The guys at The Pirate Bay stuck a finger up at the IFPI as demands were made for damages totally $2.5 million. Chief Pirate Gottfrid Svartholm Warg told a newspaper that he told lawyers from the IFPI to “go screw themselves”.

Four Pirates were indicted in January for allegedly aiding the piracy of 24 albums, nine movies and four videogames.

Svartholm laughed off the indictment, saying that the $2.5 million figure likely came from multiplying the number of items by the number of times they were downloaded. Most downloaders would never have paid the full price for their music, games and movies, he added.

All this comes as Swedish artists came out this week in support of filesharing. Also this month, Trent Reznor uploaded part of his Ghosts I-IV to The Pirate Bay. It seems that all the action with regards to filesharing and music downloads is currently going on in Sweden.

The lucky owners of Apple’s latest Big Thing – the iPhone – will be salivating at the recent news of the release of another new toy for their machine: the iPhone SDK on Download. While this mean much to many people, the SDK (software development kit) will allow third party programmers to write code that integrates seamlessly with the iPhone hardware and its downloads essentially the it allows much more flexibility when it comes to producing third party apps. Large gaming companies like PopCap and Namco have promised ports of classics like Pac-Man, Bejeweled and Zuma using the new iPhone SDK.
The full release date of the iPhone download with SDK is unclear (the current release is for the beta version only) and as such there can be no promises on the timely release of games or any other apps.
The iPhone SDK has certainly generated significant interest with owner and fans: there were over a million views of a release video that Apple and its music download on iPhone had posted on its site covering the new technology.

Would you believe there is another free filesharing service available? These filesharing programs seem to pop up like flowers in spring. Most of the new ones we’ve covered recently haven’t been very good because there are now so many filesharing programs to get free music downloads that the market is saturated.

Also, for new filesharing services, there are hardly any users, but the point of some of them is just to upload files for other people. File Dropper offers a service that boats no sign-up and 5GB capacity. It ain’t Limewire, but it has it’s uses. You just pick the file you want to share with the world and upload it there and then.

You don’t even have to fill in any personal details, which is novel for a filesharing program. Uploads are fast enough and before you know it you’re provided with a link to your file to share with your mum or whoever. Files and links stay live for as long as people keep downloading your stuff, which doesn’t mean much really. Check it out if you’re into trying out new things for the sake of it.

Another new website for music downloads slipped into our radar this week, this time its MusicMP3.ru. The guys at MusicMP3 were kind enough to open an account for us to check out the service. After a quick browse around, we were surprised to find the new Moby album available for download for $2.10. We bought the album right away on principle.

The album has only been released for a few days in the UK and the US. Looks like we got a bargain music download. The rest of MusicMP3 is cool enough. There’s a decent selection of tracks for downloading. What is amazing is that it isn’t just the Moby album that costs 2 bucks. Everything on the website is available at totally reduced prices.

The guys behind the website claim that it’s all completely legal and that they can do this because they are in Russia. There is also mention of an organization called ROMS. We have no idea what’s going on here, because brand new albums are available for about 1/8 of what you’d pay on iTunes.

There’s tonnes of new stuff on the website, too, as well as older albums. If you need some inspiration, they also have music news and album reviews to check out.

When you’re getting music downloads for this cheap, it raises the question why you wouldn’t just use a filesharing program or BitTorrent. Still, we did feel slightly pleased with getting a bargain, even if we can’t work out how this is possible.

The quality of the files is pretty high and everything downloads fast enough. Songs for 15 cents? Get them while they’re hot. Only problem is that you can’t pay by Paypal or credit card. Take that for what it’s worth.

Students have long been the target of the RIAA and its many assorted cronies; they love P2P filesharing and they’re generally unwilling (or unable) to pay for the same material they can get for free on Campus. With fast network connections in rooms – as well as near-neighbors with huge file collections – colleges are well suited for hot P2P filesharing action.

Campuses are going on the offensive and encouraging students to use Ruckus. Ruckus is a music-download service catering specifically to this type of downloader. Naturally Ruckus files are DRM protected meaning there’s nowhere you can put this file but on your computer. The selection? Not as good as you would get with a P2P filesharing application like Ares, quite simply.

So where is this offensive of P2P filesharing likely to go? Not very far if you ask me. Students will find a way around the flimsy barriers erected by industry and by their learned academic institutions. Power to the people? Probably.

The British clampdown on filesharing is a real threat to Internet freedom. The British record industry is intent on coming up with ways of stamping out all filesharing activity. According to Jollyon Benn of the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), people use filesharing programs like Limewire mistakenly believing they are not breaking the law.

Benn thinks that education is the key to solving Britain’s filesharing problem. That’s BS. People know what they doing. Education will not solve a damn thing. Yes, filesharing and BitTorrent is now easier than ever to use, but people aren’t so stupid that they aren’t made fully aware that downloading copyrighted material is wrong.

Apparently, the BPI is developing bots that can detect illegal filesharing. The BPI wants to take out larger filesharing networks. What happened to educating people? Could the British music industry be even more clueless than the industry in the US?