News written by James Delahunty (January, 2010)

The European Commission (EC) has agreed to requests from a human rights watchdog to monitor Virgin Media's planned deep-packet inspection test on its network to determine the level of illegal file sharing. Virgin will use software called CView that will sniff traffic over the Gnutella network, eDonkey network and through BitTorrent and will be capable of retrieving file names.

The system is setup currently so that individual users cannot be identified by CView. However, Privacy International is concerned that using the software will breach UK privacy laws. "Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) intercepting communications is a criminal offence regardless of what you do with the data," Alexander Hanff, head of ethical networks at Privacy International, said.

He has vowed to file a criminal complaint if Virgin starts using CView. Legislation proposed in the UK would use a measured response to fight piracy. It would start with a warning letter to a customer of an ISP (from the ISP once it receives a complaint) and those who persist will get further, stronger warnings before eventually being suspended from the service.

More than 150 people have contacted consumer publication Which? Computing claiming to have been wrongly targeted with written warnings for Internet piracy activity. ACS:Law has sent thousands of letters to users in the UK accusing them of illegally sharing copyrighted content on the Internet, and providing a chance to pay about £250 to settle the case.

Which? claims to have been contacted by a number of people who say they have no knowledge of the alleged offense. One such case involves a 78 year old man who was accused of downloading and sharing pornography. "He doesn't even know what file-sharing or BitTorrent is so has certainly not done this himself or given anyone else permission to use his computer to do such a thing," Which? was told in a complaint.

The consumer advocate is now concerned that users might be accused wrongly. "Innocent consumers are being threatened with legal action for copyright infringements they not only haven't committed, but wouldn't know how to commit," said Matt Bath, technology editor of Which?. "Many will be frightened into paying up rather than facing the stress of a court battle."

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is preparing for a third trial to once again determine damages, which have so far ranged from $54,000 to $1.92 million, to be paid by Jammie Thomas-Rasset who has been accused (and found guilty) of sharing 24 songs illegally on file sharing networks. Last year, the mother of four from Minnesota was ordered to pay $1.92 million in damages for sharing the music.

Last week, Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis reduced the damages to $54,000, declaring that the $1.92 million figure was "monstrous and shocking." The RIAA was given until Wednesday to accept the decision or to reject it, which would result in a new trial. The trade group announced it will reject the decision and go to another trial, as Thomas-Rasset turned down an opportunity to settle the case.

Attorneys for Thomas-Rasset said she would not accept a settlement offer from the RIAA, which would have her paying $25,000 to a charity for struggling artists. "Jammie is not going to agree to pay any amount of money to them," Attorney Joe Sibley said, adding that it doesn't matter to Thomas-Rasset whether the damages are $25,000 or $1.92 million.

Netflix has reported its highest number of new customers in a single quarter in the company's history, adding more than 1.1 million new subscribers in the fourth-quarter. It took four years to hit 1 million subscribers after Netflix launched in 1999. Investors applauded as the company revealed its results for the quarter, including a 36 percent rise in the Q4 profits for the rental-by-mail service.

Netflix now has more than 12 million subscribers, with a boost in new subscribers in response to new plans that bundle the rental-by-mail service with unlimited video streaming over the Internet, for prices as low as $9 per month. The good news didn't stop there for investors either; Netflix management expects Q1 2010 to be even more successful, projecting between 1.2 and 1.5 million new subscribers by the end of March.

Fourth-quarter revenue climbed 24 percent to $444.5 million, missing analyst expectations by $1 million. The shortfall however was overshadowed by pledges from management to boost profit margins to 11 percent from its previous 10 percent target.

Nokia Corp. has decided not to bundle its 'Comes With Music' service with its flagship X6 music phone model, in an effort to boost sales of the device. By cutting the unlimited music service, Nokia can cut the price of the phone by a third. Nokia launched 'Comes With Music' in 2008 in Britain as a test for the service, but it has only received a lukewarm reception, largely due to a large price overall.

"Nokia will have unbundled Comes with Music with heavy heart. It's a cornerstone service for flagship products like the X6, but this move reflects operators' reluctance to offer it," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight. Nokia wanted to boost the service by bundling it with the X6 phone, but retail outlets and operators weren't warm to it.

"This was an expected move -- in our view, the early demand for the bundled X6 has been soft," said analyst Tero Kuittinen from MKM Partners. "The lack of confidence in Comes with Music has kept European operators from marketing it aggressively." The phone went on sale last year, bundled with 'Comes With Music', for around €450 ($634), excluding taxes and subsidies.

Ubisoft is looking to reduce the amount of pirates playing its PC games while tackling some of the common problems that Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology causes for legitimate consumers. The company has said that a new anti-piracy system will allow users to install their games on as many PCs as they want and there will be no need to insert a disc for authentication purposes either.

