Live from Austin!

A satellite TV hacker has testified in court that he was paid for 10 years by HarperCollins, a publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch.

The hacker’s job, according to the prosecution, was to break DISH network’s cryptographic security and flood the market with pirate DISH satellite cards. The idea was that this would cost DISH nearly a billion dollars in lost revenue, perhaps putting them out of business or weakening them ready for a takeover.

That, in turn, would have left DirecTV–part owned by Murdoch –with a monopoly on satellite TV in the US, just like Murdoch’s Sky has a monopoly in the UK.

Apparently MySpace has jumped the shark, with the number of page hits dropping 4% in September. News Corp say it’s a normal seasonal variation. I’m skeptical of that explanation, as us old-timers know that September is when all the students go to college, jump on their fast college-provided Internet connections, and post tons of crap on the net. Of course, now we have Eternal September, but many sites still see a noticeable uptick in traffic that month.

Anyway, if MySpace is dying, it’s not a moment too soon. Why do I hate MySpace? Well, let’s see…

For starters, it’s owned by News International, Rupert Murdoch’s company, the same corporation that gives us FOX News. If there’s a corporation I’d less like to trust with my personal data, I can’t think of it.

Then there’s the design. Ye ghods, it’s like Geocities rose from the dead and shambled onto my browser window.

Then there’s the functionality. In a way, it’s genius marketing. Someone obviously sat down and put together a list of exactly the functions that would encourage self-obsessed teenage drama queens to adopt the site as quickly as possible:

• Picture of person, interests, personal data at the top, as that’s the most important thing in the world. After all, we’re marketing to the people who start chat conversations with “A/S/L?”

• A lie at the top of the page saying “<insert name here> is in your extended network” no matter who it is, to try and sucker people in.

• Under that, a section boasting how many friends the person has.

• A “top 8 friends” feature, to guarantee lots of drama.

• Lock down all the content not on the front page, so you have to sign up even to read it.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve yet to see anyone link to anything worthwhile on MySpace. It makes LiveJournal look like Granta, it’s the toilet stall wall of the Internet. “JUDY UR THE BESTEST LUV U LOL!!” “<insert band name> ROCKS!” “FRIEND ME!”

So no, I don’t have a MySpace page. I will never have a MySpace page.

As of January 15th, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal for copyright to be extended indefinitely, and retroactively. It is likely that no work created after 1920 will ever enter the public domain. Justice Clarence Thomas was amongst those voting in favor of Disney in Eldred vs Ashcroft.

In totally unrelated news, on January 9th Clarence Thomas was offered a book publishing deal worth $1 million from HarperCollins, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.