pirate name

For those of you who didn't enter and will thus be forced to walk that thar plank, we shall first recap!

We had three full copies of the pirate-themed MMO, Bounty Bay Online, to give away along with a whopping fifty account keys for two-weeks of free gameplay for some lucky runners up. All we asked in return is that you tell us the secret pirate name you've wanted since childhood.

Now, with the competition closed, it's time to announce the winners once and for all!

Our first winner, bagging himself a full copy of the game as loot, is Alex Manktelow, who has secretly harboured a life-long wish to be known as Captain Skankletoes.

Next in line is Ivan Lynn, who wasn't afraid to admit that he should always wished his birth name had been Captain Stinky Fingers, apparently for "obvious reasons". Moving swiftly on...

Our favourite entry by far however was from Tommy Giovannelli, who made even our most hardcore PC case modder chuckle with his piratey name of Captain Long-Mod Dremel Beard because, yes, a Dremel beard would be truly, truly awesome.

As for all you runners up - you need not worry. There's a tad too many of you for our lazy fingers to talk about (it was a late, grog-filled evening last night), but we'll be contacting you all directly over the next few hours and sending you the codes you'll need.

InMediaDefender, A company hired by record labels to disrupt and monitor peer-to-peer networks, had 6,000 of its internal emails leaked after an employee who had been forwarding all of his company email to a gmail account had his account hacked. This story started out bad for MediaDefender, but today marks a new low.

Hacker group MediaDefender-Defender has released MediaDefender's source code as a torrent on The Pirate Bay under the name "MediaDefender.Source.TrapperKeeper-MDD." A message posted there explains that they posted the 50MB source code file so that members of the public can comb through it to identify the decoy user accounts set up by MediaDefender on file sharing networks:

"MediaDefender-Defenders proudly presents the source code that MediaDefender use[s].

"The source is complete for their operations regarding Kazaa, bittorrent, gnutella etc. This system is now released for the public in order to identify the decoys they set up. A special thanks to the MD employee that gave this to us."

Peer-to-peer developers might also be able to use the source code to develop networks more resistant to MediaDefender and other software used by labels and studios to curb file sharing.
the meantime, feel free to congratulate the winners or moan about your bad luck in the forums! Earlier this week, a couple of UK retailers (accidentally or otherwise), were accused of breaking the street date for Bungie's titanic third release, while similar reports have been hinted in other parts of the world, too.

Of course, illegally pirated versions of the full title won't work on normal Xbox 360 consoles, and those who have modified their systems could face bans from Xbox Live if Microsoft detect user agreement-breaching modifications. No Xbox Live would of course mean no online gaming; one of the most important aspects of the new release in any case.

That said, news of the game's leak once again highlights the organised and determined efforts of software pirates, who more often than not glean copies of big name releases prior to release.