Cody Taylor

Confessed pirates themselves, Franz Ferdinand have recently taken a pro-piracy stance, encouraging fans to download some of their work. It was therefore quite a surprise to hear that the band has recently hired the infamous Web-Sheriff to stop people from downloading their recently leaked album “Tonight”.

What a pairing: Hollywood slacker-hottie icon Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley slacker-hottie icon Kevin Rose have teamed up to create 24 Hours at Sundance, a Web-based reality show set at the eponymous film festival in Park City, Utah later this week.

An anonymous reader writes “Germany’s Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany’s equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the ‘fight child porn’ guise. The minister is quoted as saying: ‘We must not water down the problem’ in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: ‘I can’t know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.’ She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it’s pretty much a done deal.”

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alphadogg writes “Barack Obama’s election to US president has already brought a string of firsts, and on Wednesday there came another. The official presidential portrait was shot on a digital camera for the first time. The picture was taken by the White House’s new official photographer, Pete Souza, and issued by The Office of the President Elect through its Web site. It was taken on Tuesday evening at 5:38 p.m. using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, according to the metadata embedded in the image file.”

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