News written by James Delahunty (April, 2009)

Twenty individuals have been sentenced to jail time averaging at about eight months each following a trial in Udine for copyright infringement. The case emerged after a raid was carried out by he local Fiscal Police (GdF) acting on a warrant issued by the public prosecutor in 2007.

It involved the sale of compilation CDs on eBay, the world's largest auction site. The GdF, assisted by the Italian industry's anti-piracy organization FPM, had collected evidence of the massive distribution of infringing CD-ROMs which contained mp3 files downloaded from file-sharing networks.

More than 600,000 music tracks were found, and personal computers and CD burners were seized by police. The individuals are also facing up to €10 million in administrative sanctions.

It has been reported that Apple Inc. is hiring new blood from the semiconductor industry in a bid to boost its chip design capabilities. The new employees will build Apple's capabilities to design its own chips which will both give Apple the ability to bring new features to its products and share fewer details about it plans with outside chip vendors.

A spokesman for Apple confirmed that it has hired both Bob Drebin and Raja Koduri. Both held the position of chief technology office of the graphics products group at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The hires were reported or rumored in a number of online outlets earlier in the week.

The company has been hiring engineers to create multifunction chips using in cell phones, but sources familiar with the matter say they don't expect internally designed chips to emerge until next year at the earliest. Apple acquired P.A. Semi last year. a designer of low-power microchips. Analysts said the move was to customize key parts for its iPhone, iPod and Macintosh products.

According to BusinessWeek, Apple and Verizon Wireless are in talks to offer iPhone-like devices to the market. The report cites two people familiar with the matter, claiming that Apple has produced prototypes of two new devices and that discussions stretching back six months included Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

One of the sources who saw the devices described one as an "iPhone lite". The other is a media device would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos, and could place calls using Wi-Fi. The sources go on to say that one of the devices might reach the market as early as this summer.

AT&T has been Apple's sole carrier for the iPhone. The carrier has benefited immensely from the exclusive deal, adding seven million subscribers because of it. It has reportedly been in talks with Apple to extend the agreement, which is set to expire as early as next year.

Apple working more closely with Verizon Wireless, a combination of Verizon Communications and Vodafone, might pressure AT&T into accepting terms that are biased toward Apple's interests in a new deal. It is also worth noting that Verizon could have been the sole carrier for iPhone initially, but it objected to sharing monthly service fees and Apple's desire to choose which retailers could sell the phone.

According to an upcoming report from In-Stat, the next generation of Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n, will dominate the HD market. Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI), WirelessHD, and Ultrawideband (UWB) are contenders for wireless High-definition delivery systems within the home. However, In-Stat comments that "the ubiquity of Wi-Fi technology is proving unstoppable."

"802.11n is the next generation of the immensely popular Wi-Fi family. It promises data rates above 100Mbps and is backwards compatible," reckons In-Stat analyst Brian O’Rourke. "The installed base of Wi-Fi is immense, and effectively includes all mobile PCs, many mobile phones and a wide variety of CE devices. The primary drawback to 802.11n is expense, since it requires codec technology on both ends to transmit HD video. Neither of its primary competitors, WHDI and WirelessHD, require codecs."

According to Microsoft's Senior Vice President for the Windows Business, Bill Veghte, the new Windows 7 operating system might arrive on store shelves in late 2009. Speaking to Bloomberg, he commented that a "holiday release is accomplishable." However, he would not comment on the possibility of the upcoming Windows upgrade being released before the holiday season.

Many analysts are expecting that Windows 7 will be released earlier than Veghte is expecting, with some predicting a September 2009 release. The first release candidate version of the operating system will be made available on Thursday to Technet and MSDN subscribers, and everybody else on May 5.

Recently it was revealed that Windows 7 will include an add-on to run Windows XP SP3 in a virtual environment, extending a crutch to older applications that might have issues running on the new operating system. It also promised to reduce the occurrence of User Account Control (UAC) prompts; one of Vista's most disliked default features.

A creator of one of the first botnets that uses P2P technology to distribute instructions to drones has escaped a jail sentence. Jason Michael Milmont, 20, of Cheyenne, Wyoming was sentenced instead to five years of supervised probation, a year of home confinement and has been ordered to pay almost $37,000 in restitution.

"This young man has quite a bit of talent and we asked that he turn that talent toward good," said John Powell, a spokesman for the US Attorney's office in Cheyenne. "He's helped us somewhat toward that." He had been facing up to seven years in prison and a fine up to $250,000.

Milmont admitted last year to creating the Nugache Worm, which used a decentralized network to distribute commands among compromised machines, making it much harder to tackle a botnet. The worm was spread with phony AOL instant messenger and Limewire installers.

Milmont used the network to steal usernames and passwords for online accounts, as well as credit card details. He used stolen credit card information to purchase goods on the Internet, which he had delivered to vacant houses.

Matrox Video Products Group announced last week the new Matrox CompressHD H.264 accelerator card for the Mac. It is the first implementation of Matrox MAX technology. Matrox MAX technology uses a dedicated hardware processor to accelerate the creation of H.264 files for mobile devices, the web and Blu-ray discs.

Matrox CompressHD works in systems with or without a video I/O device. Ease of use is ensured through direct integration with Apple Compressor on the Mac. As an added benefit, the Matrox MAX technology allows direct export to higher-quality H.264 Blu-ray compliant files from Compressor. By using specialized hardware acceleration, jobs are finished with faster speed and system resources are liberated for other tasks.

"Final Cut Studio is the creative tool of choice for video professionals around the world," said Richard Townhill, Apple's director of Video Applications Marketing. "By adding the Matrox CompressHD accelerator to a Mac Pro, editors can spend more time creating the movie they want and less time getting it ready for distribution."

Beta testers have revealed that Apple Inc.'s QuickTime media playback and editing software is getting several video-sharing options, including the ability to upload videos directly to YouTube. The software will convert and upload any support multimedia file to Google Inc.'s popular video sharing site, as long as the user has his/her account details.

This is just the latest in a line of Apple products that have come with built-in support for YouTube at some level. Both the iPhone and iPod Touch play YouTube videos directly, and the company's Apple TV device also has built-in support. Recent releases of iMovie also have incorporated support for YouTube.

In addition to the video-sharing functions bring brought to QuickTime, it will also get support for converting and exporting your video files to work on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. The files will automatically be imported to iTunes before being synced to the devices.

After being rejected by the French National Assembly earlier this month, the controversial "three strikes" Internet piracy bill backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy has returned to Parliament for debate. The legislation proposes cutting Internet service for users caught downloading movies and other content illegally three times.

A state agency would be formed to warn the user the first two times and then make the moves to get the connection suspended. It was expected to pass earlier this month, but a low turnout and two members of Sarkozy's party joining the opposition turned the tide. IFPI chairman John Kennedy said the vote was "disappointing".

"President Sarkozy has been a true champion of intellectual property rights and the proposed law is an effective and proportionate way of tackling online copyright infringement and migrating users to the wide variety of legal music services in France," Kennedy said.

The two dissenting votes were in objection to a requirement that would have forced users suspended from Internet access to keep paying their bill. An amended version is before the Assembly and Senate for debate, where opponents and supporters can add further changes.

Police in Hungary have raided and shut down several BitTorrent and Warez sites in actions against growing Internet piracy in the country. Hungary was kept on the piracy "watch list" for many reasons, one being the existence of several "pay to leech" websites.

"It is difficult to energize police and customs officials to investigate Internet cases because Hungarian court decisions are not a deterrent," an International Intellectual Property Alliance report stated.

Ever since the report authorities have moved against piracy on several occasions, and earlier this month, Hungarian police carried out raids on four BitTorrent trackers including Bitlove, BitMusic and Indep, as well as other warez and spam sites. The police arrested up to ten individuals, eventually detaining six for further questioning.

The police targeted these websites specifically because they were not free. Members were expected to pay for access to the websites through premium SMS.

NBC Universal and News Corp.'s Hulu online video service took the No. 3 spot last year for Internet video. It was launched about 13 months ago, and has grown considerably in that time. During March, over 380 million videos were viewed on Hulu, a 14 percent rise from February, according to ComScore.

The site gathered 41.6 million unique viewers last month, with a growth rate that outpaced YouTube and the overall online video industry. The growth of Hulu shows the migration of viewers toward long-form videos on the Internet. The average Hulu video was almost twice as long as the overall average online video, according to ComScore.

It's not a surprise at all that Google Inc.'s YouTube was the dominant video site in March, accounting for 49 percent of all video views and 59 percent of viewers. The company is looking to fight for Hulu's new found audience having recently announced agreements with content companies that would bring full length movies and TV shows to the website.

RealNetworks Chief Executive Officer, Rob Glaser, told a court on Tuesday that Real's recently released DVD copying software is for legitimate users and not intended to be used for piracy. "We were both designing our product and marketing our product for legitimate use," he said. "If they didn't want to be legitimate users, there were so many other alternatives they could go to and our product would be an inferior product."

The software had a short life on the market so far, after being pulled days after release by court order in September 2008. This puts the tech industry and Hollywood into a battle of control over digital media again. The studios argue that RealDVD can be used to make copies of rented DVDs as well as personally owned DVDs.

Glaser argued that scofflaws are unlikely to use RealDVD, which costs US$30 and comes with copy control features to make it difficult to disseminate any copies of a DVD. He said that if a user wanted to make a copy of a movie, all they would have to do is "Google DVD Ripper". The studios had their expert witness Robert Schumann on the stand explaining how RealNetworks had deliberately circumvented copy protection mechanisms, particularly ARccOS.

Hong Kong set a precedent in 2005 when a man was jailed for three months for downloading and sharing films using BitTorrent software, the first conviction of its kind in the world.

Customs officers announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a man for the same actions, which marks the third time it has happened.

He was arrested after investigators monitoring his Internet usage caught him sharing two films on Monday night. The suspect was later released on bail as the customs officers prepare to build the third case of its kind in the region.

Another investigation is ongoing into activities of a woman after customs officers installed a monitoring system to track the activities of BitTorrent users in the city of 7 million.

Patricia Santangelo, a mother of five, has been involved in a legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) since 2005. Originally, Patricia herself was accused of downloading and sharing songs from artists such as Michael Jackson, using the Kazaa P2P client. Patricia denied it and it became pretty obvious quickly that she simply did not have the knowledge required to share music at the time.

The RIAA eventually dropped the case against her, but decided to sue two of her children, Michelle and Robert, aged 20 and 16 at the time. It said that Michelle had admitted piracy in a deposition and that Robert had been implicated by a family friend. They denied wrongdoing. However, since both are now in college and feel that the case is holding them back, they agreed to pay $7,000 in damages.

They paid half the amount April 20 and are to make six payments of $583.33 by October. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Santangelos," Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA. She didn't give any information on how much the RIAA spent to reach a $7,000 settlement, but did say: "We don't break out costs per case, and it's not a question of it being 'worth it' or a 'victory.'"

We reported that the EU's telecom's reform efforts were under threat when questions of how to handle Internet piracy caused a spat between Parliament and states, despite the fact that the issue was never part of the reform which focused more on infrastructure. European lawmakers worried that over two years work was under threat from a last minute debate over the responsibility of Internet Service Providers (ISP) to fight Internet piracy.

However, it now appears that the European parliament and states have come to a draft deal to resolve the argument and cut the delays. "Subject to final agreement by all member states tomorrow I do think we have a package which will advance the European telecoms sector," said Malcolm Harbour, a British center-right member of the European Parliament.

He continued: "I am absolutely delighted. It has been deeply frustrating to feel this one issue which was not in any way at the center of what we were doing could derail two years of work." The Parliament agreed that the body of the reform must emphasize consumers' freedom to access the Internet, and that cutting of Internet access for crimes like copyright infringement should be done with the agreement of an impartial and independent tribunal, as outlined under the European Convention of Human Rights.

A recently reported study that suggested large numbers of young gamers exhibit signs of addition to videogames has come under scrutiny from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). The trade group sent a letter to Dr Robert Kail (editor of Psychological Science), citing a blog by ABC News' director of polling, Gary Langer, which called into question the claim that the results can be applied to the broader population.

The study, carried out by Professor Douglas Gentile, used data from Harris Interactive through an opt-in online survey. The survey itself actually reads, "because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated."

Gentile responded to this discovery by admitting making a mistake. "I'd assumed they had gathered the population initially as part of a random probability sample, I missed that when I was writing this up. That is an error then on my part." Michael Gallagher, CEO of The ESA, wrote in his letter to Dr Kail: "The concern arises from the fact that the sample group for the study was not randomly chosen… It was a 'convenience' sample of individuals who agreed to participate in the survey."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had teamed with OdioWorks lawyers to file a lawsuit against Apple Inc. in a federal court, claiming the company has stifling free speech by bullying OdioWorks into pulling content that shows how to use an iPod with stores other than iTunes. "I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously," said OdioWorks owner Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks.

He continued: "Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions." The problem Apple had was with the BluWiki site, which contained information on using the company's iPhone and iPod products with stores other than iTunes.

BluWiki users edited it themselevs, sharing insights on reverse engineering Apple software to "manage their media with whatever program they chose." However, late last year, the BluWiki site was shut down after Apple lawyers threatened to sue for spreading word of how to circumvent its digital rights management technology.

According to the manual for JVC's first Blu-ray player to hit the United States, the XV-PB1 supports the Matroska (MKV) multimedia container. It's manual states it supports MPEG-4/AVC content up to 1080p (from file on USB, or streamed), making the MKV container support even better. MKV is a very flexible multimedia container format that is used widely for High-definition content.

