Digital Media Company, ValueFirst has acquired Way2online - a Hyderabad based Consumer Focused Internet Technology Company, which owns and operates Way2sms.com and 160by2.com – in an all cash deal (expected to be in the ballpark of Rs. 200 Crores)We earlier reported or rather broke the news of Way2SMS acquiring 160by2 in December, 2011.valuefirst
The VFirst transaction is one of the largest acquisitions in the Internet industry in India that makes ValueFirst (as claimed) the largest digital media company in India in terms of revenue as well as the number of users. With this acquisition, ValueFirst will cross 50 million profiled registered users, add 40,000 fresh registrations daily and get to 250 crores of revenue this financial year.
V. Raju – the founder and CEO of way2sms and his dedicated team have created a great asset that has huge scale, traffic, monetisation and has created excellent engagement with consumers. The potential to build further on way2sms.com, 160by2.com is immense as ValueFirst can now leverage the huge inventories that these sites have through its large sales infra and 4000 strong client base.
Way2sms has grown completely virally and despite Facebook’s popularity in India way2sms still adds an amazing 30,000 new registrations daily. Its one of the top searched keywords in India and more than 500 million contacts have been saved on way2sms.com. There is massive potential to explode the traffic further by creating social sharing with saved contacts – which is practically an extension of one’s phonebook”. [Kumar Apoorv, CEO, ValueFirst Group]
The Indian Music Industry (IMI), an industry consortium of 142 music Companies, has obtained orders from the Calcutta High Court directing all Internet Service Providers (387 ISPs) to block 104 music sites. Court orders were obtained on 27th of January, 6th February, and the 1st and 2nd of March 2012.
ISPs have been directed by the court to block all 104 sites within 36 hours. It essentially has the order against Songs.pk as a sample. Apurv Nagpal, CEO of Saregama, told MediaNama that the first order was against songs.pk, and subsequent court orders covered the rest of the sites. The IMI made a case against each website, he added, with proof of piracy of content from labels by each site.
Indian content businesses have increasingly been taking the legal route to combat piracy: T-Series filed lawsuits against several major companies like YouTube (which was later settled), MySpace, Yahoo and Ibibo, and even got the founders of Guruji.com arrested. Reliance BIG Pictures began getting generic “John Doe” orders trying to force filesharing sites to prevent movie uploads, and getting some of them blocked. This is by far the biggest anti-piracy initiative till date.
How They Will Block?
The court has asked ISPs to block the sites using any of the three methods:
DNS Name blocking: which ISPs use to for looking up IP addresses corresponding to domain names. However, it is possible for filesharing sites to change their domain name: as we reported earlier,like Songs.pk renamed as Songspk.pk
IP Address blocking using routers: IP address blocking using routers. However, it is possible for sites to be hosted on alternate servers, once blocked, so this might not entirely address the issue.
DPI based URL blocking: “This mechanism involves configuring the ISP’s network management system to monitor traffic by means of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and reset or block a customer’s connection to specific Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) as defined in the network management system’s Access Control Lists” DPI-based URL blocking is necessary can be used to block only a portion of a website, for example, “www.example.com/home.html” only, instead of “www.example.com.”
What This Means
The information docket lists each of the 387 ISPs in India, all the 104 music sites, and certain legitimate sites in India, which provide legal options for consumers: Saregama, Nokia Music, Flipkart, Cyworld, 7digital, Gaana*, In, IndiaONE, Meridhun, MyBand, Raaga, Radio One, Saavn, Dhingana, Artist Aloud and Telugu One.
The intent is evident : at one end, IMI is using legal means to stop illegal downloads, and at the other, it is propping up legal businesses. This could act as a fillip for legal sites – perhaps users might choose to stream music over the cloud or buy it online instead of downloading for free. On the other hand, they could find alternate means, through file sharing sites and torrents. Nagpal told that the IMI will go after filesharing sites next, so it appears that the battle against online piracy of Indian music is well and truly on now, and music labels are beginning to take online revenues a lot more seriously.
This might be a consequence of changes in mobile marketing and mobile ringbacktone subscription policies, enforced by the TRAI, which might have impacted mobile revenues.
Here is the list of the sites which IMI wants to block via court orders.
