pirates

Continuing an aggressive campaign to defend his copyrights, pop star Prince is preparing to file lawsuits within the next few days in three countries--including the United States--against The Pirate Bay, CNET News.com has learned.

One of the world's best-known BitTorrent indexing sites, The Pirate Bay has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood's requests to remove them. The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, but the service is internationally famous for being a highly effective file-sharing tool.

Prince will file similar … Read more

Pirates have grown mighty bold around the Horn of Africa of late--so bold that the Navy is reportedly considering the deployment of 30-foot, armed robo-boats to challenge the dusty buccaneers. Surely they'll mend their ways.

The Navy began testing the Israeli Protector unmanned surface vehicle (USV) last year. There is a civilian version of these rigid-hulled inflatables built by Rayglass Boats in New Zealand, a common enough sight around any harbor that's even used as the official chase boat for the America's Cup. But you'd hardly equate these with the unmanned version.

Extensively tweaked by defense … Read more

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article about Imeem, pegged to the news that this fledgling site has signed a third major label, EMI, leaving only Universal in the "not yet" column. The service is getting credit for trying to pioneer a new business model for digital music distribution: users can select songs and stream them for free, as long as they're willing to sit through the occasional advertisement.

I registered and fired the service up, and while I'm not ready to call ad-supported music DOA, Imeem isn't about to unseat the current digital music leaders. The main problem: I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing on the site. … Read more

There's now a discreet way to declare one's allegiance to the swashbuckling lifestyle without being obnoxiously preppy or hiding it in the parking lot. The "Crystal Pirate" is an 800-dpi USB mouse that combines "booty and bling," as Popgadget aptly describes it.

And it should come as no surprise that this $135 skulled peripheral comes from Pat Says Now, the Swiss specialty mouse house that's been responsible for novelties ranging from the Halloween ghost to the $24,000 "Diamond Flower." The only downside to the pirate model it has succumbed to … Read more

In case you hadn't noticed, today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day," which means it's socially acceptable to start speaking in tongues to your friends, family, and coworkers without them being able to roll their eyes as much as they usually do. It's also a time to check out Flickr, who has managed to translate the entirety of the site to pirate-speak. To toggle this option, just go down to the bottom of the page and select "Arrr!" as the language. Flickr's logo changes, along with all the menus, greeting messages, … Read more

UPDATE: In an attempt to "reclaim the Internet," Prince is preparing to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay, for allegedly encouraging copyright violations, according to one of his representatives.

The rock star has hired Web Sheriff, a British-based company that specializes in hunting down pirated content on the Web, to launch a legal campaign against companies that wrongfully profit from the artist's work, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president.

Prince plans to file suit in both the United States and the U.K., and has hired a top Swedish law firm to … Read more

Motorized pirate ships are all good and fine, but sometimes we need something a little bit classier and old-fashioned to satisfy our high-seas ambitions. Take this toy pirate yacht, for example. It retails for the U.K. equivalent of about $35.

It's a lovely, tasteful little wooden boat, made of plantation-grown wood with genuine sailcloth for the sails, and would look perfect either on the mantelpiece of your expansive parlor's fireplace or gently bobbing in your backyard koi pond as you sit on the porch drinking mimosas after a morning of squash at the local country club. But … Read more

As Friday's release of High School Musical 2 looms--to the dread of hapless parents already forced to endure daily doses of Radio Disney--the requisite product merchandizing has been wholly expected. But we didn't know that the locker-themed TV and clock radio we cited earlier were just the beginning of an entire fall line of gadgets aimed at kids and tweens, including cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, HDTVs and enough accessories to choke an elf. (The "Disney Flix Video Camera" pictured here goes for about $100.) Gizmodiva recommends the Hannah Montana-themed line. And we already know, of course, … Read more