Swedish telecommunications firm Tele2 announced yesterday that it will not keep records of IP address usage to protect its customers. "We will erase the IP addresses after they have been used for our internal use, starting today," Niclas Palmstierna, Tele2's managing director for Sweden, told AFP. The measure was introduced after Sweden's adoption of IPRED.

It is a similar policy as was introduced by Bahnof, a smaller Swedish Internet firm that also won't reveal the user's behind IP addresses. A police official has commented that such measures will make it virtually impossible to crack down on copyright infringement crimes on the Internet as had been planned.

"In certain cases, this will make an investigation impossible," said Stefan Kronkvist, the head of Swedish police's internet crime unit. Tele2 claims to have 600,000 people among its Internet clients. Internet piracy is under the spotlight in Sweden like never before since the Pirate Bay trial kicked off in February.

Mozilla has released both a new stable Firefox update addressing a couple of security and stability issues, and also a new Beta version of the popular web browser. The new version changes and download links if needed, are below...

Firefox 3.0.10 -- Changes From 3.0.9

• Fixed two security issues.
• Fixed a major stability issue.
• See the Firefox 3.0.9 release notes for changes in previous releases.

• This beta is now available in 70 languages - get your local version.
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5

The four men sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.6 million after being found guilty of assisting copyright infringement should be given a new trial because the Judge was biased, a court heard on Monday. The lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, one of the four founders of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker, said that Judge Tomas Norstrom's affiliation with groups for copyright protection should have disqualified him.

"Tomas Norstrom was biased during the trial ... Secondly, he neglected to inform the defendants and their lawyers of the facts that constituted the bias," defense lawyer Per Samuelson said in the document, obtained by Reuters. The court of appeal now must decide whether to send the case back to District Court.

Judge Norstrom is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright and a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. Peter Danowsky, A board member of The Swedish Association for Copyright, represented the film and music industries in the trial. Lundstrom's lawyer last week filed an appeal, asking the court of appeal to change the verdict and dismiss the prosecution and the claims for compensation.

ASUS today released the new ASUS Express TV Stick which features high quality digital (DVBT) and analog TV signal reception, plus a host of versatile utilities. By just inserting the ASUS Express TV Stick into the computer's USB 2.0 port, it will automatically install software to enable recording or viewing of high-quality digital and analog TV programs.

The ASUS Express TV Stick is the world's first hybrid TV stick to come equipped with free memory that incorporates the pre-installed software. Therefore, all users have to do is to plug it into their PCs or NBs, whereupon the auto-installation function will install the driver and run the UI automatically.

The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the independent regulator and competition authority for the communication industries in the United Kingdom, could eventually derail the BBC's proposed new set-top box project, dubbed "iPlayer in hardware". The regulator wrote to the BBC Trust outlining several concerns it had about the new project and their consequences for competition.

"Commercially-led propositions which seek to compete with Canvas should not be unfairly prevented from accessing BBC content," it read. It also has concerns about technical standards, user interface (EPG), the BBC's partnerships with other broadcasters and program quality standards.

Project Canvas is a Linux-based box that attempts to update Freeview with PVR functionality, web access, IPTV and other features. It won't be manufactured by the BBC, but the broadcaster wants to set a specification that other broadcasters can use. It's also promised not to aggregate content for the box, or give preferential treatment to BBC content in the Canvas spec.

James Gunn, a director of Horror movies, has criticized Microsoft for its poor handling of original content on the Xbox Live service. According to Gunn, he was promised absolute freedom to create content for the Horror Goes Comedy series, but soon became subject to conservative content cuts and rejections, leading him to brand Microsoft as "the most dreadful, non-talent friendly company".

"I still love Xbox gaming, but I think their original content plans are DOA, precisely because of situations like the experience I and some of the other directors had on the Horror Goes Comedy series," Gunn wrote on his blog. To emphasize his point, he cites Grand Theft Auto IV and episodes of South Park that are available for Xbox 360.

"Microsoft wouldn't let us get close to the extremity of that material, so I don't know how in the world they planned to create their own successful original content," he explained. "People didn't want to see our shows, which were barely a half-step removed from something you'd see on the Disney Channel. It's a shame. I really think Xbox could have been its own Network, as well as a gaming console, DVR, and way to buy movies. I saw them as the future."

Microsoft has half-learned a very important lesson from users of the Windows Vista operating systems; enough with the damn User Account Control prompts already! While Windows 7 still has some UAC prompts on by default (surely can be disabled like with Vista) they will be cut down by about 29 percent, which still leaves a whole lot of annoying prompts.

"From our beta and internal testing, we expect a 29% decrease in UAC prompts compared to Windows Vista," Paul Cooke, Microsoft Corp.'s director of Windows 7 client enterprise security, said last week. The UAC prompts are intended to prevent malware infections by asking the user to confirm program executions before they can take place.

Unfortunately, with Windows Vista even the most patient user was suffering from "click fatigue," according to an internal Microsoft study. While scaling back is always welcome, it's probably fair to say that users who can, will disable the prompts altogether for the good of their mental health.

In other Windows 7 news, Windows Media Player 12 ships with the Release Candidate of the operating system, and will include codec support for many popular formats out of the box. Users reportedly won't have to install an XviD codec to decode XviD video, and won't need a separate splitter installed for MP4 content. Apple QuickTime files also reportedly play with the software without any additional installations.

Microsoft's virtual festival, Xtival '09 runs from May 1 to 4 (this weekend) and during that time frame, Xbox Live Gold Membership will be free to all Xbox Live users (at least in the UK).

"We don't think anyone should miss out on the treats we've got lined-up this year, which is why we're giving everyone Xbox Live Gold membership FREE for the entire weekend," the Xtival page reads.

"There are even bigger competitions and tournaments to rock, and loads of exclusive HD movies, music and game downloads to check out - so round up all your friends and get ready for what is set to be the best Xtival yet!," it continues.

Xtival '08 offered up early release of a high-definition music video from The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die album, plus exclusive Franz Ferdinand, Watchmen and Oasis content.

Qualcomm and Broadcom have come to an agreement that will end years of litigation that spanned across three continents. Over a four year period, Qualcomm will pay a whopping $891 million to mobile chip rival Broadcom, after losing several patent infringement cases against the company. It will make a first payment of $200 million by the end of June this year.

Qualcomm rescheduled its quarterly earnings call after announcing that it was in advanced settlement talks with Broadcom, whom it has been fighting a legal battle with since 2005. "It's clearly costing Qualcomm a lot but it's best for both companies to move on." said Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder. "It's a win for Broadcom."

Analysts expect Qualcomm will report quarterly revenue of $2.35 billion today. The settlement will lead to the dismissal of all litigation between the companies, including patent infringement claims Broadcom brought against Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission.

Broadcom said it will also withdraw its complaints against Qualcomm to the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission as part of the deal.

Netflix has added a lot of subscribers in the past couple of years, posting surprising results and fending off competition from much larger corporations such as Blockbuster. However, the company has acknowledged itself that competition is coming now from other directions, particularly with kiosks.

"In exit surveys of canceling Netflix subscribers, kiosk is more and more frequently named as where they will go now for movies," Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said. "By the end of the year, kiosks will likely be our number one competitor as video stores fall inversely," he said, adding the "long-term effects of ubiquitous $1 new release DVD rental are not positive for us or the industry as a whole."

He is not alone in that belief either, as Hollywood studios have also raised concerns about the low prices that kiosks charge, saying it is hurting DVD retailers. When asked how Netflix plans to compete with this threat to its business, Hastings said, "We have to focus on our differentiators, such as selection, convenience and the value of unlimited streaming. We'll focus on our benefits and they'll focus on theirs."

In an effort to convince businesses to migrate to Windows 7, Microsoft will offer an add-on for the upcoming operating system that will allow users to run applications designed for Windows XP in a virtual machine. This represents the first time Microsoft has relied on virtualization for backwards compatibility.

The add-on, called "Windows XP Mode" creates an XP virtual environment running under Virtual PC within Windows 7. "All you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode," said Scott Woodgate, the director of Windows enterprise and virtualization strategy. "The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop and then you can run them directly from Windows 7."

Windows XP Mode (XPM) will be available as a free download for users of Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise, whereas presumably more cut-down versions of the operating system will require a fee to add the functionality. A fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3 will be included with the add-on.

Pic Source: SuperSite for Windows

Tiga, a trade group representing the video games industry in the UK, has criticized Alistair Darling's budget for not including a requested tax break for game developers. Tiga's Chief Executive Officer, Richard Wilson, remarked that it is "disappointing that while Alistair Darling plans to spend £671bn over the coming financial year, he could not find the £150m over five years to invest in the tax break for games production."

Wilson had called on the government in the weeks leading up to Wednesday's budget to include a 20 percent tax break for games developers to help spur growth in the games industry in the UK. He said that games development is a "growing sector" and that the UK had a world-beating sector developing as it is.

The games industry might receive some help from the budget however, as it includes a £750m Strategic Investment Fund. About £50 million of this will go to the Technology Strategy Board (TIB) and a further £10 million will be given to the UK Trade and Investment (UKT&I) body. TIB helps promote "technology-enabled innovation" across the UK and UKT&I assists firms to compete in international markets.

Sony executives have acknowledge BD-Live's numerous roll-out problems but claim that the demand for, and interest in BD-Live is growing among consumers. The execs vowed to continue pushing improvements to the service, which adds more interactivity and content to Blu-ray Disc titles for customers.

David Bishop, President of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, acknowledged several obstacles with BD-Live, including consumers difficulty getting it to work. It requires that a compatible Blu-ray player be connected to a broadband connection, but in many BD-enabled homes, the source for the connection is not located in the living room.

BD-Live enhanced titles have also been criticized for not offering good enough content. "We're just in the Pong stage of BD Live," said Bishop, likening the Blu-ray feature to the primitive computer game. "The launch has posed many challenges for both Sony and the industry. There was the need for consumers to introduce their broadband connection to their entertainment system, which was generally located elsewhere in the home. It also has taken some time to grasp BD Live's capabilities. Many of our initial features were regarded as a bit underwhelming."

A caller named Alberto told an incredible story to HLN money expert Clark Howard on CNN which emphasizes once again, the need to read fine print. Recently vacationing in Mexico, Alberto used his data card to download Wall-E for his nephew. When he returned home, he was shocked to receive a bill for $62,000 from his wireless carrier. The carrier lowered the cost to $17,000 when he contested it, saying that is what it cost to deliver the movie to him.

While that cost for downloading a movie is totally ridiculous whatever way you look at it, Alberto did make a huge mistake by not checking and activating roaming options for voice and data plans before he went traveling. Unfortunately, this is quite a common problem. There is another class action case brewing over a $2,000 bill received by an iPhone owner after using the service in Mexico.

The carriers insist that the roaming charges in other countries are extravagant and that they have to pass on the fees to the customers. So, again, remember to check your carrier's website or any information you got when you joined for roaming options before you leave.

Gamefly, a Netflix-like rent-by-mail service specifically for video games, has filed a complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission which accuses the United States Postal Service (USPS) of improper sorting, resulting in goods being damaged in transit. The service is useful for those who don't want to pay top dollar for new game titles. Like Netflix, subscribers choose a number of games to rent each month, keep them for as long as they like and then mail them back.

Gamefly calculated that it sends out 590,000 games and receives 510,000 games back from subscribers a month. It estimated that between 1% and 2% of the discs end up broken. "Testing by GameFly and Postal Service personnel has revealed that breakage occurs during the processing of DVD mailers on Postal Service automated mail processing equipment," Gamefly states.

While some discs can expected to be broken in transit, and some stolen (19 Postal Service employees have been arrested to date for stealing games), Gamefly goes on to accuse the USPS of providing a better service to other rent-by-mail services, including Netflix and Blockbuster. "On routine visits to multiple Postal Service facilities, GameFly's employees have observed that a large percentage of mail pieces from Netflix and Blockbuster are culled from the automated letter processing stream," the complaint states.

Following a decision last year by a Danish court which forced the ISP Tele2/Telenor to block access to the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker (at the request of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), the ruling now seems set to be analyzed by the Supreme Court in the country, after an appeals body accepted petition from Telenor to do so.

"We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to find out whether it is Internet Service Providers responsibility to ensure the closure of a website," said Telenor’s regulatory chief Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer. "We have always been highly skeptical when we receive subpoenas in this type of case."

He said that the Supreme Court will help to clarify the situation for those involved in site blocking cases in the future. "We seek a clarification of whether we have a responsibility to help the stuff flowing through our networks, as we have no commercial interest in the individual sites," said Pfeiffer, commenting that it makes more sense to get to the source of the problem anyway.

Wii Fit has managed to stay top of video games charts in the UK for a third consecutive week, adding up to 12 total weeks that it has hit the #1 spot. It's continued recent success could be explained by a growing interest in exercise equipment and weight loss solutions shortly before summer. Chart-Track reported it on top of the list with sales down by 30 percent.

The recently released sequel, The Godfather Part II, took the number 2 spot with its sales down 35 percent. Fifa 09 took the number 3 spot with a 17 percent drop in sales. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games saw sales slide by 35 percent, but still came in fourth, followed by Resident Evil 5 at number 5, with sales down 30 per cent.

Professor Layton, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Play, Call of Duty: World at War and Carnival: Funfair Games made up the remaining five of the top 10 in the region.

DTS Inc. has announced new audio product tools aimed at the professional and prosumer markets. The new products include DTS-HD Master Audio Suite v2.0 and SurCode's DTS-HD solutions for Apple Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio users. With the increase in Blu-ray Disc production and penetration of Blu-ray hardware, these offerings provide content producers new ways to deliver best-in-class DTS audio on their BD titles.

