Working today on an (eventually spiked!) piece on . If that description leaves you blank the clue is in its name, it has a lot of links to music, film and other copyright content. It's important to note the site does not itself host the material.
Pirate Bay was raided by Swedish police in 2006:
The interviews below are with . I'm told Pirate Bay grew out of Piratbyran but the two organisations are now separate. And there's an interview with I an organisation representing the recording industry.
You'll see that iPM is back in April, in the meantime I've been working on reports for PM and other bits of the network. I hope that you'll see this as an opportunity to suggest stories you'd like me to have a look at particularly if they have a tech/web/social media aspect. All ideas are very welcome drop me an email ipm {@} bbc.co.uk, or leave a comment in the blog.
At the moment I'm looking at hackers and others use to send spam etc. I'm keen to get inside the story. Who should I speak to?
I'm keen on human stories told through the net too. A colleague pointed me to this which will lead to an interview next week.
Apart from that all other plans are at a very early stage of development so please do send in your suggestions.
View our list of del.icio.us links to see other websites catching our attention:
Award winning photographerdocuments the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo in that are at once beautiful and disturbing. In this interview Marcus talks about what life was like in the DRC, a country where conflict has claimed over 4 million lives since 1998, and explains why he's taken to podcasting. Marcus was speaking from Norway, en route to his new assignment in Somalia.
Thanks to Graham of the Frontline Club put me in touch with Marcus. They've just launched a new blog by which promises to be an interesting read.
Inspired by this post I've been taking a look at the and concerns over it's current level of funding. The scheme has been a huge success allowing metal detectorists and members of the public to report archaelogical finds to a national database. But for 2008/9 there's no increase in the scheme's funding and that is worrying some people who say it may mean cuts in the project. Here are two roughly edited longer interviews that made up the package that ran on the issue on today's PM: who oversees the PAS, and Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the the body which, under current plans, funds the scheme. The interviews run sequentially in the player - hit the forward button on the player to move on.
Mary Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge who writes . You don't have to be interested in Greek urns to get a kick out of reading Mary's blog, it's about life in the round as much as it is about ancient civilisations.
In an interview recorded last year Mary talks though some of her favourite sites including , and
A follow up to the piece I did on PM about the online fundraising of US Presidential Candidate Ron Paul (for some related interviews with Steve Grove of YouTube and Andrew Rasiej of TechPresident see this earlier post) Well Justine Lam, e-Campaign director was kind enough to grant me a phone interview an edit of which is posted below:
FYI There's a different edit of that interview over at Pods and Blogs
I had a lovely chat with the . Global Voices does a wonderful job of reporting the news as seen by bloggers around the world. In the film we speak about maintaining positive relations in "the United Nations of the web", and Solana's hopes for the future of the site.
Solana was very kind to allow this radio person to film the interview on his 3 year-old web-cam, propped up on the top of the laptop! For obvious reasons I've tried to keep the video file as light as possible - so it is very low res. You can download the
Vegetable gardeners know that, in the bloated months of summer, nature's bounty can turn to a surfeit of produce; produce that often ends up as a biological time capsule at the back of the refrigerator, mouldering in boxes on doorsteps, or worst of all forced upon unwilling family, meal after meal after meal.. But a new website aims to solve this problem by enabling growers to swap surplus produce.
I spent a very entertaining afternoon with James from Vegexchange and Ian from the splendid allotments.. Thanks also to and to for their thoughtful musings on the wider meaning of it all.
There's something magical about growing your own veg. As Bacon said of gardening (and possibly allotmenteering too), "it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handy-works" The half dead supermarket rosemary currently browning in the family windowbox is sadly no substitute.
I've been speaking with Dave Evans of the Information Commissioner's Office about the issue of how easy it is to delete your profile should you wish to leave Facebook. At present the company initially offers you the ability to deactivate a profile, meaning that although your profile is removed from the site, Facebook retains the information on the profile: deleting it is a much more time consuming process. That concerns the ICO who will meet with Facebook to discuss this and other data protection and privacy issues later this month.
