Landmark copyright trial against Pirate Bay gets underway

The trial against the four men behind Pirate Bay started at the 16th of February 2009. The four men are accused of being accessories of breaking copyright law. If the judge says that they are guilty they will have to go to prison for 2 years and they will have to pay a fine of 143,500 dollars.

The designers of the site are confident that the site will still exist without them, because the court already tried to take it down once, but they failed. The four men are convinced that the court will fail again.

The creators say that the site only acts as a search engine and that the site doesn’t contain any infringing content. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, who represents 1400 record companies worldwide, disagrees with this statement of the Pirate Bay creators. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says that authors, musicmakers, moviemakers and other people lost a lot of money because of Pirate Bay.

The evidence in this case will show that Pirate Bay is a commercial business, which made a lot of money for its creators, no matter what the creators of Pirate Bay say.

The entertaining industry demands 14 million dollars from Pirate Bay for lost sales income. The creators of Pirate Bay will refuse to pay, because they don’t have a lot of money. They don’t earn money from Pirate Bay.

I think it’s good that the government tries to remove sites like Pirate Bay, because a lot of people are losing a lot of money, because everybody is downloading illegally from the Internet. My opinion is that downloading illegal content from the Internet is the same as stealing something from a shop. It’s not difficult to download illegally and the chance that you will be punished isn’t very high. That’s why the government must act and remove sites like Pirate Bay from the Internet.

Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/pirate_bay_copyright_infringement_trial/

Viewpoints: Laurence Fink on Real Estate Sector.

Laurence Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock inc. gives his opinion on the crisis in the real estate or real property sector. He said that everybody who bought real property in 2006 or 2007 made a bad investment. In 2006 and 2007 everything went well and the real property companies received a lot of money. The most of those investments are bad today. They lost a lot of their value.


The company of Laurence Fink made a mistake, but they aren’t the only one, a lot of people made the same mistake. Mister Fink sais that now it’s a perfect time to buy real estate, because the prices are low. BlackRock inc. lost a lot of money because of the crisis, and now they have a big refinancing risk in the next few years. Now the market is growing again and new clients want to buy real estate. Laurence Fink thinks that if the US economy will increase again, the real estate sector will heal and the real estate market will grow again. It will be difficult in the first few years, your property might even have a lower value, but after a few years the value of your property will increase. Nobody knows how long the economic crisis will last, so it’s hard to tell when the real estate market will heal.


I think that the people must find their confidence back in the economy. If they find their confidence, they will invest again in the economy and in the real estate sector. Today the people don’t want to invest their money because they are afraid to lose it again. So it will be difficult to win the confidence of the people, but once they are confident that they will earn money instead of losing it, they will invest again and the economy will grow. When the economy increases, the real estate market will recover itself.


Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://online.wsj.com/video/viewpoints-laurence-fink-on-real-estate-sector/12FF512D-98F6-46BA-834E-98C1351F83F4.html

Qantas to seek damages from Boeing

Qantas, an Australian flag carrier, wants to seek damages from Boeing, the US aircraft maker, for late delivery of the 787 Dreamliner. Boeing already confirmed that it was facing more embarrassing delays in the first deliveries of its 787. The 787 is an 250-300 seat jet, the group’s biggest investment in commercial aircraft in more than a decade. “Qantas and Boeing will be discussing the issue of liquidated damages in the coming weeks.” said Qantas chief executive, Geoff Dixon. Boeing has collected a large number of orders for the 787 and the issues of financial penalty payments to customers and the rescheduling of deliveries are becoming a n increasing headache. The order book may become a huge problem as the delays grow. Qantas is amongst the biggest customers and the group has made a commitment for up to 115 aircraft. Scott Carson, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said on Wednesday the first flight of the 787 had been put back again, the third delay from the original plan for the first flight in August last year. I think Qantas has it at the right end. They will get damages for the delays of delivery of Boeing. Hopefully for Boeing, the deliveries won’t take long anymore.

Steven

Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6198e578-c52c-11dc-811a-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

TLC files breach of contract suit against Jon Gosselin

Jon Gosselin of the TV-show has committed breach of contract against cable network TLC for taking paying gigs of other Television-shows without permission including the CBS-syndicated shows “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider”. Furthermore, Gosselin has appeared in non-paying media without TLC’s approval, which could also be in violation of his contract. The suit says he has also harmed the show with his constant criticisms and misstatements about being on the show and what goes on behind the scenes and revealing confidential information such as when he talked about his salary on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” He and his wife, Kate Gosselin from the show “Jon & Kate Plus 8” are in the middle of a divorce. The show follows the lives of a western Pennsylvania couple and their eight children. It became a huge hit after it came in the tabloids that Gosselin was seen with other women who weren’t his wife. In June, the show in which the couple revealed that their marriage was ending drew more than 10 million viewers. TLC has said that it would greatly reduce Jon Gosselin’s role in the show but Jon has already threatened to stop the production of the show. I think that TLC will get right in this case because Jon has really misbehaved himself and didn’t follow the contract.

Steven

Source:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/10/tlc-files-breach-of-contract-suit-against-jon-gosselin.html

Trade Unions Decline Around the World

We can see that the trade unions in The United Stated are declining. They’re losing their influence and popularity in the U.S.A., but how about the trade unions in the rest of the world?


The organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published an article whit a graphic from each country, on the graphic you can see how many employees are connected to a trade union. We don’t only see a downward trend in the U.S.A, but also in many other industrialised countries all over the world. Belgium is almost the only country where the influence of the trade unions remains quiet stable in the last few years. In a lot of other countries in Europe for instance France, Italy, Spain the influence of the trade unions and the employees connected to the trade union are declining a lot.
Even in Asia the trade unions are losing their influence. Which is very strange because in some countries the working conditions are not good, so it’s strange that the people don’t want to be in a trade union.


Sometimes I find the trade unions very aggressive and they want to achieve their goal no matter what, even if the employer can’t solve the problems. Most of the time they don’t want to give in. That I find wrong because you only can come to a good solution if everyone puts some water in the wine, but trade unions can’t always see that.


I find it very important that there are trade unions, because the employees must be protected from the employer, so that he doesn’t have all the power. Somebody must represent the employees in the company and defend their rights, so that’s why it is necessary that there are trade unions.


I don’t think they will disappear, because than there is nobody to protect the employees and I don’t think that the governments are going to let that happen.


Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/trade-unions-around-the-world/?scp=1&sq=trade%20union&st=cse