"At DTS, we are thrilled to announce new production tools that continue to make the Blu-ray audio production process faster, easier, and more accessible than ever," says Ronny Katz, Director of Professional Audio at DTS. Hundreds of Blu-ray titles on the market utilize DTS-HD's unique One-stream architecture that provides backwards compatibility.

The DTS-HD Master Audio Suite gets over 30 features and enhancements in the new Version 2.0 of the software. adds new Bonus View encoding features including dynamic Mono panning as well as Seamless Branching optimization for multi-story and multi-angle titles. MAS v2.0 also features the fastest BD audio encoder on the market, at 3 to 4 times faster than real-time for lossless audio encodes.

A new Internet censorship bill that has broad Government backing in Germany is intended to block access to websites hosting child pornography. Recently, the music industry decided that if child porn sites should be targeted, so should file sharing websites; a seemingly exploitative demand to make considering the seriousness of child porn relative to music piracy.

Now a representative for the German book publishers association (Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) has come along with another stupid suggestion. Boersenverein chief counsel Christian Sprang used a media law forum in Cologne to add Rapidshare to the list of sites he'd like to see blocked.

"I don't see any other way than access controls to get to platforms like these that are based in foreign countries," said Sprang. He went on to deem one-click-hosters like Rapidshare as part of the "Internet mafia", complaining that ISPs help to fund them by buying advertising space on the sites.

Rapidshare has already cooperated with right's holders in Germany, handling takedown notices and even reportedly has helped to identify an uploader of a Metallica album.

Nintendo will target the Mother's Day holiday in North America (May 10, don't forget!) this year with the release of a new DS bundle on May 3. While the company has not officially announced the bundle, it was accidentally available for pre-order on a Canadian Best Buy website for a while on Friday, but was removed when it got attention.

According to reports, it will include a lime green-coloured DS Lite with a copy of the Personal Trainer: Cooking title. It will also include a "fashionable carrying case". The Best Buy website had listed it for CAD $159.99. Whether the bundle will continue to be shipped past Mother's Day or if it will just be available around the holiday remains to be seen.

Back in January, Nintendo announced that the Personal Trainer: Cooking title had sold 1.68 million units worldwide, following an agressive holiday season-2008 campaign.

The recent release of the movie Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete and the release of a playable Final Fantasy XIII demo, boosted sales of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) by 45,826 units within a week. The console beat the other gaming consoles on the market for the week ending April 19, with a tally of 62,527 unit sales, according to data provided by Media Create.

Sales were also helped with by a "Cloud Black" special edition of the console. Nintendo's DS platform maintained its dominance in handheld gaming hardware sales with a total of 44,725 units sold, of which the new DSi variant of the handheld accounted for 38,287 units.

Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) did not lag too far behind the DS platform, moving 40,065 units. The Nintendo Wii console was next, selling 13,221 units in the period, a world different from the top selling figures it produced up until recently. It still outsold the Xbox 360, which moved 8652 units. Japanese consumers also bought up 4230 units of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) console.

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics has reported a sharp drop in net profit, but still beat analysts expectations. Net profit fell by 72 percent year-on-year to 620 billion Korean won over the first quarter while its revenue grew 9 percent to 18.97 trillion won. The company's mobile phone handset division led the earnings, driven by continued demand in developing nations.

"It's very difficult to gauge the demand outlook," said Robert Yi, vice president of investor relations at Samsung, remaining cautious in global economic uncertainty. The company reported stabilizing LCD panel and memory chip prices, and better profit margins for mobile handsets. However, Kim Hyungdo, a vice president in Samsung's telecommunications division warned that demand for mobile handsets in emerging market is declining.

"We will monitor whether LCD panel prices continue to rise despite sluggish economic conditions," said Cho Yeongduk, a vice president in Samsung's LCD Business. LCD panel prices increased lately, as have prices for memory chips such as DRAM and NAND flash memory. Cho Namseong, a senior vice president in Samsung's semiconductor business, however, warned that price increases will lead to production increases, which inevitably sends prices down again.

Google Inc.'s YouTube video-sharing service has come up with another new feature for its users. The new "YouTube RealTime" feature makes it possible for a user to check which videos their friends are watching, and when they add comments to videos or upload a new video.

YouTube product manager Ryan Junee wrote on the official YouTube blog about the new feature, describing YouTube Realtime as "a new way of discovering what your friends are doing on YouTube."

The service is not available to all YouTube users just yet, but Junee did say that invitations to try out RealTime will be sent to the first 100 volunteers.

"Please keep in mind that you will need to have friends on YouTube for this to work -- the more you have, the richer the experience, so be sure you accept friend invites and actively manage the list," he wrote.

The Finnish government has allocated extra frequencies to telecom firms TeliaSonera, Elisa and DNA for the new fourth generation (4G) mobile communications technology. The allocated frequencies for the 4G network are located in the 1,800 megahertz band, lower than most other European nations, but requiring less base stations and so, reducing the cost of setting up the networks.

"The decision will help to make fast wireless networks more widely available in all parts of Finland," Suvi Linden, Finland's minister of communications, said in a statement. Linden said she hoped that telecommunications companies will now start to prepare for the 4G technology. Telecom operators are working together with handset manufacturers such as Finnish giant Nokia to develop 4G technology.

A large part of the Finnish population resides in rural areas, and the government plans to develop better Internet access across the country. The fourth generation (4G) technology will allow users to surf the internet or transfer data such as photos or videos more quickly than the current third generation (3G) technology.

In September of last year, RealNetworks began selling a new product called RealDVD for $30. The product could copy retail DVD content onto one hard drive and up to five devices. However, only a few thousand sales or so were made before a federal Judge blocked the sale of the program at Hollywood's request. Now RealDVD is being tested in court, with lawyers for the Hollywood studios saying RealNetworks violated copyright law.

"In the end, this case will be about how RealNetworks tries to take money that is not theirs," argued Bart Williams for the movie companies. He also commented at one point that code being used by RealNetworks was sourced from Ukrainian hackers, which RealNetworks has denied exists in the product.

RealNetworks fought back however, with lawyer Len Cunningham arguing that the studios had their own products which provide for backups, called digitalcopy. "They have aggressively marketed it," he said. "The threat (to Hollywood) is for legitimate competition." U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel interjected: "They have the copyright."

Subscribers of TiVo who have access to a broadband Internet connection have gotten good news today from the DVR pioneer. The company has partnered with Amazon to deliver its new HD downloads directly to TiVo subscribers.

The new service will be offered to all Series3, TiVo HD, or TiVo HD XL customers with a broadband connection. As for pricing, new HD movies will cost $3.99 - $4.99 to rent, while older titles will be priced at $2.99.

This would make for one of the easiest HD video services available so far. Television episodes are also available through the service, and can be purchased for $2.99.

"Consumers are seeking affordable entertainment alternatives to an expensive trip to the movies. With HD downloads for movies and TV shows, TiVo and Amazon can transform any night into a memorable movie experience, all for a fraction of the cost of the theater," Tara Maitra, general manager and vice president of content services and advertising sales at TiVo Inc, said.

Joost, the creation of Skype and Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is reportedly searching for a buyer among cable and satellite providers. Time Warner Cable has apparently expressed interest in Joost, which claims it could be a provider's online video solution. It is struggling amongst its growing competitors (Hulu, YouTube etc.), with that predicted bright future it would have nowhere to be found.

Like Skype and Kazaa, Joost was based around peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, which at the time of the launch was touted as a way to provide excellent quality video to a very large group of viewers using the software. It has been through several technology setbacks and a management shake up in the past couple of years, and it also has failed to get top TV shows and movies.

China has combined its war on pornography and it's war on piracy to single out some street pirates for heavier punishments. Recently, it has detained or sentenced dozens of individuals who sold DVD or VCD copies of pornographic content, according to China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). Multiple people were sentenced to 7 years in prison and fined for copyright infringement, and more importantly "selling obscene materials".

China's efforts against piracy are to keep the international community somewhat happy, and it's efforts against pornography are to tackle influences that may "pervert China's young minds." It has shut down more than 2,000 sites containing adult content and is even pursuing pornographic media on mobile phones.

The government is also pointing a finger of blame at Google and Baidu for not doing enough to stamp out adult content. The Chinese government doesn't seem to understand a basic fact, that if people have a demand for illicit or adult goods, somebody will step in to fill the void, and all "progress" made in a fight against it will only push the peddlers to conceal their actions more effectively.

Netflix has beaten its own earnings forecast after announcing a 68 percent rise in profits in the first quarter. The results are due to the company attracting many more customers than it had expected to. Netflix' net income rose 68 percent to $22.4 million, or 37c per share, from $13.3 million, or 21c, in the same period from the previous year, as sales rose 21 percent to $394.1 million and subscribers jumped 25 percent to 10.31 million.

In the last year, Netflix has brought its movie streaming service to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, LG and Samsung Blu-ray players and TiVo digital video recorders. "First-quarter results showed strong momentum driven by consumer attraction to our unlimited rental proposition," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in the statement.

Netflix estimates that subscribers for its DVD-delivery service will peak between 2013 and 2018. It has a digital inventory of over 12,000 titles so far.

Microsoft Corp. has revealed a 32 percent drop in quarterly profit, but saw its share price rise on news of Windows 7 being on track for a fiscal 2010 release, and its ongoing cost cutting measures to fight the global recession. "While we would all like to think that our recovery will be soon and painless, we unfortunately believe that it will be slow and gradual," Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said on a conference call.

The company revealed it expected weakness in the personal computer, server and hardware markets to continue for at least another quarter, in contrast to Intel's belief that the worst is already over. The company's 6 percent drop in revenue for the March quarter was the first time in its history that it marked a year-on-year decline.

It has cut operating expenses by 9 percent. "It's good to see that they are controlling their costs because that's within their sphere of control. They can't really do a lot about demand," said Kim Caughey at money manager Fort Pitt Capital Group. "They have a nice product refresh cycle coming up, which should allow them to maintain their market share."

After Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata let it slip earlier this month that a video-on-demand (VOD) service would be available soon for the Wii console in Japan, he also pointed out that it would come with a Nintendo twist.

The service will launch in Japan on May 1, but it doesn't seem like much of a VOD service. Dubbed "Wii no Ma", the channel is set around a virtual living room that can house 8 Miis.

The Miis can relax and watch programming Nintendo has come up with in conjunction with a Japanese ad agency, and supply ratings for the video material.

It also asks for personal details from the viewer, such as her/her age and blood type. It is unknown whether the service will launch outside of Japan, but it seems more like a market research experiment than anything resembling video-on-demand anyway.

Broadcom Corporation has announced that its Bluetooth combo chip technology and associated BTE software have been qualified as compliant with the ratified Bluetooth v3.0 + HS (high speed) specification. Bluetooth v3.0 + HS expands the capabilities of Bluetooth wireless technology in multimedia smartphones, netbooks and other devices by enabling the transmission of large files via Bluetooth profiles at speeds up to 24Mbps.

"The new Bluetooth v3.0 + HS specification is a welcome step in the continuing evolution of Bluetooth technology, adding industry approved techniques for leveraging the high data rates of Wi-Fi with the ease of use, low-power and utility that Bluetooth wireless technology is recognized for," said Craig Ochikubo, Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom's Wireless Personal Area Networking line of business. "The new specification makes our combo chip products even more attractive to OEMs who seek to provide their customers with the most complete wireless user experience available."

The Bluetooth products now qualified as compliant with the v3.0 + HS specification include the Broadcom BCM4325 802.11b/g combo chip solution that combines Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM radio functionality on a single-chip design. In addition to enabling 10 times the transmission speed over previous Bluetooth specifications, v3.0 + HS provides other useful innovations that Broadcom combo chips and BTE software can utilize as well.

DivX, Inc. and LG Electronics, Inc. jointly announced today that LG's new line of digital TVs is the world's first device series capable of playing back full DivX HD 1080p videos. The digital TVs will enable consumers to easily playback DivX HD videos from the PC or the Internet through the USB slot. Using DivX technology, users can fit approximately two hours of high-quality DivX HD video on an 8GB media card.

"Being first to market with digital TVs capable of playing back DivX HD 1080p video is a big win for LG as well as our customers," said Simon Kang, Chief Executive Officer and President of LG Home Entertainment TVs Company. "As people expand their DivX HD video collections they are looking for more convenient ways to watch them on their TVs. We've given them the ultimate convenience by building support for DivX HD playback into our digital TVs. This is another feature we've integrated beautifully inside of our TVs and we look forward to working with DivX in the future to offer even more innovative solutions that effortlessly bring HD video into people's living rooms."

Rep. Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking member of the committee, and Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, sent a letter this week to government officials and to the head of Limewire, expressing their concerns about the potential risk to privacy and security caused by use of P2P networks.

Mark Gorton, chairman of The Lime Group, appeared before the committee almost two years ago. At the time he admitted he was shocked to learn about the sheer amount of confidential and private information that was accidentally (or intentionally) shared using the Limewire software, and vowed to make changes to the software to help prevent accidental sharing of information.

We're not just talking about curriculum vitae word documents or other personal files common to most users, but some notable accidental P2P leaks are blueprints of Marine One, Social Security numbers, tax returns, and private medical records. "It appears that nearly two years after your commitment to make significant changes in the software, LimeWire and other P2P providers have not taken adequate steps to address this critical problem," they wrote to Gorton.

Dell has shipped its first Desktops that contain Qflix DVD drives. Sonic Solutions and Pioneer Corporation develop and license Qflix, which is a technology that allows for the burning of CSS (and DRM) protected DVD-Video to blank DVD-R media, which can be played on a standard DVD player. Sonic hopes to establish Qflix as a standard for recordable CSS and charge royalties for its use.

