Potentially bad news for you UK readers. An amendment to the big Digital Britain report would kick off “hardcore copyright pirates” from the Internet. The amendment would require ISPs to tell repeat offenders to knock it off, or else. The cost for doing this—it’s not exactly inexpensive to keep track of copyright infringement, mail out letters, etc.—will be burdened by both the ISPs and rights holders.

You know how on the Internet, after something particularly stupid happens, someone says, “I lol’d”? Well, I lol’d after reading the following two sentences: “There is uncertainty surrounding the purchase of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) by Swedish-based Global Gaming Factory (GGF). Trading in GGF shares has been suspended and there are reports that the firm’s chairman—Magnus Bergman—has resigned.”

And now, the 900th note on Internet piracy written in the past week. It would appear that the UK is inching closer to a law that would require ISPs to disconnect people who download music, movies, etc. illegally. The proposal, currently making its way through the back rooms of the British Government, could well be placed before the Parliament during its next session.

So here’s an interesting look at Internet piracy you may well enjoy. The English Premier League complained the other day that illegal Web streams of live games (from Justin.tv and the like) were eating into its profits. No profits, no Premiership, was the implied threat. Then explain this to me: WWE ran a pay-per-view event in June called The Bash, and it marked the first time the company aggressively pursued illegal Web streams (again, from Justin.tv, Ustream, etc.). According to the company’s recently released financials, by way of the latest Wrestling Observer newsletter, The Bash was the third least purchased pay-per-view event “in years.”

Another day, another fun video. Today’s is “To Catch a Pirate,” a clever parody of the hit American TV show that’s “devoted to the subject of identifying and detaining those who contact people they believe to be below the age of consent over the Internet for sexual liaisons.” Only this time, we’re dealing with filthy pirates. Software pirates, to be exact. Makes sense: the BSA is behind the video.

Son of a gun-diddily-un. Just as I’m about to leave the house to fix my uncle’s broken computer—doesn’t it suck being “the computer guy” in the family?—I come across this great interview. It’s from The Sound of Young America, a public radio program based in L.A., and is with the music critic of the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot. It’s basically about the state of music in America today, and how the RIAA screwed itself over the past several years. Good stuff. So good, in fact, that I just bought the guy’s book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, from that Barnes and Noble e-book store.

Sweden’s anti-piracy law, IPRED, seems to be working, insofar as various Internet traffic monitors have seen a significant downturn in piracy. The day after the law went into effect, Web traffic fell by some 30 percent, and now, several months later (the law went into effect on April 1), an ISP there says piracy-related traffic is still “free-falling.”

Here’s a tip: this isn’t 1998, and you shouldn’t go around making “Web pages” that are filled with Nintendo ROMs. If you do, you could end up like the Japanese guy who’s now facing two years in prison and a $96,000 fine.

Another day, another RIAA trial victory. Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to cough up $675,000 to the record labels. It works out to $22,500 per song he downloaded off Kazaa years ago.

You might like to know that The Pirate Bay has been ordered to shut down in the Netherlands. That is, courts there would like to prevent people from inside the land of orange from accessing the site. Of course, The Pirate Bay, when they found out* about the case, denied all wrongdoing.

Not for nothing, but it looks like the sale of The Pirate Bay may well be in jeopardy. You’ll recall that the site announced last month that it had found a buyer in Global Gaming Factory. The deal was predicated on the ability of GGF to come up with nearly $7 million, which now doesn’t look all that certain.

Friends, you cannot go anywhere on the Internet without running into the OEM version of Windows 7. This is the same version of the operating system that’ll be loaded onto your Dells, your HPs, your Lenovos, etc.

Remember yesterday when I noted, by way of TorrentFreak, that the RIAA had all but considered DRM to be dead? Not true! Not true at all.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is the company that announced plans last month to buy The Pirate Bay now getting cold feet? A lawyer representing Global Gaming Factory X said in a Dutch court today that GGF would only buy The Pirate Bay if it could turn it into a “legitimate business.” And while we’re at it, I’d like to announce that I plan on purchasing the New York Knicks, but only if I can turn it into a winning baseball team.

So it looks like the hot, new trend is to buy the name of old peer-to-peer applications, then “resurrect” said application. Such is the case with Kazaa, which was the biggest P2P application in the post-Napster extravaganza of the early 2000s. Anyhow, someone out there plans to bring Kazaa back—legally, of course.

The chief spokesman for the RIAA, one Jonathan Lamy, has gone on record to say what any normal, not-on-the-RIAA-payroll person has been saying for some time now: “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Yes. Yes it it.

The former president of Grokster, Wayne Rosso, just dropped a little hint regarding The Pirate Bay 2.0. Mr. Rosso, writing on The Music Void, said that he’s been contacted by Hans Pandeya, the CEO of the company that’s poised to buy The Pirate Bay for nearly $8 million. What’s the big deal?

You wouldn’t want to be isoHunt founder Gary Fung these days. He’s currently facing an MPAA lawsuit that could well result in fines in the millions of dollars. (TorrentSpy was ordered to cough up $100 million last year.) And even if Mr. Fung doesn’t have that kind of money, and he doesn’t, the MPAA is prepared to pursue any judgment “for the rest of his life.” The MPAA sounds like it means business.

There’s a new study that suggests that teens are moving away from illegally downloading music. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that teens are turning to iTunes (or whatever) en masse, but rather is a reflection of the way the Web works in 2009. Music blogs, streaming sites like Imeem and YouTube (note: not all streaming on YouTube is 100 percent legal), applications like Spotify, etc. are increasingly the destination for teens today.

Put on your “WTF?!” hats, friends, as we watch this preview of Don’t Copy That Floppy 2. As you might imagine, it’s an anti-piracy video that’s supposed to teach people that Copyright Infringement is very, very wrong. It is a load of liquidy garbage.