It seems like everything is being steadily reduced to one of three categories these days: terrorism, child pornography, or piracy. Mention of any of them will stop intelligent discourse with the rapidity of a falling watermelon striking the ground, and within the halls of government will derail legislation as surely as 1+1=2. When the categories begin to blur, however, is when the trouble really starts. In the past week that I know of (and probably a bit before, because this sort of shitstorm takes a while to ramp up) blogger.com was forced to delete six music blogs …

Notorious BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay somehow came into possession of the net.domain of an organization called the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), which is said to be one of the Net's foremost anti-piracy organizations. The IFPI's been a thorn in the side of Pirate Bay for years, even going so far as to try to get hold of files on the 'tracker held by the Swedish police force, with no success. Supposedly, black hat tricks weren't needed to get hold of the domain (somebody probably sniped the domain the moment its registration expired), and as result …