Dell will include the Qflix drives in ts Studio XPS Desktop, Studio XPS 435, Studio Desktop and Studio Slim Desktop, after last year becoming the first company sell external Qflix drives, shortly before Pioneer did. It is unclear exactly what demand download-to-burn technology can hope for amongst consumers, and right now, only CinemaNow offers downloads that can be burned to disc.

Nokia's Comes With Music mobile music download service has gotten a very slow and disappointing start in the UK. While Nokia did not reveal official statistics itself, Music Ally claimed yesterday that Comes With Music has only gained 23,000 British subscribers since launching last year. Paul Brindley from Music Ally revealed the information at an Association of Independent Music conference in London.

"If anything I was rather kind in not saying it was a complete catastrophe. It's a big disappointment because very rarely, if ever, have we seen a digital music service that's been so widely promoted in the mainstream media," Brindley said. Tim Grimsditch, head of product marketing for Nokia Music was there to give his response too.

"We didn't release those numbers so we can't confirm them," he explained. "It's a very new business model, we're live in five markets and the numbers only mention one. We're going to continue to develop the model and fine tune how we market it."

Grimsditch added that he is confident the company will have significant successes to report within six months time. A customer who buys a Nokia Comes With Music handset gets unlimited music downloads to their mobile phone for 12 to 18 months. The downloads are DRM protected, so they can't be used with other devices. Brindley criticized this fact.

Market research firm iSuppli has done one of its popular teardown analysis' on Amazon's Kindle 2 eBook reader, and come to the conclusion that it costs twice as much to buy as it does to manufacture. The Kindle 2 retails for $359 but only costs $185.49 to build. Around 300,000 units have shipped since the device was launched, indicating that Amazon as taken in more than $100 million from sales.

All the parts that make up the Kindle 2 come to about $176.83, and $8.66 is added for components, including battery and the manufacturing costs. The analysis did not guess figures for IP costs, royalties, shipping costs or marketing costs however. There are more than 230,000 books, magazines and other material available to buy for the Kindle 2, up dramatically from its predecessor.

A single charge will allow a user to read for up to 4 days with the wireless feature switched on, or up to two weeks with it switched off. "The new version of the E Ink display in the Kindle 2 supports 16-level grayscale images, rather than the four-level version used in previous-generation hardware," Andrew Rassweiler, a director and analyst at iSuppli said.

"In terms of pricing –- we perform pricing analysis at the manufacturing level," said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for iSuppli's teardown services. "That is to say, our analysis reflects the economics of the supply chain far removed from the consumer or retail level."

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has announced that it plans to produce a server chip with 16 cores, quite a step up from the quad-core server chips currently being marketed. The project is codenamed "Interlagos" and is expected to producer a final product by 2011. Interlagos will follow "Magny-Cours", a 12-core chip AMD expects to bring to release in the first quarter of 2010.

Adding more cores helps to squeeze more performance from servers, helping to cut hardware acquisition and energy costs, said Pat Patla, server platform unit VP. The chip will be part of the Opteron 6000 series of chips, which the company said will likely be used in data-center servers. The 16-core chips could be used in servers with two to four sockets.

"Given the consumer environment and those workloads, it will be a while before 16 cores is mainstream," Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, said. AMD in its future chips will integrate advanced power management features and instruction sets at the chip level to better execute tasks in virtualized environments, users will be able to manually cap the power drawn by cores or simply shut off idle cores.

Apple COO Tim Cook revealed during a second quarter earnings call on Tuesday that sales of the company's iPhone and iPod Touch devices have passed 37 million units. He said that sales of the touch-screen handhelds had more than doubled year over year. The sales figures combined make it an enormous platform for developers, particularly with games, which have been the most popular downloads from the App Store since it launched 9 months ago.

Apple and its development partners will soon "unleash a whole new level of innovation that keeps Apple years ahead of everyone else," according to Cook. The company said the success of the iPod Touch is clearly driven by the App Store. "All genres [on the App Store] are very popular," said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, "but games are quite popular. That's one of the reasons the iPod touch has been such a success."

In his preamble, Oppenheimer said the App Store now totals more than 35,000 applications. The company expects to pass 1 billion App downloads sometime on Thursday, April 23. It has also held its position on top of the portable media player market, with NPD recently confirming that Apple still holds 70 percent of the market in the U.S., and gains more ground each year worldwide.

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 console has finally passed the 1 million sales mark in Japan. The announcement was made at a media conference held in Japan today. To celebrate the milestone in the Xbox 360's harshest market, Microsoft said it will say "thank you" by giving away 1 million Microsoft Points to Japanese Xbox Live users.

The announcement was made by Microsoft Japan president Takashi Sensui along with announcements of new games set to retail for the console, as well as downloadable content. Namco Bandai's Yoshihisa Kanesaka announced the company would bring fantasy role-playing game Magna Carta 2 to the console on August 6.

Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi confirmed Lost Planet 2 will feature four-player co-op support, while Dead Rising 2 producer Keiji Inafune shows off a trailer showing the game's protagonist attacking zombies in a casino using objects as weapons.

Tri-Ace's Takayuki Suguro Sega discussed the new RPG title End of Eternity, which is scheduled for release in winter 2009. Microsoft Xbox marketing spokesman Joji Sakaguchi used the latter of the media briefing to announce some upcoming Xbox and XBLA titles, including BlazBlu: Calamity Trigger which is due out June 26, and a new 3D Samurai Shodown title. Lode Runner is due to land on the service tomorrow, April 22, while Banjo-Kazooie sequel Banjo-Tooie and Virtual On will both be available from April 29.

BT Broadband users who try to access the notorious Pirate Bay tracker are met with a "Content Blocked" message, claiming it has been blocked in "compliance with a new UK voluntary code". "This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have 'over 18' status," the warning states.

On the list of things blocked it has adult/sexually explicit content, information on "criminal skills" and hacking. It does not state the reason for the Pirate Bay block specifically, but the tracker does host links to torrents for pornography. The block can be lifted however if a user calls up customer services and requests it, the warning states.

The self-regulations scheme includes all five of the major mobile networks too. "The Code covers new types of content, including visual content, online gambling, mobile gaming, chat rooms and internet access," the code of practice at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) site states. However, it then goes on to state that "the Code does not cover peer-to-peer communications but it does give assurances to customers that the mobile operators are taking action to combat illegal, bulk and nuisance communications."

Despite the fact that it had nothing to do with EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding's telecoms reforms, arguments over how to tackle illegal downloading has stalled the entire process. There is broad agreement over the reform package without the anti-piracy measures (covers infrastructure and not content), but it is now causing a last minute stand-off between states and parliament, pushing back final adoption to May at earliest.

There is agreement too that Internet service providers should be able to cut access to pirates with approval from "a competent legal authority." The industry committee votes on the draft deal on Tuesday evening, setting up a clash with EU states over what some see as a purely political issue rather than one of substance.

"This is the major sticking point. It is clear member states won't agree to this going into the body of the text," an EU diplomat said. "It would be a shame if the whole reform was held back just because of something which was not in the original proposal."

A GPS system for the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld console has been around for some time, but now GPS is new to the Nintendo DS handheld thanks to a product called Ranger, from Fab Chain of China. The product uses Google Maps, can do fake 3D map rendering and uses a U-Blox GPS receiver. It can also connect to other devices such as a laptop or a PDA as well.

Use of mobile phones is continuing to grow substantially in China, and with it, usage of premium music download services and multimedia messaging is setting new records. There are about 648 million mobile users in the country, after 26.7 million subscribed to the three main state-owned carriers in the first quarter. Users sent over 174 billion text messages on China Mobile's network alone.

More China Mobile subscribers are also using their phones to download songs and send messages via MMS. The carrier counted over 384 million users of its wireless music service, where paid downloads of songs by Chinese and Taiwanese pop stars are particularly popular. However, average revenue per year fell for China Mobile as it added more low-end users and launched promotional deals in a marketing move.

China Mobile is offering "more economical" packages and plans for users. "We've kind of reached saturation of what I would call the high-end to the medium-end market in China," said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy. China Mobile also has another obvious problem with it's lack of attractive handsets compared to its rivals.

Since speculation started mounting about a 'DS Phone', attention turned toward the possibility of being able to use Skype with the more online-friendly DSi handheld console. Skype is already available for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld console, and recently was brought to the iPhone and iPod Touch via the Apple App Store (for use with Wi-Fi).

"We have no plans to release a Skype application for Nintendo DS or DSi," a Nintendo rep told CVG. However, a spokesman for Skype said that the company's objective for the service was "extending the Skype infrastructure and platform to bring Skype functionality wherever, whenever, and on whatever device or site people choose to use it."

Microsoft will be shipping a limited edition Xbox 360 bundle that will include an Xbox 360 Elite console, and two popular titles, Halo 3 and Fable II, starting in May. It's $400 price tag is the normal price of an Xbox 360 Elite console on its own. A previous bundle included Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda, two family-friendly games that could boost sales during the holiday season.

Now with two M rated games, it would appear Microsoft is trying to build in an area where it is already strong, with what is arguably a better deal. The box also bears the Netflix logo, as Microsoft has managed to keep the movie streaming service exclusive to the Xbox 360 console, while the PlayStation 3 (PS3) supports Blu-ray Disc.

The bundle might give Microsoft the edge with some gamers looking to choose between a PS3 or an Xbox 360, as it includes two popular games whereas the $400 PlayStation 3 (PS3) does not. For a PS3 with a bundled game, you have to jump to $500 which will get you a 160GB Hard Disk Drive and a copy of Uncharted. Sony is rumored to be planning price cuts in time for E3, however.

Nintendo has come out to defend the sales figures for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, released recently for the Nintendo DS portable platform. The sales figures for March were met with disappointment from analysts and many in the industry who expected the game to be incredibly successful like everything else in the GTA series. Nintendo has responded however, saying that the sales are "in line" with other AAA DS titles.

Steve Singer, vice president of licensing for Nintendo of America, said that the 89,000 units sold of the game was about standard for a successful third-party title on the platform, referring to Call of Duty 4's DS version which sold 36,000 units in its first month. GTA: Chinatown Wars was predicted initially by analysts to sell 2 million units this year.

Investment firm Cowan and Company said that the March sales for the title were a disappointment, and has cut its projections to 500,000 units for 2009.

Owners of new Apple iMacs, equipped with an ATI Radeon HD 4850 video card, are reporting problems with freeze ups during normal usage, forcing them to reboot the machine. The problem doesn't appear to be caused by software running at the time of the freeze in Mac OS X, and some users have noted that the problem persists using Windows in a Boot Camp partition where drivers or Mac software wouldn't be an issue.

Threads have popped up on Apple's support forums about the issue and the company is aware of it. Some users report being told that a fix is expected to be rolled out with the Mac OS X 10.5.7 update while others have been offered replacement systems when a troubleshooting session has been unsuccessful.

This isn't the first experience of this kind of problem for Apple systems. In March, some users of MacBook Pro machines reported graphics issues during use, related to the NVIDIA 9600M and 9400M GPUs. Back in 2007, when the aluminum iMac machines launched, another freeze issue surfaced. That time, it allowed some programs to continue running, whereas the latest issue freezes up the entire system.

The four founders of The Pirate Bay torrent tracker, Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, have filed an official appeal against a ruling that found them guilty of assisting copyright infringement, sentenced to one-year in prison and fined $3.6 million. The four always had planned to appeal a guilty verdict from day one of the trial, which kicked off in February 2009.

The case will now be referred to the Swedish Supreme Court, which may take a number of years to deliver a final decision on the case. Since the verdict was announced, there have been a number of DDoS attacks against the IFPI, demonstrations in Swedish cities and outside the country and a boost in membership for the country's Pirate Party, which hopes to win a seat in the European Parliament.

The reaction from the entertainment industry was exactly what you would expect, as we reported earlier. Also, Paul McCartney is one celebrity who decided to comment on the decision, calling it "fair". "If you get on a bus you've got to pay. And I think it's fair you should pay your ticket," he said.

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has announced the sale of its enterprise mobile TV unit to Wipro, an India-based corporation that operates in the areas of information technology, consumer care, lighting, engineering and healthcare.

The Mobile Broadcast Solutions unit employed around 40 professionals who developed software and hardware to enable mobile TV technology to locate and access data from a broadcasting network.

"We wanted to focus on the consumer side of things, the mobile TV client in the devices, rather than on the business-to-business side," said a Nokia spokesman. While a few years ago it seemed that mobile television and on-demand video would be the holy grail for mobile phones, the technology has since arrived with very little interest from the public.

Oracle is jumping straight into the computer hardware market with an announced purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.06 billion. The announcement spurred surprise and shock in the industry, as many wonder if Oracle can boost profitability at Sun's hardware unit in fierce competition with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell etc.

"It's an out-of-the-box, left-field type of a deal because Oracle is buying a predominantly hardware business," said Jefferies & Co analyst Ross MacMillan. "The push-pull of the deal is the uncertainty of the hardware business with the earnings accretion of the software business."

Sun had previously rejected a bid from IBM, which was offering $9.40 a share. Oracle will pay $9.50 a share, valuing the company at about $7.06 billion. The news pushed shares of Sun Microsystems by 35.7 percent in morning trading. Safra Catz, Oracle President, said on a conference call that the company does intend to make Sun's hardware division profitable.

A study by the Iowa State University (ISU) and the National Institute on Media and the Family has revealed that one in ten players of video games exhibits some symptoms of addiction. Researchers found that some show at least six symptoms of "gambling addiction" which includes lying to their families and friends about how much they actually play, using games to escape problems and becoming irritable when they have stopped playing.

