirate Bay plans to buy their own nation with the intention of circumventing international copyright laws. They plan to buy Sealand, a 550 metre square former British naval platform in the North sea which was designated as a micronation.

If they succeed in buying Sealand, they will be untouchable to the many anti-piracy Bureaucrats. They would set up the world’s largest bittorrent tracker.

It doesn’t come cheap however. The Royal Family of Sealand are willing to sell their own country for a paltry £65m sterling.
(more…)

[ratings]
A female teacher in Norwich currently awaits a possible 40 year sentence for being found responsible for spyware allowing 10 minors viewing porn in her classroom. This is a strange one.

Julie Amero was acting as a substitute teacher when pornographic pop-ups started appearing on the screens of a computer in her classroom. I’m sure you’ve all had spyware problems at some stage, you know the pop ups that when clicked, open up 10 more pop-ups. Since spyware runs in the background and can be initiated but a number of things you do on your computer Amero obviously had no control over when this was going to happen. In fact, having noticed spyware on the pc, she had put in a number of previous requests to the school administration to have them fixed but was ignored. In fact, the school did have content filtering software but when the pop-up frenzy ensued, the license had expired.

(more…)

[ratings]
With every second person owning an online dating site these days you would think there wouldn’t be much money in it anymore. Not the case if you happen to be running since 1999 and have a membership of 3.5 million in the UK alone. UK based DatingDirect has just been sold to the French dating company Meetic for £27.3 million.

When you consider they had a turnover last year of £11, it even seems like they could have gone for more when you consider trippling the revenue of the company is usually how companies are valuated roughly. Meetic however, now find themselves with the UK online dating market wrapped up, and one less heave duty competitor to worry about. Clever business I think you’ll agree.