In my full interview with Dave Evans, we cover the deactivation vs deletion issue as well as other matters relating to privacy, data and social networks
Dave was keen to point out that he believes Facebook are eager to comply with UK data protection rules. The company itself has given us this statement, "“We believe we are in full compliance with UK data protection law. We give users the notice that the UK Data Protection Act requires in order to inform them about what information is collected. We also give users granular control over what information they share and who they share it with. We take the concerns of the ICO and our user’s privacy very seriously and are committed to working with the ICO to maintain a trusted environment for all Facebook users and ensure compliance with UK law.” They also say they do not use information held in deactivated accounts in any way.
UPDATE:The company has moved to make complete deletion of accounts (not just deactivation) easier. says: Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, confirmed that deletion "removes all personal information from the account."
Hello, here are a couple of the stories I'm looking at in the coming weeks. Your ideas are very welcome here to, or if you'd rather contact me directly drop me an email ipm {@} bbc.co.uk.
I'm looking at deleting data from Facebook and other social networks. Have you ever tried to close your account or delete it? What was the experience like?
The has the movie industry finally embraced online distribution wholeheartedly? What does it mean for the industry?
I'm still curious about the buses - though TFL tell me that anecdotally the number of incidents isn't that high - but they also say that they don't have the data readily to hand.
Well we have .tv .us and now becoming available. What will the uptake of these say about the state of the net in Asia?
And is there anywhere I should visit? I'm keen to get out the office and interview some interesting folk about bloggy/webby matters. Any suggestions welcome.
View our list of del.icio.us links to see other websites catching our attention:
Time for a little bit of crowdsourcing! I was on a bus yesterday - the driver refused to let on a group of young people - their response: to lift up the engine cover at the back and stop the bus by hitting the engine stop button. It's the second time this has happened to me when I've been on a bus. I wonder if any of our blog readers have had a similar experience? There are a few questions which arise - which I'm going to try and find answers to - but I'd be interested in hearing from you if you've experience of this. You can email me at ipm [at] bbc.co.uk or drop a note in the comments.
is currently enjoying a major retrospective . His films include Buena Vista Social Club and Paris Texas. He spared a couple of minutes from a very, very busy schedule to talk about his favourite bookmarks.
can be found here
I'm rather absent minded, which is why I'm filled with admiration for the blogger behind Nee Naw - . Nee Naw is one of the people who takes your 999 calls, a demanding enough job on a busy Saturday night, but what about being on duty , or taking the first call during the 7/7 attacks on London? Well Nee Naw did all of those.
To find out a little more I spoke to Mark Myers (that's a pseudonym adopted by the female blogger behind the site as you can hear on the tape). Out of respect for the bloggers privacy we've also altered her voice.
iPM will be back later in the year after a break of a few months (we'll keep you posted on the return date) but while we're off-air the blog will live on. I'll be working to put your stories on the radio, on to this blog and . So if you have a newsworthy idea which you think deserves a bit of coverage on Radio 4 drop a note in comments or email me at ipm [at] bbc.co.uk I'll keep the rough notes section going too so you can see what I'm working on. Here are a few pointers on the kind of material I'm looking for:
- Ideas for leads to follow up, perhaps based on your own experience, that could be turned into a news story with a bit of work. e.g. the poor broadband speeds many of you experienced
- Interesting blogs that are below the radar. e.g. BH have had great fun talking to Bill Lamin of the
- Stories covered in the blogs but overlooked by the rest of the media. The in jails was a good example
I'll also be glued to my RSS reader looking for ideas from the blogs, so if you are a blogger or an avid blog reader, advice on what you think I should be reading will always be very welcome.
Back in October on iPM we spoke to Baghdad about , groups, often funded by the US, who are taking control of the security of some areas of the city. He'd visited Adhamiya where an awakening group appeared to be having a positive affect on security.
Well, since that report, Last has , prompting him to wonder if the violence is being displaced into formerly safe areas. In this audio which he sent to us, he describes the aftermath of a bombing and a drive-by shooting, events he was unfortunate enough to witness at close range:
As we consider Iraq in 2007 I'd also like to mention a sad event that happened towards the end of last year. Alive in Baghdad, which posts videos by independent Iraqi film makers, lost special correspondent Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi : "The morgue report says that Ali took 31 bullets between the chest and the head and died immediately. He will be missed and remembered. His two brothers were killed in the Firdos Square bombing in 2005. He is survived by his mother and sister."
Ali's death reminds us again of the extraordinary bravery of Iraqi bloggers, film makers and journalists working in that country.
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