"If you own a hundred PCs, you can install your games on a hundred PCs," said Brent Wilkinson, Director, Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft. While these changes will sound great to those affected by Ubisoft's use of StarForce DRM, there is one major problem. The game is authenticated by the user by signing into his/her Ubi.com account before playing -- even on a single player game.

This obviously raises issues for people who do not have constant access to the Internet, or might regularly suffer service outages. However, Ubisift is not convinced that this will be a big problem. "We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection," Wilkinson said.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has lost a lawsuit against China's biggest search engine, Baidu. The trade group, which represents record companies from across the world, said that it was disappointed by the loss, and is currently taking time to plan its next steps. It has accused Baidu of "deep-linking" users to hundreds of thousands of illegal MP3 downloads.

The IPFI brought the lawsuit against Baidu in 2008 at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Baidu said it is pleased with the court's decision and that it will continue to comply with all laws.

"The verdicts do not reflect the reality that these services have built their music search businesses on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement, to the detriment of artists, producers and all those involved in China's legitimate music market," an IFPI representative said.

The hacker behind the first proper breach of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console's security has released the exploit for others to tinker with. It won't let you launch a "hello world" program easily, but its definitely a start for others who are up to the challenge now. George Hotz (geohot), known for his work Apple's iPhone, ran a blog for a few weeks following his efforts to crack the console security, and then on Friday announced that he had "hacked the PS3".

Here's his latest blog post.

Here's your silver platter
In the interest of openness, I've decided to release the exploit. Hopefully, this will ignite the PS3 scene, and you will organize and figure out how to use this to do practical things, like the iPhone when jailbreaks were first released. I have a life to get back to and can't keep working on this all day and night.

Please document your findings on the psDevWiki. They have been a great resource so far, and with the power this exploit gives, opens tons of new stuff to document. I'd like to see the missing HV calls filled in, nice memory maps, the boot chain better documented, and progress on a 3D GPU driver. And of course, the search for a software exploit. Read more...

Speaking with Ars Technica in an extensive internet, Google's Matthew Papakipos, the engineering director for the Chrome OS project, revealed that the operating system and the Chrome browser would include a media player. He said it would be the "equivalent of Windows Media Player." The player will support HTML5 audio and video, as well as Flash, and will be integrated with services on the web.

For example, a GMail user can view an attached video file directly in the Chrome browser because the media player framework is built-in. Google's Chrome operating system allows users to perform every day tasks such as checking e-mail, using social networking or just browsing the web. It is meant to provide long battery life for netbook users in particular.

The inclusion of a Chrome Media Player is then a necessity for users to be able to perform simple multimedia tasks offline. The operating system is still a work in progress by far, as Papakipos reveals that the team is still experimenting with many issues, such as ways to make use of dead space on widescreen monitors (the areas to the right and left of a web page that are blank, and may be quite large amounts of space depending on screen size).

Microsoft has confirmed some major organizational changes to its Entertainment and Devices unit following the departure of Corporate Vice President Enrique Rodriguez, who has reportedly decided to pursue other interests. Under Rodriquez were teams for Zune Software & Services, Mediaroom IPTV and Media Center. Those have now been moved to Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB).

The IEB division is also part of Entertainment and Devices, and is in charge of Xbox development, Games for Windows and Microsoft Game Studios. "As a natural evolution of the Interactive Entertainment Business, our consumer products and experiences focused on games, movies, TV and music will move into IEB, led by SVP Don Mattrick. In addition, we’ve formed a new centralized E&D services infrastructure team, which will act as a combined resource across the division," a spokesperson said.

"Finally, Enrique Rodriguez has decided to move on from his leadership position running the TV, video and music business and is evaluating his next career opportunity. The TVM first party business, Zune and Windows Medica Center will move to IEB, and Mediaroom, the TV platform business, will become a standalone group within E&D, reporting directly to (E&D) President Robbie Bach."

The Justice Department has vocally supported the awarding of $675,000 in damages to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from a Massachusetts student for sharing 30 songs illegally on the Internet. The department said that copyright infringement, "creates a public harm that Congress determined must be deterred."

The comments aren't very surprising, since several former RIAA lawyers do serve in high positions. The student in question is Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University graduate student, who is only the second person to go to trial against the RIAA following a P2P lawsuit. Over 30,000 such claims were made, almost all of which have resulted in settlements for a few thousand dollars.

The Copyright Act allows for fines ranging from $750 to $150,000 per infringement. After the Jury verdict in Tenenbaum's case, his defense team mounted a legal challenge against the damages, claiming they were unconstitutional on the grounds that they were disproportionate to the harm done to the industry by the crime.

Data acquired by Valve's Steam gaming delivery service shows that a large portion of its users have already decided to switch to Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7. Although it can be installed on Windows Vista, Microsoft has essentially tied DirectX 11 to the new operating system by working with Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to maximize its potential for more realistic graphics, improved multimedia performance and other features in Windows 7.