Since the study focused on children and teenagers, it also noted a very negative effect on homework and overall performance in school among the gamers showing addiction signs. "While the medical community currently does not recognize video game addiction as a mental disorder, hopefully this study will be one of many that allow us to have an educated conversation on the positive and negative effects of video games," Dr Douglas Gentile, an assistant professor of psychology at ISU, said in a statement.

1,178 children and teenagers aged between 8 - 18 years old were included in the study. Six of the eleven symptoms of pathological gambling as defined by the American Psychiatric Association were identified in a portion of the gamers (about ten percent). The technically "addicted" gamers generally spent 24 hours or more per week playing games, twice as much as casual gamers in the study.

The official website of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) was knocked offline at times, and made to perform sluggishly on Monday as a result of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Discussions among 250 "hactivists" at irc.anonnet.org talked of retaliation on the IFPI and the lawyers involved in the Pirate Bay trial, which resulted in a guilty verdict.

"They want to get the message across that the IFPI can not mess with the internet and that the internet is serious business," coldblood, an admin at anonnet.org told The Register. "This is very much like the Scientology thing started more than a year ago now." The overall effort is being called "Operation Baylout", and also reportedly involved the defacing of the Swedish IFPI website.

While there are attacks against the IFPI and others over the Pirate Bay trial, there has also been attacks against Torrent trackers in recent weeks. Free-torrents.org, for example, has been the victim of a DDoS attack for about a month now by a Black Energy botnet run out of China.

According to sources at Taiwan handset component suppliers, Nokia is moving to replace the resistive touch panel used in the popular 5800 handset with a capacitive touch panel. The change is being made in order to compete more effectively with the products from Apple, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics on the market.

The initial orders from Nokia are enough for two million 5800 handsets, and shipments of the new version are expected to begin in May-June this year. Nokia's design and pricing strategy for the 5800 handset have been very successful, leading to sales of over three million units so far since the device was launched in November 2008.

Availability for the Nokia N97 handset is expected in the second quarter, while Nokia is also expected to roll out more models with capacitive touch panels, QWERTY keyboards and with ultra-thin designs during the third quarter.

Microsoft's partner program site temporarily revealed an expected date for the first Windows 7 release candidate to be made available. "Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now," the page read Saturday afternoon. "Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009." The link however led the user to a TechNet download page that didn't have any Windows 7 RC in sight.

This is the second such incident in about three weeks to do with the release candidate details. In late March, a page was added to a Microsoft site indicating that the RC will be available sometime in May, but when it started to get attention, Microsoft quickly removed it.

The latest information leak did not mention a public roll-out date, but generally speaking Microsoft makes previews available to MSDN and TechNet several days before the public. For example, in January MSDN subscribers could download a Windows 7 beta on January 7, while the public started to download on January 9.

Subscribers of Netflix' online DVD/Blu-ray rental service have been complaining about receiving damaged or cracked discs from the company. "Over the last two months, we've had probably four to six Blu-ray discs in a row arrive with small cracks at the edge of the disc that render it unplayable," says Pete Brown, whose wife has been a Netflix subscriber for three years.

Blu-ray is structured significantly different to DVD in that DVD is comprised of two 0.6mm thick polycarbonate discs with the data recorded to a thin metal substrate in between, while Blu-ray is a single 1.1mm polycarbonate disc with the data recorded at the top, and protected by a 0.1mm coating. The Blu-ray discs circulated by Netflix may be more affected by the process than DVDs, and you have to remember Blu-ray is still a very young format.

"The coating is supposed to protect the discs but it could also be making them more brittle," says Adrienne Downey, senior analyst at research firm Semico. "Ultimately Blu-ray is a new technology and they are still working the kinks out of it." The problem can't just come down to the discs however, as BlockBuster customers don't complain about damaged Blu-ray titles as much.

According to a report by Blu-ray.com, cheaper Blu-ray players will hit store shelves in the United States a lot sooner than one would think. At the moment the average selling price of Blu-ray players is around $199, but the report expects it to fall to $99 fairly soon. The expected drop is due to the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) licensing in China, which led Samsung marketing director Mark Leathan to predict $99 players.

It's a bit early to speculate about holiday prices, as usually it takes to about mid-summer before accurate predictions are made, but NPD Group industry analyst Stephen Baker isn't discarding possibilities. "Black Friday, maybe. It's entirely possible you could see a few players down at that price level," he said.

MySpace Music is only about half a year old, and at the moment it is simply just another location among many where users can listen to music for free. Recent announcements, such as the new Vevo site being developed by Universal and YouTube, show the continued trend of services hooking up with record labels to provide free music streaming.

After MySpace launched back in 2004, Courtney Holt, then of Interscope Geffen A&M, saw the potential it could have for music promotion and encouraged artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Weezer and The Black Eyed Peas to use MySpace to their advantage to connect with fans. "The artists loved it and it created a Pied Piper effect for the fans," Holt said.

Holt took charge of the recently revamped MySpace Music service, and is striving to build upon it to transform it into something unique, and not just another music service. MySpace Music is vital to fending off Facebook, which has overtaken MySpace in terms of global users, but not as the biggest social networking site in the U.S. just yet, and definitely not in revenues.

Samsung Mobile Display, a joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI, has revealed on Sunday that it expects the global smartphone market to balloon from 170 million in 2009 to 500 million units in 2012. Feature-packed phones such as Apple's iPhone and Blackberry handsets have seen sales continue to pick up while the mobile phone market overall has seen drops in handset sales.

According to the Samsung Mobile Display statement, smartphones will make up 29 percent of the industry by 2012, compared to 14 percent in 2009. The display maker also expected touch-screens to increase in popularity and be used with mobile phones, digital cameras, navigation devices and digital media players, predicting that 50% of the devices produced in the areas in 2013 would use touch-screen technology.

Sales of Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays will take off over the coming years as they are thinner and provide better picture quality, but currently with a trade-off of a shorter life-span and high cost of production, compared to its alternatives. Samsung Mobile Display predicts OLED will be used with 50 percent of all mobile phones over the next five years.

The BBC has explained the limitations that will be enforced by digital rights management (DRM) with regard to recording from its High-definition broadcasts. The information follows the launch of the Panasonic Freesat Blu-ray recorders. The DRM will allow users to make one personal copy of HD content (after recording to the PVR) to a Blu-ray disc, but copies of that disc cannot be made afterward.

"It will now be possible to make a single HD Blu-ray copy of one of our programmes, although not copies of copies. An HD connection to a protected home network will also be possible, although an HD connection to the Internet or portable devices will not work..." said Danielle Nagler, head of BBC HD, in a blog post.

He continued: "...Partial unlocking of some paths should also enable the high quality standard definition RGB outputs from some set top boxes". In the future, it will be possible to make a copy of the content to a compatible portable device too.

According to research, about 10% of all electric power used within the average home is used by televisions and their accessories. California is looking at this as a possible target for efforts to reduce energy usage in the state, and is proposing stricter efficiency standards for television sets. Ideally, the standards would aim to cut the average power consumption of a television by 50 percent.

The target date for the plan to kick in is 2013, but if the standards could be drawn up as early as this summer, then it could apply to televisions produced in 2011. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is resisting such restrictions, and points out that energy can already be saved without making new rules. It points out that simple acts such as lowering the brightness and contrast levels can cut energy usage by up to 25% alone.

Of course, there is a long way to go before something like this plan could be drawn up. It would have to take into account the differences in technology used in the televisions of today; there is a large difference in energy consumption of Plasma and LCD, for example.

The BBC has announced that the iPlayer service will soon be loaded with High-definition content that can be accessed by web browser. There are plans to also roll out HD on iPlayer through the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and a Virgin set-top box. For many users in the UK, this will probably be their first experience with high-definition video. The iPlayer has been a runaway success, with more than 387 million requests to stream or download since it launched on Christmas Day 2007.

"Introducing HD streams enables users to enjoy BBC programmes in HD without a set-top box," BBC's head of digital media technology, Anthony Rose said. The new version of the iPlayer will also include a diagnostic tool that will analyze the user's Internet connection and automatically adjust the steam quality settings to get the best result.

"The new adaptive bitrate technology and speed diagnostics page help optimise the viewing experience, while the resizable window gives users flexibility to switch between different quality streams, hopefully leading to a more satisfying experience overall," said Mr Rose.

Despite gaining a good reputation for an anti-DRM stance and a "just ignore it" attitude to piracy, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has experienced first hand what piracy can mean for your games. He had said that pirates will do what they will do, and should be ignored, but DRM should not be used as it punishes the legitimate customer. However, with the launch of Demigod, piracy showed how it can have adverse effects on game titles.

Firstly, there was a major problem with online play, as the servers were overwhelmed with 120,000 connections to deal with, well beyond the number that had been anticipated in advance. Of the 120,000 connections, about 18,000 were from validated users. As you may have guessed, the system quickly went down, which disrupted gameplay for legitimate customers.

To make matters worse, the problems occurred as reviewers were assessing the new title, and was marked as a reason for GameSpot's 6.5 rating. "Our stress tests had counted on having maybe 50,000 people playing at once at peak and that wouldn’t be reached for a few weeks by which time we would have slowly seen things becoming problematic... So during the day today, people couldn't even log on, and in some cases, the Demigod forums, which use one of the affected databases for some piddly thing were even down," Wardell wrote.

Following Friday's guilty verdict announced by a Stockholm court for the four founders of The Pirate Bay, the country's Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) gained 3,000 new members in just 7 hours. As a result, it is now larger in numbers than 3 of the 7 political parties that make up the Swedish parliament.

"The ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world," said Rick Falk Vinge. "We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages."

He commented that the party needs its members, saying that unlike any other political party in the country, it is a true grass-roots organization that aims to affect real change to the countries laws regarding copyright, patents and so on.

AMG TV is a modestly sized network that feeds syndicated programs to some 200 terrestrial station affiliates. It is being bought out by Signet Intl. Holdings, a publicly traded company led by former NBC and PBS exec Tom Donaldson and boxing promoter Ernie Letiziano. Signet has also simultaneously joined with Kerner Broadcast Corp. for exclusive use of its 3-D TV technology.

"We fully plan to have, as soon as we can acquire the library, the first full-time 3-D network in the country," Donaldson told Daily Variety. Set-top boxes for cable and satellite aren't currently equipped for 3D content, but a lot of televisions currently being sold are technically 3D-ready.

Kerner plans to introduce two solutions in the form of an add-on box for cable and satellite subscribers and an "enhancement" that will turn any HD television into a 3D TV for about $50, which includes glasses. Kerner Broadcasting CEO Yuska Siuicki admitted that he'd give the 3D quality about a 5/10 rating, but it would make ED TV affordable and widely available for the first time.

Sweden's Pirate Party was setup to attempt to reform laws in the country around copyright and patents in the digital era. Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party had some strong words to utter today when the four founders of the Pirate Bay were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay a $4.5 million fine. Falkvinge dismissed the trial, and called the verdict "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure. There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it," Falkvinge said.

He continued: "Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament." Of course, the four defendants plan already to appeal the decision, confident that in the end they will be found not guilty of all charges under Swedish laws.

Solid-State Drives (SSD) continue to advance to new heights of performance, and every self-respecting tech enthusiast is following the progress to see data storage develop in line with other computer components and not be stuck as a bottleneck for performance. Up until now, some security concerns came out of the fact that while full drive encryption solutions are available for traditional, mechanical HDDs, SSDs were lacking in that department.

In steps Samsung and Dell with their own solutions to this problem. Samsung Electronics said on Thursday that it will bundle SSD data encryption software with every SSD it ships. The software, from Wave Systems' Embassy management software, will be bundled with all SSDs with a storage capacity between 64GB and 256GB, and will be available from PC markers, the company said.

Dell has also stepped in to fill the void, announcing at the same time that it would include self-encrypting SSDs with its Latitude line of laptops during the year. SSDs have enormous potential in performance, energy consumption and heat radiation, making them suitable for modern computers and notebooks. However, to replace the traditional HDD, it has to cross some bridges with capacity limits, longevity, performance and of course, data security too.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has been involved in two anti-piracy operations in the UK. The trade group cooperated with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency to raid the private address of an individual who sold hundreds of hard drives preloaded with music using the Internet. Each hard drive sold for £100 and contained up to 5000 albums, 200 of which the purchaser could request to be included.

In the property, police seized a large quantity of hard drives and other storage devices, including hard drives containing a master library of more than 500,000 albums. They also seized eight burners and more than 5,000 discs. Meanwhile, in a joint operation with Leicestershire Police and Trading Standards Departments, BPI anti-piracy investigators raided two private addresses that were being used as counterfeiting factories.

The addresses supplied the north of England with counterfeit Bollywood movie and music repertoire. Two gang leaders were arrested and 84 burners, 21 printers and in excess of 100,000 counterfeit discs were seized. The police are seeking to not only prosecute the gang leaders but also strip them of their assets, which to date, have funded a luxurious lifestyle.

According to a report issued by Forrester on Friday, Apple's customer satisfaction is remarkably high in several categories, while Dell's is notably low. A market research report was compiled from 4,500 surveys to measure consumers' overall satisfaction with computer manufacturers in different areas. The results clearly put Apple on top, with an 80 percent consumer satisfaction rating.

Gateway came in second place with 66 percent, showing the considerable lead Apple somehow has attained over its rivals. Hewlett-Packard and Compaq weren't two far behind in third and fourth place, achieving a 64 percent and 63 percent consumer satisfaction rating, respectively. Coming in dead last, with 58 percent consumer satisfaction rating, is none-other than Dell.

