Free Republic

Oh let the laughter ensue raucously on this one folks. Seriously how ridiculously stupid do you have to be to not only steal music from the very people you are suppose to be representing, and protecting, but then to get caught doing it. It all started back in 2006 when Dutch performer Melchior Rietveldt was approached by the anti-piracy group BREIN to write a score for an anti-piracy video which he was led to believe would only be shown a a local arts festival. Well it turns out that his music found its way on a large number of retail...

China is sending its largest surface combatant, the amphibious landing ship Kunlun Shan, to the Gulf of Aden to serve as a command ship for a PLA Navy anti-piracy task force, according to China Defense Blog. This marks the first deployment of the 071 LPD, launched in 2006, the largest naval ship of its own design China has built to date with an estimated displacement of around 20,000 tons. China is scheduled to command the multinational task force operating off the coast of piracy haven Somalia. Accompanying the Kunlun Shan is the destroyer Lanzhou and the supply ship Weishanhu. Available...

Japan plans to establish a $40 million strategic naval base in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti, where U.S. and French forces are deployed to combat al-Qaida jihadists. The facility, intended to boost the fight against Somali pirates preying on vital shipping lanes, will be Japan's first foreign military base since World War II. "This will be the only Japanese base outside our country and the first in Africa," said Japanese navy Capt. Keizo Kitagawa, commander of the Japanese flotilla deployed with the international anti-piracy task force in the Gulf of Aden. He will oversee establishment of the base....

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is announcing new efforts to freeze pirate booty, part of a series of diplomatic steps by the Obama administration to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia. Clinton said Wednesday the administration would call for immediate meetings of an international counter-piracy task force to expand current naval coordination against pirates. The administration also will send an envoy to a Somali donors conference scheduled for next week in Brussels, and will attempt to organize meetings with officials of Somali's transitional government as well as regional leaders in Somali's semiautonomous Puntland.

If you were online and couldn't access some websites today, we might know the reason why. The FBI raided a Dallas building that houses servers for several different websites. CBS 11 News has learned that the raid is part of a general criminal investigation. Because of the confiscation of computers at Core IP Networks, a number of legitimate businesses have been affected. From the downtown office building in the 2300 block of Bryan Street, FBI agents seized what one source described as millions of dollars in computer equipment. Matthew Simpson, the owner of Core IP Networks, said in a letter...

A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate would, if passed, dramatically reshape copyright law by prohibiting file-trading networks and some consumer electronics devices on the grounds that they could be used for unlawful purposes. The proposal, called the Induce Act, says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. In the draft bill seen by CNET News.com, inducement is defined as "aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures" and can be punished with civil fines and, in some circumstances, lengthy prison terms....

<p>LOS ANGELES - Walt Disney Co. has settled a $20-million "whistle-blower" lawsuit brought by a former executive who says she was fired for refusing to help the company allegedly cheat the IRS. The case, scheduled to go to trial Jan. 27, was settled late last week, the Los Angeles Times reported. The terms were not disclosed.</p>