A children’s charity in the UK has decided to take on the issue of filesharing and spread the word about the evils of illegal music downloads, which are both against the law and “unsafe”, apparently.

One converted child said, “I used to use Limewire, but didn’t realise it was wrong and my parents didn’t know what I was doing.”

Oh dear.

Childnet admirably campaigns to improve Internet safety for children. There’s nothing wrong with that. The charity is sending a leaflet to schools to persuade kids to take care while surfing the net and using their mobile phones.

The clear message is that filesharing is an adults’ games. While America’s college students haven’t been so lucky, UK children will be “educated” about the errors of their filesharing ways. How noble.

However, for the million of non-children who still use filesharing programs like Limewire, there is no hope of salvation.

More campus activity this week. This time, the University of Arkansas has been targeted by the RIAA for filesharing students.

The RIAA has formally requested that UA complies with its dealing with filesharing activities, which means that the university must supply the names that match up to IPs that show illegal filesharing activity.

This has caused much uproar, as some at the university have slammed the request, saying that the RIAA does not have the right to do such a thing.

One senior compared this filesharing monitoring to phone tapping. The RIAA has basically requested that UA keep records of all Internet filesharing activity that occurs on campus.

What this means is that the UA’s IT department finds filesharing culprits who are getting free music downloads and passes on their names to the RIAA, who in turn send a letter to the students demanding damages or a court case.

UA responded by issuing a statement saying that students’ details will not be passed on unless a there is a subpoena.

There is a new drug on the block and it is making inroads into the markets previously dominated by Marijuana and LSD. The good news? It is entirely legal. The bad? It might not be legal for very long.
Salvia is a plant with hallucinogenic properties hailing from Mexico. Its sale, use and possession is entirely legal in most U.S. States and in Mexico, and the plant is solid in both leaf and extract form on the Internet. Its use induces hallucinations lasting for around one hour. While the effects are said to be stronger than those provided by Marijuana they only last an hour or so.
Pro-Salvia commentators claim that Salvia is a relatively harmless drug and that those wishing to see it banned are making a lot of fuss over a very small problem.
Some states have already banned Salvia or limited its use in some way, and with others likely to follow perhaps now is the time to make the most of Salvia’s legal status.

Read all about it! Read all about it! Apple’s new 3g iPhone will soon be entering the market! While this alone is very exciting news for many Apple fans and potential iPhone buyers, the much more exciting news is that the 3g iPhone may be subsidized by up to $200, bring the price down to a much more manageable $200 or so; the subsidy will of course be in return for customers signing a new two year contract.

Apple AT&T have not officially released news of this subsidy – or indeed many details about the 3g iPhone. The word on the street is that the 3g iPhone will be available around the 1 year anniversary of the first model’s release, so look towards the end of June.

Before this release date Apple plans, according to an insider, to stop shipping the old model of iPhone. This will create a supply lacuna and an explosion of demand when the new iPhone finally arrives.

While America’s students are being terrorized by the RIAA for filesharing, it looks like one special group of students is immune to filesharing rules and regulations. Step up the class of 2008 from Harvard.

The RIAA has delivered thousands of letters to universities to try and curb filesharing habits. This action often results in students who are accused of filesharing being given an ultimatum with the threat of court action if they don’t cough up several thousand bucks.

Perhaps Harvard’s students are simply a law-abiding bunch of students, but they are students, right? For whatever reason, Harvard has not received any pre-litigation letters from the RIAA.

What’s most bizarre in this case is that the RIAA admits that Harvard students are engaged in filesharing activities, but the “levels are not sufficient enough to warrant legal action”. Hold on a minute. When did it become about levels?

Is the RIAA too scared to go after Harvard’s hardened team of lawyers?

Great news for fans of Nokia phones. All new Nokia handsets will now come with unlimited music downloads from Sony BMG for one year as part of Nokia’s new music service.

The “Comes With Music” campaign was launched by Nokia last year. It meant that Nokia users had access to unlimited music downloads from Universal. Now, the mobile giant has added Sony BMG into the mix.

All the songs Nokia users download will be theirs to keep. If you cancel your subscription, you won’t lose all the music downloads you’ve accumulated.

Nokia is opening up new doors in the world of music downloads. This surely gives the phone maker an edge over the iPhone. Nokia has a lot of ground to make up in terms of mobile music downloads, but this should go some way to evening out the playing field.