The ratings were made up from three categories; Useful, Easy to Use, and Enjoyable. While Apple scored well in all three - with 82 percent approving in the Useful category, 86 percent approving in the Ease of Use and 72 percent approving in the Enjoyable category - Dell set the low mark as being the only manufacturer to receive below 50 percent, when it got 47 percent in the Enjoyable category.

Silicon Alley Insider cites a "plugged-in industry executive" in reporting that the popular web video site Hulu is developing an application for Apple's iPhone. It wouldn't be the first of it's kind, as TV.com, i.TV and Joost are all on the market as it is, but because it's Hulu, the rumor is getting considerable attention.

Hulu providing an iPhone application is obviously a good idea - that is if AT&T doesn't object to it and force Apple's hand to ban it from the iPhone store. Such a service would obviously be heavy on traffic if not only used when Wi-Fi is available for it. The data problems also would create demand for an ability to save and watch videos later.

Hulu has gotten a very good following online since it was launched, taunting YouTube with its catalog of premium content, and being mimicked by many others as a good model to copy from. The question is with just around 3% of mobile phone users watching any video at all with their phones, will Hulu be able to set some precedents here too?

As you would imagine, music industry bodies have been lining up in Sweden and Internationally to give their take on the guilty verdict for the founders of the Pirate Bay website. Here is a pick of some of the comments that have been officially made about the verdict.

"The trial of the operators of The Pirate Bay was about defending the rights of creators, confirming the illegality of the service and creating a fair environment for legal music services that respect the rights of the creative community. Today's verdict is the right outcome on all three counts. The court has also handed down a strong deterrent sentence that reflects the seriousness of the crimes committed. This is good news for everyone, in Sweden and internationally, who is making a living or a business from creative activity and who needs to know their rights will protected by law."
- John Kennedy, Chairman & Chief Executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)

"Song writers and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. We are pleased to see an appropriate judgment making it clear that it is not acceptable to run a business based on the violation of the rights and livelihood of creators."
- Ger Hatton, Secretary General of the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP)

A Stockholm court has found the four founders of The Pirate Bay BitTorrent site guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through the site. The four were found guilty of assisting distribution of illegal content and were sentenced to a year in jail. They also must pay a fine of $3.6 million to 17 different music and media companies including Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner, MGM and 20th Century Fox.

The case was brought against TPB, which claimed 22 million concurrent users in February, by an International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)-led consortium of media companies. All four defendants have pledged to appeal the decision. "Stay calm – nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or filesharing what so ever. This is just a theatre for the media," said Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi.

He continued: "Really, it's a bit LOL. It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release." On the other side the reaction was a mixture of relief and delight. "We're very pleased at the verdict of what was a very important case for us," said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI. "It would have been very difficult to put on a brave face if we had lost, but this verdict sends a strong educational and deterrent message."

Google Inc.'s YouTube video-sharing service announced on Thursday that it will stream full length movies and TV show content to its users for free. The movies and TV series will be provided by several top-brand major studios, and will be available to viewers within the United States.

The partnerships stuck by Google's video giant include Sony Pictures, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz and the BBC.

Instead of asking viewers to pay for viewing content like some Internet services, YouTube will share advertising revenue with the studios.

In an effort to boost revenue, which has become a major concern for YouTube while it continues to grow get more expensive to maintain, YouTube will use video ads more broadly, including mid-stream ads shown in breaks on longer content.

Sony Pictures has signed up to support a theater-chain upgrade that will digitally convert over 20,000 cinemas in the United States and Canada. This makes Sony the sixth major studio to back the initiative, which is expected to cost around $1 billion. The studios are backing the upgrade program with the Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP), a group of theater chains comprising Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc and AMC Entertainment Inc.

Walt Disney Co, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Lions Gate Entertainment have backed the plan along with Sony Pictures. The DCIP reported in October that it could complete the plan within three and half years starting with an early date in 2009, but some of the conversions have gotten delayed due to economic conditions.

Once outfitted with digital projectors, the theaters can easily be made ready for 3D movies. Hollywood studios have a growing interest in 3D movies, expecting that more consumers will be willing to go and see 3D movies at a higher price.

According to reports, SlingPlayer has become the latest service to have its iPhone application banned from the Apple App Store at the request of AT&T. SlingPlayer for iPhone was first introduced at MacWorld this year, and conformed to Apple's guidelines for user interface. However, just as it did with the Skype iPhone app, AT&T used possible excessive traffic on its network as an excuse to oppose its use on the iPhone.

Sling Media hasn't gotten any word from Apple yet on what the decision is for the application, and the website still states they've "submitted the first release of our application to the iPhone App Store." However, reported surfaced today that Apple made an executive decision this morning to reject the apps entry to the App Store.

If AT&T did in fact ask Apple not to add the SlingPlayer App due to network data traffic concerns, then Sling may have to do the same thing as Skype and limit the application to Wi-Fi only. However, there is also speculation recently that AT&T is working on its own mobile video technology, and it has silently changed its terms of services basically prohibiting the use of services like SlingPlayer on its network.

Netflix has squashed a recent rumor that it will become available on the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles. Netflix is already available on the Xbox 360 console and has been very successful, with Microsoft boasting that over 1 million users have watched 1.5 billion minutes of video through the service since it became available in November 2008.

"For now, Netflix streaming on game consoles is exclusively on the Xbox 360 - and it's a terrific hit," Netflix vice president of corporate communications Steve Swasey told GamesIndustry.biz. He did not rule out possibly moving to other consoles in the future however. "Netflix is always looking for ways to grow the service," he said.

Rumors began circulating earlier this week, due to a job listing made by Netflix seeking an engineering leader for gaming platforms. It asked that the candidate have, "years of experience both building and leading the development of games on the current generation gaming consoles," to, "expect to help build a small technology team to rapidly prototype and iterate on a variety of platforms."

GameStop CEO Dan DeMatteo has called for price cuts for the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) console and the Nintendo Wii console, and also dismissed Sony's PS2 price cut as basically too little, too late. The video games industry is weathering the recession particularly well compared to others in the tech business, but according to DeMatteo, price cuts will be essential to keep the momentum going.

The first point he made to CNBC was the price of the PS3 console, which is the most expensive console on the market at $399. "That price point is clearly an issue in this economy," he said. Sony has repeatedly denied plans to cut the price of the PS3, but is expected to make a price cut before E3. The debate going on is about how much needs to be cut.

"I don't know that $50 gets you that much," DeMatteo said. He poured cold water on the recent PS2 price cut announced by Sony. "To be honest, it really wasn't worth doing," he said. "If they'd done it earlier, publishers probably would have kept making games for the PS2, but once they've stopped, they've stopped."

Two small pieces of news today for the world of Nintendo Wii. Firstly, ahead of NPD's sales figures for gaming consoles, Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian has reported that sales of the Wii system in the United States remained steady in March, despite the large drop in sales in Japan. "Our checks in the US still indicate fairly steady sell-through, albeit within the context of some seasonal sluggishness overall in hardware," Sebastian said.

He attributes its continued success to it's easy availability on store shelves because of, "production increases put in place last summer as well as a more normalised mid-cycle selling pattern." Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted that the Wii is in its worst condition yet in the Japanese market last week, but ruled out price cuts as a response.

Consumer Focus has said that the copyright laws of the United Kingdom needlessly criminalize music fans and badly need to be updated. The comments come as the UK was ranked last in a survey of 16 countries' copyright laws. Currently, UK law technically makes it illegal to copy a CD that you "own" onto a computer or a portable player like an iPod, despite the fact that manufacturers like Apple provide software to do exactly that.

"UK copyright law is the oldest, but also the most out of date," said Ed Mayo, chief executive of Consumer Focus. "The current system puts unrealistic limits on our listening and viewing habits and is rapidly losing credibility among consumers. A broad 'fair use' exception would bring us in line with consumer expectations, technology and the rest of the world."

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the UK and the United States were all surveyed. It ranked countries based on a balance between the interests of rights holders and the interests of consumers.

Just days ago, we reported that the French National Assembly had rejected the proposed "three strikes" legislation in a defeat for the ruling UMP party. Following the vote, French President Nicolas Sarkozy revealed he was determined to get it passed to protect creative diversity. The film and music industries have lobbied the French government vigorously for a tougher approve to Internet piracy.

The parliament will vote again on the legislation on April 29. Under the proposed law, a user would be warned twice when caught downloading and sharing pirate content, and would be disconnected for a year the third time. Opposition parties regarded it as inefficient and consumer advocates were worried that it could end up hitting the wrong people.

There is always a risk of hijacked connections being used for piracy, which is a very real danger when unprotected or badly protected wireless networks are used. The bill was defeated in a vote of the National Assembly despite already being approved by the Senate. Two members of President Sarkozy's majority government joined the opposition to the bill.

The MySpace Music project is only 6 months old, and it's 75 million or so users are streaming literally billions of songs per month. Under any normal regular deal with the record labels, a price would be set per stream that would have to be paid to the label. This is what you would think is in place at MySpace Music, because it certainly is at many other online audio services.

However, sources have told TechCrunch that Warner Music Group has been making some noise about the deal they struck with MySpace Music. It would appear that the deal does not have any pay-per-stream agreement setup. Instead, WMG gets a share of the advertising that is displayed when a user streams its songs.

That advertising revenue is not turning out to be as good as was initially expected, and now WMG is getting angry about the widespread use of its content on the site and the low revenue it is receiving for it. It has indicated that when the current deal is up, it will seek a new agreement with MySpace Music or pull its music from the service completely.

New details of Microsoft's upcoming "Zune HD" portable media player (PMP) have emerged. WMpoweruser.com received some new pictures and tech details in its e-mail Inbox. The Zune HD will sport a multi-touch Organic Light-emitting Diode (OLED) display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It features TV-OUT support, with what appears to be a HDMI slot on the side of the device.

It will support HD multimedia playback (no information on maximum resolution) and HD content will become available from the Zune Marketplace. Another interesting note is that the Zune will support "3D Xbox games", but it's unclear how exactly this functionality will work, what will be its limits and what content will be initially available.

However, the information provided states that the new Zune will be available in 16GB and 32GB models, which is disappointing for a player that will be advertised as HD-capable. It supports wireless sync and comes loaded with a multi-touch ready browser too.

Plex media center software for the Mac OS X platform now can add support for Netflix movie streaming service. The add-on was developed in response to continuous requests from users, and as shown in the pictures below, it looks very beautiful and will fit a HTPC environment perfectly. Plex is a port of XBox Media Center for the Mac OS X platform. Originally an XBox media player, Plex has grown to be a sleek looking and feature rich Media Center application.

It plays pretty much every media file you can throw at it. Plex is designed to run in fullscreen on the living room TV, but works well in windowed mode on your computer display too.

Pioneer and Sharp have announced that they will create a new venture that will operate in the optical disc business area. The new venture will make effective use of the management resources of both Pioneer and Sharp in the optical disc area, and intents to claim a leadership position particularly in the Blu-ray Disc market which is expected to see significant growth in the coming years.

The new company is expected to begin operating on October 1, 2009. It will engage in the design, development, manufacturing and sale of optical disc equipment, focusing on drivers, recorders and players. Both companies are negotiating in good faith and expect to official sign the joint venture agreement by June 25.

The two companies will combine their technological expertise in the field, built from decades of experience developing and marketing products based on optical disc technology, dramatically enhancing both of their market competitiveness in the area.

The founders of the infamous Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker remain confident that they will be victorious in the court battle over alleged copyright theft, which has gotten significant media coverage around the world since it kicked off. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde founded The Pirate Bay in 2003. "We are quite confident we are going to win," Peter Sunde said.

In February 2009, the Pirate Bay recorded 22 million simultaneous users of the service. The site hosts no copyright infringing content whatsoever, but instead let's users download torrent files which can be used to download and share films, TV shows, albums, video games and everything else in between from other users.

Representatives for the movie, music and games industry are seeking about 115 million kronor (€10.6 million) in damages. A charge of "assisting copyright infringement" was dropped on day 2 of the trial, and instead the founders are charged with "assisting making available copyright material", which would be considered a lesser offense.

Gerardo Arellano and his wife, Maribel Fernandez, both 32, were arrested after being caught by police officers recording the Hannah Montana film at a cinema in South Barrington. A subsequent search of the couple's home turned up 44,000 CDs and DVDs containing pirated movies, as well as DVD duplicating equipment, Assistant State's Atty. Adam Klugman said at the bail hearing.

"Apparently, he wasn't taping this for his own personal use," Klugman said. Arellano is a restaurant worker who lives with his wife, three kids and his mother. He denied that he was involved in any piracy scheme, claiming that the mountain of discs found at his home were owned by his mother.

"My mother saved all of the DVDs, CDs and videos," Arellano said. "She saves those." Authorities also found that Arellano's computer had a link to a Web site in France that sells pirated films. Cam copies of movies are the main source for pirate copies of new movies showing in theaters, according to Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The 90-strong international orchestra built through the YouTube video-sharing site will make its debut at New York's Carnegie Hall tomorrow evening. The video will be available on YouTube on Thursday. All 90 musicians auditioned for their place in the orchestra through YouTube, and also went on to practice for their concert at home while getting advice and lessons from some of the world's top musicians over the Internet.

The orchestra has had three days to rehearse together, and will be playing pieces from Gabrieli, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Villa Lobos and John Cage. "Everyone in the orchestra clearly has had a lot of experience playing their instrument," said Michael Tilson Thomas, the orchestra's Grammy Award-winning conductor and music director for the San Francisco Symphony.

Thomas added: "Some of them are vastly experienced ensemble players in chamber music and orchestral music, some have much less experience," he said. "Some have other professions, including being physicians, poker players and financial analysts." More than 3,000 auditions were submitted through YouTube in December and January.