Some have been banned and some will be banned:
1. 22beats.com
2. absongs.com
3. apniisp.com
4. apunkabollywood.com
5. bollyextreme.com
6. bollymaza.com
7. bollywood-hits.com
8. bollywoodmp4.com
9. bollywoodstop.com
10. coolgoose.com
11. dacoolsite.com
12. desibajao.net/desihits.net
13. desifunda.net
14. desisong.com
15. dhakdhakradio.com
16. downloadming.com
17. freeindisongs.com
18. funmaza.com
19. gogrumogru.com/songs.ind.in
20. karachimag.com
21. koolfree.com
22. lovepaki.com
23. mastmag.com
24. mobraja.com
25. mp3fundoo.com
26. mp3paradice.com
27. musicduniya.com
28. musiqbuzz.com
29. muskurahat.com
30. netmasty.com
31. pakfellows.com
32. paktimes.com
33. playlist.pk
34. punjabcentral.com
35. radioreloaded.com
36. radiorhythmz.fm
37. radiorocking.com
38. rkmania.com
39. songbox.pk
40. songsinn.com
41. songsnonstop.com
42. songsrack.com
43. songsrip.com
44. songzila.com
45. topupmp3.com
46. town67.com
47. 100india.com
48. musicindiaonline.com
49. aflatune.com
50. bharatlover.com
51. cckerala.com
52. centralmusiq.com
53. chimatamusic.com
54. desimusic.com
55. desishock.net
56. dhool.com
57. dishant.com
58. filmicafe.com
59. filmimusic.com
60. fun1001.com
61. hindimirchi.com
62. sunomusic.com
63. telugufm.com
64. yolike.com
65. andhravilas.com
66. smashits.com
67. songdad.com
68. songslover.net
69. ragalahari.com
70. rameshmusic.com
71. freeplaymp3songdownload.com
72. freefundoo.com
73. desijammers.com
74. thenisai.com
75. mp3feelings.com
76. mazafm.com/hindimirchi.com
77. kjyesudas.com
78. jaanfm.com
79. gr8click.com
80. funscrape.com
81. chirkutonorkut.com
82. tamilmaalai.com
83. tamilkey.info
84. vmusiq.com
85. sevanthi.com
86. tamilwire.com
87. a2ztamilsongs.com
88. mymaza.com
89. germantamilan.com
90. 123music.mobi
91. desiden.mobi
92. longmp3.mobi
93. krazywap.com
94. mobile-zon.com
95. mymp3.mobi
96. samwep.com
97. spicyfm.com
98. wapindia.net
99. wapmaza.mobi
100. waprocks.in
101. mobidreamz.com
102. waptamil.net
103. zinkwap.com
104. songs.pk
An Akamai Technologies report, titled State of the Internet Q4 2011 holds the answers to the queries of those of you who think that the state of the Internet (no pun intended) is particularly deplorable in their part of the country. The report, which helped itself with data from the company’s Akamai Intelligent Platform has found the Internet connectivity in India to be among the worst in the world. The State of the Internet report provides with details about attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time. The report, among other details elaborated on several key factors. It stated that the connection speed in India, on an average was found to be as low as 0.9Mbps, which put it in line with countries, like Egypt and Venezuela.
The report further adds that the attack traffic percent in India in the fourth quarter of 2011 was 3 percent, which is lower than that it recorded in the third quarter of the year (3.7 percent). The average peak connection speed in the country was recorded to be 9651 Kbps in Q4 2011, while the average speed was 1664 Kbps. In the period of assessment (Q4 2011), there were 9,602,386 unique IP addresses that were recorded in the country. The average megabytes downloaded per month by mobile providers in the country was recorded to be 204 MB. Just a notch above India, in this respect is Kuwait (205 MB), closer on is Qatar (215 MB), while Hong Kong (3308 MB), Indonesia (6351 MB) in Asia fare exceedingly better.
In India, 27 percent of the connection is below the 256 Kbps mark, and only countries racing ahead of India in this respect is Libya, where 52 percent of the connections fall below the stipulated 256 Kbps mark, and Nigeria (31 percent), Iran (30 percent) and Nepal (32 percent). In countries like the U.S, this number is as low as 1.6 percent. Only a measly 0.5 percent of the Internet connection speeds in the country were found to be above 5 Mbps, which opposed to a whopping 83 percent by South Korea, 60 percent by Japan and 57 percent by Hong Kong pales.
Also, not surprisingly none of the Indian cities feature on the list of the fastest cities in the world, in terms of Internet connectivity speeds.
In India, 27 percent of the connection is below the 256 Kbps mark, and only countries racing ahead of India in this respect is Libya, where 52 percent of the connections fall below the stipulated 256 Kbps mark, and Nigeria (31 percent), Iran (30 percent) and Nepal (32 percent). In countries like the U.S, this number is as low as 1.6 percent. Only a measly 0.5 percent of the Internet connection speeds in the country were found to be above 5 Mbps, which opposed to a whopping 83 percent by South Korea, 60 percent by Japan and 57 percent by Hong Kong pales.
Also, not surprisingly none of the Indian cities feature on the list of the fastest cities in the world, in terms of Internet connectivity speeds.
On Wednesday, Sweden’s Supreme Court announced that it decided not to grant an appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay trial. After a nine-day trial in April 2009, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year each in prison and payment of roughly $7 million in damages. Each defendant appealed the verdict, and in November 2010 the sentences were shortened, but the fines were increased. The new sentence was again appealed, and now the Supreme Court has rejected those appeals. Sunde must serve eight months in prison, with Neij facing 10 and Lundström to face four months. Svartholm, who missed the hearing do to illness, will be forced to serve a one year prison sentence. One of the defendants, however, reached out to TorrentFreak and informed the website that he plans appeal the new sentence at the European Court of Justice.
We learned a lot of things about Facebook from its IPO filing. But there is one detail that sticks out for its improbable exactness: The $1.000 billion in profits Facebook reported for 2011.
The number wasn’t $998 million. It wasn’t $1.003 billion. It was $1.000 billion right on the dot.
Is this just a happy coincidence, or did Zuckerberg “manage” earnings to make a statement? Companies have many different accounting levers they can pull to slightly adjust their reported earnings.
Shaadi.com has brought a very innovative and a bizzare app called the Angry Brides designed to target the Indian dowry system. It will give all those angry women a chance to hit those snobbish engineers, doctors or pilots, we mean virtually. You can play this game on Facebook where women can beat up grooms with their heels, broomsticks, pans, eggs, shoe or a traditional chappal. “The Angry Brides game is our way of throwing a spotlight on the nuisance of dowry,” said Ram Bhamidi, senior VP and Head of online marketing at Shaadi.com.
Che is a 2008 biopic about Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro as Che. The film is actually a merged version of two films by Soderbergh: The Argentine and Guerrilla. The first part focuses on the Cuban revolution, from the moment Fidel Castro, Guevara and other revolutionaries landed on the Caribbean island, until they toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista two years later. The second part focuses on Che's attempted revolution and eventual demise in Bolivia.
Know any cool new dance techniques that we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments, or better yet, post your own video.
