The Weekly Round-Up: 12.09.03

Anybody who watched 'The Curse of FriendsReunited' on Channel 5 this week will have been reminded of two things. First, that Channel 5 is the source of some of the UK's most trite television programming (as if you needed reminding), and second, that the school bully really wasn't a very nice person.

A number of victims spoke out about their experiences at the hands of a bully, and in some instances those bullies are still continuing to persecute their victims, including teachers, even years after leaving school - posting defamatory remarks on the FriendsReunited message boards and in their personal details.

But bullies aren't just a product of the British school system. They're everywhere. Take the Recording Industry Association of America for example, which this week took about five years' worth of dinner money from a 12-year-old girl.

The already unpopular RIAA excelled itself by launching legal action against Brianna Lahara who had downloaded some copyrighted material from the internet. One UK tabloid newspaper even suggested the poor innocent girl had been downloading nothing more controversial than some nursery rhymes - which as the average 12-year-old will agree is a preposterous suggestion. (Unless Eminem now does 'parental advisory' style nursery rhymes...)

Brianna, who lives with her mother in a housing project in New York City, was named along with 260 other offenders in the RIAA's first raft of suits against file-sharers.

However, little Brianna's mother, who clearly has more compassion than the RIAA, decided to protect her daughter from a harrowing courtroom experience and made an out of court settlement to the tune of $2,000 - which effectively means Brianna will be without pocket money until some time in mid-2028.

However, the plight of poor hard-up Brianna and her (now) even more hard-up mother has not gone unnoticed and a group of peer-to-peer advocates called P2P United has said it will pay the fine on Brianna's behalf. Good on them. While the Round-Up would never condone file-sharing of illegally downloaded material, major corporations bullying children with threats of legal action would still rank as a slightly less acceptable practice. (To read more about the arguments for file-sharing, read this.)

The latest salvo from the RIAA has also seen it indulge in a little mud-slinging - accusing peer-to-peer networks of distributing illegal pornography and arguing in favour of closing them down on grounds of good taste (and not at all on grounds of revenue), which is very magnanimous of them.

Well somebody call the cops. The Round-Up thinks our boys in blue really ought to know about all this illegal pornography being traded.

'Why...' the Round-Up hears you cry '...because they will want to make some arrests?'

Sadly no. It's just that if there's porn to be had then it appears the police will more than likely want to get involved. A police investigation is currently underway in Scotland looking into how some unsavoury material found its way onto the computers of officers in the Lothian and Borders police force.

In total four police officers and one civilian worker are being investigated but the long arm (and hairy palm) of the law is also reaching out to a number of other police stations who are also being investigated in the ongoing case.

A police spokeswoman told the BBC: "There is an internal inquiry into the misuse of computers by a number of members of staff. A report will be sent to the Deputy Chief Constable. We are fastidious about the integrity of our IT system and we are determined it will not be abused." Which is good to know.

And while we're on this seedy subject, there is a new craze doing the rounds on eBay currently, called rather imaginatively 'Reflectoporn'. The basic idea is that users put articles up for sale, such as chrome kettles, which have highly reflective surfaces. Alongside the article listing they include a picture which appears normal on first glance but on closer inspection reveals the naked seller, with nothing to protect their modesty than a camera to their face as they photograph their lot, complete with reflection of themselves in the buff.

But if it's exposure you're after, then you can't get much more extreme than living in a Perspex box above one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

That is the latest self-imposed challenge set by US magician David Blaine.

The Round-Up strolls past Blaine each morning on the way into Silicon Towers and yesterday was forced to stand and stare at the black-clad beardy-weirdy illusionist for around 15 minutes due to Tower Bridge being up.

Now as far as the Round-Up is concerned that was around 15 minutes too long.

Blaine seems to spend most of his time sat crouched in his 7x7x3ft cell looking for all the world like an ailing gorilla in need of rescue from a too-small cage in an Eastern European zoo.

He can't go anywhere and he can't do very much, apart from pee in a tube or drink from a bottle but, even still, it's not the sort of thing you'd pay to see...

...Unless, that is, you are one of the one million people who have signed up with Channel 4 to watch live streamed video of Blaine's stunt online.

For less than £10 you will be able to watch such exciting events as Blaine standing up to stretch his legs, Blaine sitting down again, and around 10 hours per day of Blaine sleeping.

And you don't have to miss a minute of it.

One subscriber to the service was so annoyed to be logged on during one of Blaine's more sedentary moments - in mitigation, it was 3:00am - that he travelled down to the site by the new London Assembly building and started banging a drum to wake up the snoozing magician. Mission accomplished he then returned home to watch footage of a bemused Blaine wondering 'what all the banging is about'.

And that story is fairly typical of the welcome which has greeted Blaine in London. Another wag stood on Tower Bridge hitting golf balls at him while others have hurled fruit, chips and assorted other rubbish at the Perspex target.

Amazingly there does appear to be a market for the spectacle which is about as action-packed as the test card. Search engine giant AltaVista has noted a massive increase in the number of people searching for David Blaine-related links. Outstripping even 'sex' this past week, a spokeswoman told the Round-Up that Blaine was the third biggest gainer in terms of an increase in searches.

Possibly just out of shot on the Channel 4 stream of the stunt will be the army of vagrants who have flocked to the site, aware that there is all of a sudden a market for hungry, bearded men who haven't washed or eaten for several days - not to mention a ready supply of edible missiles... and golf balls, though they presumably have very limited use and very little street value.

Which segues neatly to a very worthy "And finally..."

And finally (see) on a more serious note, next week sees the staging of Byte Night 2003, an event which every year sees the IT community band together to raise money to help prevent youth homelessness on the streets of the UK.

Over the past five years the charity has raised £850,000 and this year it hopes to shatter the £1m barrier.

Prestigious members of the IT community and non-prestigious representatives of silicon.com will be sleeping rough in London's Finsbury Square to raise awareness and money for this most worthwhile of causes.

And this is where you lot come in. All donations are welcome and can be made in the first instance by simply replying to this email and making a pledge, whether it is from your company or from yourself. Anything you can spare from £1 to £1m (hey, you don't ask, you don't get) will go a long way to help disadvantaged children in the UK. Go on dig deep.

For more information visit: www.nch.org.uk/bytenight

Thank you for your time.

The Round-Up is now off to drive golf balls approximately 70 feet to the left of David Blaine, unless I can sort out that troublesome slice.

Until next week here's some news:

12-year-old file swapper bailed out by P2P group Sony Ericsson recalls exploding phone charger Microsoft really is cheaper than Linux Spam seasonal shift favours Arnie and assorted tat Homeless hacker finally surrenders £2m card fraud IT man gets nine years