Judges from the world's top orchestras narrowed it down to 200, and YouTube users made the final selections. The YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel has been viewed 15 million times so far.

The Xbox Live-exclusive downloadable content (DLC) title "The Lost and Damned" has reportedly been downloaded over one million times from the online service. At around $20 a pop, it's very decent revenue for a single DLC title.

However, it's worth remembering that Microsoft paid Rockstar $50 million to produce two new chapters for the blockbuster "Grand Theft Auto 4", released in April 2008.

The Lost and Damned broke day one sales records on Xbox Live, and according to analyst Michael Pachter, it will have been downloaded 2 million times from Xbox Live by the end of the year.

The Business Software Alliance has decided to hijack the "real" cases of piracy that have been highlighted in the mainstream media in the past week for use with its own anti-piracy campaigns. To anybody with half a brain, it is obvious that the same word is used for two totally different things, but it's not so obvious to the BSA apparently.

We've all been following the events of the past week of the pirates off the Horn of Africa. Piracy takes many forms, some more violent than others. I wanted to let you know that the Business Software Alliance is launching a new campaign today "Faces of Internet Piracy" that shows the real-life impact of software piracy...

Nintendo has announced the release of the new Wii MotionPlus accessory is scheduled for June 8 in the United States. The accessory will push the motion-sensing controls of the popular Wii system to new levels of precision and performance, the company claims. Nintendo points out that it will be available on July 26th, when the Wii Sports Resort game launches.

Wii Sports comes packed with the Wii console. It grew into a worldwide phenomenon and continues to attract millions of new players to the world of video games. Each Wii Sports Resort game comes packed with a single Wii MotionPlus accessory. When used with specially designed games, Wii MotionPlus tracks players' movements in finer detail and with greater accuracy.

Even the slightest twist of the wrist or turn of the body is replicated exactly on the TV screen, allowing users to become even more immersed in Wii game play. Designed for easy attachment to the Wii Remote controller, the Wii MotionPlus accessory will be offered at an MSRP of $19.99.

eBay commented on the future of the Skype VoIP service on Tuesday, indicating that it intends to spin-off the subsidiary through an initial public offering. The emergence of this news casts doubt on any potential sale back to the original founders, who reportedly were keen to get their hands on the service once again. eBay had made some indications in recent times that it might sell Skype.

Shareholders will be pleased with the news, as they have been pushing for a sale of Skype or a spin-off. "We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential," eBay Chief Executive John Donahoe said in a statement. He added that there were few synergies with the larger company.

eBay acquired Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion from Niklas Zennstrom, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark. When eBAy signaled it may be ready to unload the company for the right price, Zennstrom and Friis reportedly began seeking to raise a billion dollars from private equity firms. The auction giant was reported to be expecting no less than $1.7 billion for the company.

Calls made using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology generally cost the caller less than traditional phone calls. For this reason, many of the major carriers within the European Union have outright banned VoIP use on their networks, viewing it as a potentially devastating threat to their revenues.

However, there are some signals from the European Union that they will be forced to change their stance. As things currently stand, individual EU member states regulate blocked Internet services, but EU telecom commissioner Viviane Reding recently commented that action must be taken against carriers that use their large marker share to "block innovative services."

A report published in Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper claims that the European Union has already prepared draft legislation that would open all smartphones used within the bloc to VoIP services.

A free firmware update to HP's MediaSmart Server has brought some nice improvements, providing remote video streaming and video conversion of unprotected content. The update enables the server to automatically convert videos (including unprotected DVDs) into two resolutions; the original, high-resolution file to stream to devices on a home network including PCs, Macs and gaming systems, and the mobile resolution file devices such as iPod touch, iPhone and PlayStation Portable (PSP).

The video converter will transcode most popular video formats into both high and mobile quality MPEG-4 (H.264) versions. "This new feature will help eliminate the frustration people experience when attempting to stream their videos to connected devices in the home or remotely to their mobile devices," said Jason Zajac, vice president and general manager, Worldwide Attach Group, HP.

According to an analyst, Dell is currently in discussions with China Mobile over the possibility of the company offering a smartphone based on China Mobile's operating system. The move would put Dell right in the middle of a very competitive and huge market in China. Dell has already hinted in the past that it will offer a smartphone or mobile Internet device, but didn't any more details than that.

Zhang Jun, an analyst at research firm Wedge MKI, said Dell is currently waiting for China Mobile to pick one or two models from smartphones it has offered, and that both phones may have a deal around August this year. If so, a Dell smartphone could hit the Chinese market by the end of the year.

The China Mobile operating system is based on Google's Android, but includes China Mobile's own applications. The Open Mobile System (OMS) operating system supports the network's Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) network standard, which has so far had a slow take-up in the region due to the dull smartphone offerings.

The operator of FootyTweets, a website that uses Twitter to provide updates for football teams in the UK, has gotten a cease and desist threat from a firm representing the Premier League and Football Leagues copyright online. FootyTweets listed fixtures for games and also provided live updates, via Twitters, of scores and other details from football games.

From the operators blog...

If you follow me on Twitter (@ollieparsley) then you will have found out last night (2nd April) that I received a Cease and Desist notice from a company that looks after the Premier League and Football Leagues copyright online. Of course I checked that the company was legitimate and I am unhappy to say that they are legitimate.

This essentially comes from the Football DataCo (that is owned by the Premier League and Football League) via a company that looks after their online copyright.

What did it say?

The email I first received said FootyTweets was “using the UK Club Crests and League logos without permission from the Clubs or the UK Leagues“. The e-mails that then went back and forth went on to add the fact that I need a licence to display fixtures (I looked on their site and it would be £52,000!). Further to this I was told I need another licence to display match updates. I currently get this from an outside source and then send them to Twitter. Read more...

As Apple's Inc.'s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch approaches one billion downloads, heads are turning within the games industry. On any given day, six to eight of the top ten apps downloaded for the iPhone or iPod Touch are games. Some of them are free, but others are priced between 99c and $10, with Apple taking a 30 percent cut.

Some elements within the games industry are taking time out from creating blockbuster titles with cutting edge graphics and gameplay features, developed for consoles and PC, and starting to focus on developing for the iPhone/iPod platform, and more importantly, studying the thousands of games that exist already in the App Store to see what "works" on the platform.

The transition of the iPhone/iPod Touch into handheld gaming devices was more-or-less unexpected when they launched, at least to the level they have achieved. "The iPhone has changed everything," said Neil Young, a game developer who left Electronic Arts to found Ngmoco, a San Francisco maker of iPhone games.

According to data provided by Nielsen Online, viewers of Internet videos in the United States now watch an average of three hours of the material each month. Online video viewing hasn't ceased expanding, with the average time spent viewing the videos in U.S. being 169 minutes in February, then rising to 191 minutes in March, an increase of 13 percent.

The total number of video streams being viewed grew by 9 percent to 9.7 billion, from 8.9 billion, and the total number of videos per user rose 7 percent to 74, from 70.

The sharper rise in the minutes spent viewing video than the number of videos being viewed tells Nielsen that more users are switching to longer videos, with the average growing from 2.4 minutes in February to 2.7 minutes in March.

There's almost no need to say it - but YouTube remained the number 1 video site with 5.5 billion videos and over 89 million people using the site in the United States. Hulu came in second with 384 million videos and 9 million users.

Google Inc.'s YouTube service has technically complied with the new Cyber Defamation Law in South Korea, by taking actions which seem to purposely be ineffective. The Cyber Defamation Law requires that all users who upload videos on a site that gets more than 100,000 visitors a day, provide their real name and national ID card number.

YouTube decided that instead of creating a new submission and registration system that would cater to the Korean government, it would simply block all uploads and comments from users in South Korea. Of course, if a user in South Korea simply changed their preference setting to a country other than South Korea, uploading and commenting won't be a problem.

"We have a bias in favor of freedom of expression and are committed to openness," said Lucinda Barlow, a spokeswoman for YouTube in Asia. "It's very important that if users want to be anonymous that they have that chance." The decision was taken after close consultation and debate between Google Korea and its headquarters.

The Cyber Defamation Law is a government response to the suicide of Choi Jin Sil, a popular actress, in October. The case brought cyber-bullying to the limelight in a country that has a very high number of Internet users.

Following the introduction of new measures under the IPRED anti-file sharing law in Sweden last week, legal downloads of music enjoyed a 100 percent increase in the country. The information was released by digital content provider InProdicon. The company did not want to release information on the exact number of songs sold however.

"The first week after the introduction of IPRED, sales increased by 100 percent compared to the previous weeks. I don't know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change," said managing director Klas Brännström.

This could mean good things for Swedish artists however, as about 60 percent of downloaded music in the country is from Swedish artists. "We have seen a clear sales increase compared to last year. There has been a 20-30 percent increase on an annual basis, but sales fluctuate a bit depending on which artists are launching new albums," said Brännström.

Just days ago, the Pirate Bay revealed that over 100,000 had signed up to test its IPREDATOR service, which claims to offer anonymity to users.

According to a publication by Pearl Research, China's online video game market swelled to $2.8 billion in 2008, up 63 percent over 2007. "Trends to track in 2009 include the growth of social networking sites in China, with over 55 million users, and their cross-pollination with games," said Allison Luong, Managing Director of Pearl Research.

Luong continues: "One overall concern is the lack of diversification with many game operators relying on a single title for the bulk of revenues. In addition, a glut of content with more than 200 games on the market, makes releasing a breakout hit increasingly difficult."

The "Games Market in China" study goes on to predict that the market will rise to $5.5 billion by 2012. The economic downturn in China has not adversely affected revenue for gaming companies. Tencent, Changyou, The9, Netease, Shanda and Giant all brought in over $200 million in revenue during the year.

Fantasy Westward Journey took the crown for the most concurrent users, adding up to 1.8 million players. It was followed by Zhengtu Online with 1.5 million and Dungeon and Fighter at 1.2 million. World of Warcraft amassed 1 million.

Apple Inc. has been sued by Elan Microelectronics for allegedly infringing two of the Taiwanese company's patents which related to touch-screen technology. "We couldn't find a common viewpoint with Apple, so we decided we had to take action," said Dennis Liu, an Elan spokesman. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco earlier this week.

It alleges that Apple products - including MacBooks, iPhone and iPod Touch - use technology that infringe on two of Elan's patents, related to their touch screen or touch pad features. Apple, as always, has not commented on the lawsuit. Touch screens are becoming much more popular in products, with iSuppli expecting the market to grow from the 2008 figure of $3.4 billion, to $6.4 billion by 2013.

Apple reported stronger-than-expected fourth quarter earnings in January, thanks to the sales of the company's MacBook, iPhone and iPod. Elan won a preliminary court injunction against Synaptics in 2006 over one of the patents involved in the Apple lawsuit. The two companies reached a cross-licensing agreement last year.

An administrator of a website that offered links to copyrighted material has been fined, and given a 6 month jail sentence in Spain. The 22 year old operated infopsp.com, which the Spanish Association of Publishers and Distributors Entertainment Software (ADESE) and the Spanish Videographic Union (UVE) both claimed was operating illegally. Non-commercial file-sharing websites are actually legal in Spain since the Sharemula case, where the operator was found innocent because he did not profit from running the site.

However, the judge in the infopsp.com case decided that since it had advertisements from Impresiones Web, Google Adsense, Canalmail and Correodirect, it could not be considered a non-commercial website because it profited from copyright infringement. The site, which had 17,300 members, did not host any illegal content itself at all, but did link to other sites where it could be gotten from.

Adrián Gómez Llorente, the administrator, was fined €4,900 and sentenced to 6 months in jail. Fortunately for him, his lack of a criminal record means it is unlikely he will serve any time at all. This is the first conviction of it's type in Spain, and neither side have announced plans to appeal the case.

While many analysts have predicted that the sale of Blu-ray set-tops will increase by double over the 2008 tally, VideoBusiness reported that concern is spreading among retail stores. New Blu-ray players include enhanced features over older players, such as being able to use Amazon Video on Demand, wireless connectivity and more, but in this global recession, some stores are questioning whether consumers will respond to the new features as hoped.

"Sales have definitely slowed in all categories," said Doug Bravin, chief operating officer at Texas electronics superstore Bjorn's. "Blu-ray players aren't setting the world on fire. But then nothing really is. We are planning on this being a tough year." Bravin expects sales of Blu-ray players from the store to be on par with 2008 and nothing more.

Even more enthusiastic stores think sales will hit 5 million units in 2009, which represents about a 5% - 10% drop from most analysts figures. Consumer electronics makers have been packing more features into their Blu-ray offerings, hoping to attract attention. Panasonic's $299 DMP-BD60 and $399 DMP-BD80 will be capable of streaming content from Amazon from June without any firmware upgrade required, and the company will also offer the $399 DMP-BD70 - a Blu-ray/VHS dual player, for example.

MacProVideo, a company that is dedicated to producing and distributing training videos for Mac, is to release an application via the iPhone App Store. The application will allow users to watch MacProVideo's Mac video tutorials on an iPhone or an iPod Touch.

It also uploaded it's N.E.D. application for Mac OS X, adding a new "Devices" area to sync videos to your iPhone. The application will also remember your library state and playback position, searching has been tuned up a bit and there is the ability to ratings and notes to content.

N.E.D. 3.1 can be download free from MacProVideo's website. The application for iPhone is not available just yet, as it is waiting for approval from the App Store.

