Among the invited panel guests are politicians such as Eva Lichtenberger, who’s a member of the European Parliament for the Green Party, as well as Werner Müller, boss of the Austrian film and music industry trade association. The latter was looking forward to venting his thoughts on the future of entertainment in the digital age, until he found out that a former adversary was also coming to Vienna.

“On Friday, I was informed of the requested list of panelists and only then I learned that Peter Sunde, a convicted co-founder of the BitTorrent download portal The Pirate Bay, will participate in this discussion. For this reason, I would like to hereby withdraw my participation,” Werner Müller wrote to the organizers.

Although Peter Sunde discontinued his connection to The Pirate Bay a long time ago, and moved on to found the social micropayment startup Flattr, Müller refused to sit at a table with such a defiant voice. The fact that Sunde has different beliefs about copyright is not a problem, Müller said, but he is against inviting convicted criminals to the panel discussion.

“I find it a problem that the Greens have invited a criminally convicted co-founder of a file-sharing portal to a debate – a portal that is used by professional thieves to illegally enrich themselves using the creative work of authors – actions that as you noted in the statements, are still ongoing,” Müller wrote.

The Green Party, which organized the panel, is obviously disappointed with Müller’s cancellation. Organizer Marco Schreuder, who posted Müller’s cancellation letter in full on his weblog, notes that the time is not yet ripe for this matter to be discussed by the content owners, although the clock is ticking.

Peter Sunde on the other hand does not seem to be bothered with one less opponent in the upcoming discussion, and sees it as a small victory instead. “The best win you’ll have is when your enemies don’t even dare to show up, and have a lame excuse like that,” he tweeted yesterday.

“The case is not final so no final judgment is made. He’s just afraid of losing face. And he just did anyhow,” Peter added, referring to the fact that Müller ignored that the conviction of Peter and the three others associated with the Pirate Bay will be appealed later this year.

Plenty of discussion still to come, but in court.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Musicians and movie makers can share their work with the rest of the world with very little investment, something that was impossible little over a decade ago. Similarly, weblogs are able to provide news and information much faster than old media at relatively low costs.

The Internet has brought us a tool to share and consume content, but up until now there has been no really easy way for the consuming side to reward content producers. Flattr, a new venture started by The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman Peter Sunde, opts to change this.

Flattr has been in development since 2007 and finally opened up in Beta this week. It is best described as a mashup between social content discovery sites such as Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon, and an online payment service like Paypal.

“It’s a new revenue stream for people who share their content! It’s a combination of a donation system and a quality list of interesting content online,” said Peter Sunde describing the service to TorrentFreak.

Users who join the site can use it to discover interesting articles, great music and useful software, like on the aforementioned social discovery sites. If they see something they like they can give it a thumbs up, which is nothing new either.

The innovative part is that users of Flattr set a monthly budget they are willing to donate each month to the content they like. This can be as low as $2, or whatever the user is willing to share. At the end of the month the money is shared between the creators of the content they liked, who are all Flattr users as well.

In other words, Flattr allows consumers to flatter content producers for a flat-rate fee, and offers a revenue stream to those who create and share content.

The idea behind Flattr is innovative, but for the service to be a success the user base has to be significant. If Sunde and friends succeed in that they have an ideal solution to pay off the people who share their work for free.

Those who want to give Flattr a try can sign up for a Beta invite.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.