A lot of ink has been spilled these days spilled over ICANN’s (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) seizing of domain names without a detailed explanation or a full trial which many link to the government trying a new method to stamp illegal file-sharing.
ICANN, the US-based organization managing the DNS root zone starts to appear dangerously empowered. Last year, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, (meanwhile appointed European Commissioner for Justice), brought up a very important the issue – that of ICANN being accountable solely to the US government.
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Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has been kicked off Amazon.com’s U.S. servers after moving its operations just a day ago.


The move by Amazon comes after questioning from U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the House Security Committee.
“This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website,” Senator Lieberman said in a statement.
“I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.”
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After a lost legal battle, Mininova was forced to take drastic measures a year ago. The site’s founders removed millions of torrents to avoid having to pay millions of dollars in fines. In addition, new uploads were restricted to approved publishers only, a choice that expectedly dwarfed the site’s traffic and user base in the year that followed.
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Spotify, one of the most popular music streaming services in Europe, is constantly attracting new members from the seven countries it currently supports. However, it seems that financially the company is not as prosperous as it might seem.

Spotify can only be enjoyed in Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and this restriction means that inhabitants of other countries do not have access to it.

The consequence is that the sources of revenue are limited, and even though, according to a recently published report, the company's revenue for UK for the past year was $ 18.1 million, it actually translates in a net loss of $26.7 million, because of all the expenses, sales and distribution.

In an attempt to minimize the significance of this financial report, a Spotify spokesperson said: “2009 saw us focus on establishing a new and innovative music service and bringing it to millions of people across Europe.”
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After the Mulve music downloading app burst onto the scene in September, it didn’t take long for it to be closed down and cold water poured on the fun. Now, just a couple of months later, a new application has appeared which not only does everything that Mulve did, but adds more sources, integrates music discovery, last.fm, a playlist and download manager, videos, lyrics and more.

While its birth was a relatively low-key affair, the launch of Mulve into the mainstream proved to be quite the opposite. In September the news of its arrival was reported on dozens of sites but it all came crashing down just a few days later. Undoubtedly prompted by IFPI, BPI and the Big Four labels behind them, the British police moved to make an arrest. Mulve was no more.
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