More info: http://www.macprovideo.com/

The original creators of the Skype VoIP Internet communication network are reportedly seeking to buy the company back from eBay. Niklas Zennstrom, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark, founded Skype in 2003 and sold it to eBay just two years later for $2.6 billion. The New York Times is reporting that they are now seeking to raise a billion dollars from private equity firms to re-claim their creation.

eBay is reported to be expecting no less than $1.7 billion for the company. Skype made $145 million in revenues for the fourth quarter of 2008. It boasts 405 million users, up sharply from the 53 million registered users at the time of its sale. It is used mostly for free user-to-user calls as opposed to premium services it offers.

John Donahoe, eBay's chief executive, has "repeatedly signaled his willingness to sell Skype for the right price," according to the Times. Recently Skype launched an application for the Apple iPhone, allowing iPhone users to take advantage of the service.

Details have emerged about the secretive global negotiations to fight copyright infringement and the movement of pirated material across the world. The proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has received a lot of speculation due to the secretive nature of the negotiations, with some digital rights lobbyists criticizing the lack of detail. However, the Obama administration's goal to improve transparency has made some details public.

The information released shows how 37 countries are working to find a way to cut copyright infringement and counterfeiting globally. Interestingly, the summary indicates that the countries are trying to figure out how to (if at all) involve Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the fight against piracy.

ACTA also considers measures to stop the flow of copyright infringing material from moving across borders. This led to some fears that there would be checks of computers and MP3 players to find pirated content. However, the outline makes that very unlikely, as it makes it clear the interest is only with industrial-scale importing and exporting of counterfeit material.

The Associated Press made a downright weird demand recently, ordering an affiliate to remove a video embedded in a news article from YouTube. Since the video was from the Associated Press' official YouTube channel, you would assume that because the "embed" feature has not been disabled on any of the videos, that the AP intended them to be used outside of YouTube by third parties. Not the case however, as WTNQ-FM in Tennessee learned.

"I noticed you are posting our video content without a license and have to ask you to remove the AP video content from the site ASAP. If you would like to know more about our web services please contact me," AP's regional radio representative in Chicago said in an e-mail. Frank Strovel, WTNQ's operations manager, was stunned and decided to call the rep for an explanation.

"I said, 'How is it a violation of a license agreement if you are actively posting the video on YouTube - on a channel you specifically created to share content - with embed codes for people to post in their websites? Are you telling me that you put it there for people to use……but if they USE IT they're violating your rights?'," Strovel wrote. "The basic reply was, 'Well, I'll have to investigate that issue further but in the meantime you need to pull all of our videos off your site.'"

Engadget has published leaked artwork for Microsoft's next generation Zune media player. Speculation that Microsoft was going to add a new portable media player (PMP) to its line-up began arose only weeks ago. The leaked artwork shows the gadget possessing a large widescreen display, housed in a bushed aluminum enclosure and glass. The artwork also displays the title of the model as Zune HD.

The "HD" part of the name might imply that the widescreen is capable of playing higher resolution videos than rivals PMPs, or like the Samsung OmniaHD mobile phone, may be just there to generate marketing buzz. Microsoft's next Zune was expected to attack Apple's iPod Touch. It will be the first touchscreen Zune, and the leaked artwork shows that, like the iPod Touch, it has just one single button on the front below the screen.

Pic Source: Engadget

Users of the older 2G and 3G models of Apple's iPhone have been reporting Wi-Fi problems since installing firmware v.2.2.1. Some users found that their Wi-Fi features no longer worked, and rolling back firmware to a previous version didn't even help. However, using the phone with an almost dead battery can get Wi-Fi working again. Refrigerating the phone also seems to get the Wi-Fi back temporarily - seemingly confirming the problem to be heat.

The current theory about the problem is that the Wi-Fi chip in some iPhones has been throttled back, but this restriction was lifted somehow by installing v2.2.1 firmware. Since a rollback doesn't work either, there has been speculation that a driver update included with the firmware may not be rolling back. Whatever the reason for it, there is plenty of concern that the damage may be permanent.

Some users have had their handsets replaced under warranty, with Apple suggesting to ask for a model without v2.2.1 software installed. "Just got off the phone with an Apple representative who didn't hesitate at all to make an appointment for me at my local Apple Store for a replacement iPhone with the note to NOT have the 2.2.1 OS installed," one poster commented on Apple's support forums.

Apple Inc. is currently "counting up" to a major milestone of one billion applications downloaded by iPhone and iPod Touch users from the App Store. It's hard to phantom that iPod and iPhone users have actually managed to download such a large amount of applications. To celebrate, Apple is giving away prizes in a contest to users who download Apps from the store before the tally crosses the 1 billion line.

At time of writing, the App Store is showing a total of 928,603,058 downloads overall, but it has been rising fast today. When you download an App, you are automatically entered for a chance to win $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro. You can enter up to 25 times per day.

View the 1-Billion App Countdown Page

The company has also put up a list of the top 20 Apps from the App Store of all time.

Microsoft Corp. has been dealt a harsh strike by being ordered to a pay a sum of $388 million in a patent dispute. The dispute is with anti-piracy software maker Uniloc Inc, and specifically concerns Uniloc's patent on "software that generates unique identities for licensed users and prevents unauthorized use or copying of programs." The Redmond software giant said it was very disappointed with the ruling and plans to appeal.

"We believe that we do not infringe, that the patent is invalid and that this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported," said a Microsoft spokesman. "We will ask the court to overturn the verdict." The verdict is the result of a long case in federal court in Rhode Island.

The lawsuit was originally filed by Uniloc in 2003, claiming patent infringement for Microsoft's use of security software to prevent unauthorized use of its Windows operating system and other products, including Office. The damages award is among the largest in history for a patent infringement case.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has said it will unveil the full details of the new Bluetooth 3.0 specification on April 21. The new version of the popular standard will allow users to transfer photos, music, videos and other information at much greater speeds. It will speed up the transfers in many ways, one of which is the ability to utilize Wi-Fi via an 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer when it is available.

It does not require Wi-Fi to be available to work, it will simply switch back to regular Bluetooth in non-Wi-Fi areas. Enhanced Power Control will also reduce the number of disconnects that Bluetooth suffers from. Bluetooth technology is facing tough competition in a growing market for wireless data transfer solutions.

Nokia has released a handset using near-field communication that can be tied to a credit card account, for example. Sony also has plans to push its new TransferJet technology, which it boasts can transfer data at a rate of 560 Mbps.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata admitted that the Wii console is struggling a bit in Japan, but said the company has no plans to drop the price in response. "The Wii is in the most unhealthy condition since it hit the Japanese market," he said. "The current condition in the Japanese market is not the one we want. A price cut in a difficult economy cannot really excite the market and drive up sales."

He went on to say that he didn't believe a price cut would be a viable option for Nintendo as things stand. "A price cut in a difficult economy cannot really excite the market and drive up sales. As of now I really don't think that a price cut is a good option for us," he told a news conference.

In the 5 weeks to March 29th, sales for the Wii console have dropped off in Japan by 63% compared to the same period last year, representing 99,335 units according to Enterbrain Inc. By comparison, the demand for the PlayStation 3 is up sharply, with a 80% rise in sales compared to the same period last year, moving 146,948 units.

Researchers have warned that regular users of BitTorrent and maybe Skype are risking their privacy due to what they describe as a 'guilt by association' vulnerability. Fabián Bustamante, professor of computer science at Northwestern University, revealed that they have discovered how BitTorrent users form identifiable "communities" over time. The same problem could apply to other technology based on P2P.

"This was particularly surprising because BitTorrent is designed to establish connections at random, so there is no a priori reason for such strong communities to exist," Bustamante says. In a nutshell, it means that users computers tend to connect more often to certain other users machines on P2P networks that was previously thought.

The (bad) April Fool's scare caused by the widely spread Conficker variety of malware has been followed by a spring to life by the Conficker worm, according to security firm Trend Micro. The firm has tracked Conficker updates to infected machines over the past few days, hinting that the authors are trying to cash in on their global botnet. Rather than instruct the worm to cause global chaos, it has started downloading fake anti-virus tools to nag users about phony infections and scam them into buying the "product".

It is estimated that as many as 12 million PCs worldwide are infected. The use of bogus software to extort money from uninformed users is nothing new at all, but it can be very profitable to the individuals behind the scam and a total nightmare for anyone who falls into the trap and pays for a clean-up that never happens. The spread of Conficker emphasizes just how many Windows machines are running without Automatic Updates enabled or adequate security software.

DETECTION & REMOVAL

To figure out whether you are infected with the Conficker worm is to try the usual tricks. Firstly, check the websites of common security tools like Symantec, AVG and Avira. If none of those would load, you may be infected, as Conficker blocks access to the sites. Another good test is to check the status of several services (Start -> Run -> services.msc). If Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service, Error Reporting Service or Windows Defender (or other security services you did not disable yourself) have been disabled without your knowledge, or cannot be started, this could be another sign of infection.

Amazon's Kindle 2 made headlines throughout the world when it was introduced. Of particular attention was the device's decent text-to-speech feature. At first, the plan was for the feature to work with any text displayed on the Kindle 2. However, the Author's Guild saw this feature as a "performance" when used and pressured Amazon to allow publishers to decide on an eBook-by-eBook basis whether to enable the feature or not.

Whether this feature really threatens audio books and other sources of revenue is unknown, but for certain groups of people, this stance is simply not acceptable. At the end of last month, twenty groups representing visually and cognitively impaired individuals formed the Reading Rights Coalition. The group exists solely to oppose the action of the Author's Guild.

Among the members of the Reading Right Coalition are the American Council of the Blind, the International Dyslexia Association, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities. "Sadly, the Authors Guild does not support equal access for us. The Guild has told us that to read their books with text-to-speech we must either submit to a special registration system (that not all may qualify for and that would expose disability information to all future eBook reader manufacturers) and prove our disabilities -- or pay extra," says the coalition's mission statement.

MCE Technologies has begun shipping its new 8X Blu-ray Recordable Drive for Mac Pro and Power Mac, starting at $399. It is natively compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later, although Mac OS X does not support the viewing of store-bought Blu-ray movie titles at this time. Nevertheless, the drive can burn Blu-ray discs at up to 8x speed, DVD+-R media at up to 16X and CD-R media at up to 32x.

With Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later, you can record directly from the Finder without needing additional software. Creating Blu-ray discs required third-party software such as Adobe Premier Pro, Final Cut Pro and Roxio Toast 10 Pro. MCE also offers a version specific to 2009-era Mac Pros and an external recorder equipped with USB 2.0 and external Serial ATA (eSATA) connections.

Nintendo's new DSi handheld has proven to be quite popular in the West as well as its home territory of Japan. After selling over 500,000 units in its first month of availability in Japan, the company has moved over 300,000 units in both the European and US markets within its first two days of availability in each. It was released in Europe on April 3, and in the U.S. on April 5.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the amazing sales figures at the at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan lunch in Tokyo, attended by NPR. "These early launch results supplant the launch sales of the previous versions of the Nintendo DS," said Iwata. "They show us that the DSi has received a warm welcome around the world."

The DSi is 12 percent thinner than its predecessor, with 17 percent larger screens. It touts two video cameras, web browsing abilities, music playing and an SD-card slot. It was announced by Nintendo as sales of the popular Nintendo DS Lite handheld started to drop off in Japan.

Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Google Inc.'s YouTube have reached a deal to create a new premium music video service. The service, which is expected to launch in the coming months, is a bid to boost revenues from YouTube's phenomenal global usage. YouTube also gained an extension on the rights to feature content from Universal's catalog including U2 and 50 Cent, within YouTube videos.

The new service will be called Vevo, and it will offer higher quality music videos, as opposed to the typically lower quality content uploaded by users. The premium service, exclusive to Universal content, may also attract more big name advertisers who have been reluctant to advertise alongside user-generated content.

A boost in advertising rates will boost revenues for the content, which will be shared among Universal and YouTube.

Just about a week after the notorious Pirate Bay tracker unveiled a new feature that let's Facebook users share torrents on their profiles, Facebook has responded by blocking users from doing so. While this latest change doesn't seem to have gone down particularly well with some Facebook users (not unusual), it will keep them out the of the firing line of media companies fighting BitTorrent-driven piracy.

Indeed, the company is not hiding the reason for this move, with spokesman Barry Schnitt saying the social networking giant, "respects copyrights and our Terms of Service prohibits placement of 'Share on Facebook' links on sites that contain any content that is infringing. Given the controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay and the pending lawsuit against them, we've reached out to The Pirate Bay and asked them to remove the 'Share on Facebook' links from their site. The Pirate Bay has not responded and so we have blocked their torrents from being shared on Facebook."

In Facebook's defense, most other sites with user interaction on some level would make the same move, but even a small percentage of Facebook users who would have found this useful amounts to a lot of noise in protest. This block comes as the Pirate Bay revealed 100,000 users have signed up to test their IPREDATOR service, designed to provide anonymity to file sharers.

Despite being backed by President Nikolas Sarkozy and approved by the Senate, the French National Assembly has rejected a bill which proposed that Internet pirates have their connections suspended. The legislation proposed a "three strikes" system, in which a file sharer caught breaking copyright laws would receive a warning e-mail first, followed by a letter for a second offense. On the third strike, the user would be cut off from the Internet for a year.

The bill was backed by the film and music industries. Both have been pushing for tougher laws for Internet pirates as revenues continue to sink. Consumer groups voiced concerns that such a system would inevitably end up affecting innocent users, particularly those who may have had their computer or wireless connection hijacked without their knowledge.

The warnings and subsequent connection suspension would be delivered at the demand of a new state agency setup for the task. The socialist parliamentarian Patrick Bloche said the bill was "dangerous, useless, inefficient, and very risky for us citizens." The bill was defeated in a vote of the National Assembly despite already being approved by the Senate. Two members of President Sarkozy's majority government joined the opposition to the bill.