Coastalbeat.com

Hey readers, thanks for checking out Tekno-Logic this week. Last week we looked at some of the latest post-trial events of The Pirate Bay trial, which included a surge of about 22,000 new members in the Swedish Pirate Party (Piratpartiet), a political group that is driven to change copyright and patent law and intellectual property rights. Even more news is out this past week showing that the Swedish Pirate Party expects to receive a seat in the European Parliament following their massive growth of new members.

A poll that was hosted by a major Swedish newspaper, the Daily News (DN.se), asked readers what their prospective votes would be in the upcoming elections season. The Pirate Party received 5.1% of the total vote, which leads to the belief that this party may have it's first seat in the European Parliament following elections on June 7; in 2006 elections they had received only 0.6% of the vote. Christian Engström is the expected top candidate for the seat. Further analysis of this first European elections poll shows that the Swedish Pirate Party received their largest support from young men, with the party having the second largest support from the 18-29 age group. The Daily News article also states that, despite the encouraging poll results, there is still some uncertainty that the results will reflect the election in June. Historically, younger voters have had less turnout in contrast to their elders, which could seriously affect the outcome of The Swedish Pirate Party's results.

In a TorrentFreak.com article, the Swedish Pirate Party's leader, Rick Falkvinge, was confident in the face of this problem, and said: “Scoring like this in a poll will further enhance support for the party. While there’s still much work to be done, we’re on the home stretch and have the goal in plain sight. June 7 is election day. On the morning of June 8, we’ll know.”

Let's take a look at other news for this week, which is Hulu's exciting announcement about a new partnership with the Walt Disney Company, and what it means for Hulu's future.

I first wrote an article introducing Hulu to my readers after the service ended a long beta period and finally went public, this was back in late March last year. I was a big fan of the service then, and I'm still a big fan of it now: Hulu is a free streaming video service that is ad-supported, and it provides content from a long list of entertainment and media production companies, both big and independent. They've been adding more and more TV shows and movies to their library, including some favorites of mine like classic cheesy sci-fi/action flick The Fifth Element, and my new favorite firefighter drama show on FX network, Rescue Me starring Denis Leary.

The latest news about Hulu is that , and you can expect to see some of their productions soon at Hulu.com. Besides this being great news for Walt Disney broadcasting through a new “channel”, this is really exciting news for Hulu. This move with Walt Disney practically solidifies Hulu for a strong future in online video broadcasting and distribution: they now have three out of four major media broadcasters tied with their service. The last major broadcasting company to hold out on Hulu is CBS, which streams its own productions online through CBS.com. In the All Things Digital article, CBS made a statement that sounds like they won't be making the switch anytime soon, but that they're still open to discussion: “CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships that allow fans across the internet to engage with our programming in such a way that we control our distribution, sales and profit.”

The transition for broadcasting companies to move to online audiences seems inevitable as technologies become more integrated with each other, and users become more prevalent with entertainment that's available online and movies or shows can be played on-demand instantly. Hulu has just been one of the most successful companies to usher in this movement with a devoted user base that's growing with their latest TV advertising campaign, you may have recognized one of their commercials during the most recent SuperBowl, featuring Alec Baldwin.

With or without CBS, I'm happy to see Hulu gaining more support because I anticipate a ton more video streaming with my bandwidth as a few of my favorite shows come to the end of their seasons. However, I'd like to see more content available online from CBS like episodes of their geek-comedy The Big Bang Theory. It will be interesting to see if CBS makes the move with Hulu eventually, or go solo and continue streaming on their own.