Microsoft sees the potential in Windows 7 offloading tasks to graphics hardware to take the load off of the CPU; certainly not a new concept at all, but one that the Redmond-giant wants to give a bigger role to for even common tasks. Valve data gotten directly from users' computers show that around 23 percent of its users have moved to Windows 7.

A U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has dealt a setback to Nvidia Corp. in a legal patent dispute with chip-maker Rambus. Judge Theodore Essex said that Nvidia is violating three patents owned by Rambus, while dismissing two other patents as invalid. Rambus Inc. is attempting to force Nvidia to patent royalties over technology in use in Nvidia graphics chips.

Nvidia is just one of many companies that Rambus is pursuing with the goal of gaining lucrative settlements and royalties. On January 19th, South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. agreed to pay $900 million to end a legal dispute with Rambus over computer memory chips. The consumer electronics manufacturer said it will come to a licensing deal with Rambus following the legal dispute.

"We're going to continue to fight this," said David Shannon, Nvidia's general counsel, adding that the company's customers "know we're going to take this as far as we have to take it." Judge Theodore Essex' decision is subject to review by the full commission, but it could potentially result in a ban on imports of Nvidia products that use the patented technology, which could include computers made by Hewlett-Packard.

The disputes over mobile technology patents just keep on coming. Yesterday, Motorola filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging that Research in Motion (RIM) has infringed several of the company's held patents.

Motorola is asking the ITC to investigate possible infringements of five patents on early stage innovations such as Wi-Fi access, UI and application management, by the Blackberry-maker.

"In light of RIM's continued unlicensed use of Motorola's patents, RIM's use of delay tactics in our current patent litigation, and RIM's refusal to design out Motorola's proprietary technology, Motorola had no choice but to file a complaint with the ITC to halt RIM's continued infringement." said Jonathan Meyer, senior vice president of intellectual property law at Motorola.

"Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the Company's business."

Rockstar Games has responded to an open letter attributed to "wives of employees" that alleges Rockstar workers suffer poor working conditions at a certain studio. The letter alleged that Rockstar was pushing employees to the brink at its San Diego studio. Employees were expected to work 12 hour days, including Saturdays, and the company had been dishonest about deadlines, according to the letter.

It demanded that Rockstar change its working practices or face legal action over the threat to workers' health at the studio. On Rockstar's official website, the developer made its first public comments on the allegations in response to fan questions. "As for the stories spreading around the internet, yes we have noticed them. Unfortunately, this is a case of people taking the opinions of a few anonymous posters on message boards as fact," the company stated.

"No business is ever perfect, but Rockstar Games is a tight knit team made up of around 900 supremely talented and motivated professionals, many of whom have worked here for a very long time. We're saddened if any former members of any studio did not find their time here enjoyable or creatively fulfilling and wish them well with finding an environment more suitable to their temperaments and needs, but the vast majority of our company are focused solely on delivering cutting edge interactive entertainment."

Earlier this week, Nokia responded to Apple's complaints to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), saying it will "defend itself vigorously." Apple filed a complaint with the ITC on January 15th, requesting that Nokia imports to the United States be blocked. The iPod-maker accuses Nokia of infringing several of its patents, having allegedly "copied certain aspects of the iPhone."

The legal dispute between the two companies kicked off in October when Nokia fired the first shot by filing a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that Apple's iPhone infringed 10 of its patents. In response, Apple countersued the Finnish mobile handset giant, alleging that its products infringed 13 patents it held. Then, in December 2009, Nokia filed a further claim with the ITC alleging Apple infringed seven of its patents in "virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers."

Following the latest move by Apple in the ongoing dispute, Nokia said it will "study the complaint and defend itself vigorously". "This does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia's innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007," a Nokia spokesperson said.

I don't generally like to post articles on claims about console hacking. Over the past few years, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have been subject to numerous hoaxes. In the Xbox 360 case, there were several that turned out to be true (esp. of late), but so many others that didn't. For the PlayStation 3, there has been a lot of claims made and not a lot that has come from them (that's just good security, over three years now).

So I have been following a blog from George Hotz (geohot), who is responsible for several iPhone hacks, on PlayStation 3 (PS3) hacking, and just today I came across a blog entry dated as the 22nd January, 2010 with an immediately intriguing title: "Hello hypervisor, I'm geohot". So while I (and most of us) generally ignore things like this that are submitted to us by users, in this case I'm willing to make an exception, even just for the sake of discussion, and out of respect.

Hello hypervisor, I'm geohot

I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. Read more...

A federal Judge on Friday dramatically reduced a penalty imposed on Jammie Thomas-Rasset by a Jury last year that amounted to almost $2 million for the offense of sharing 24 songs over the Internet. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who knocked the $1.92 million penalty down to about $54,000 ($2,250 per song), described the original fine as "monstrous and shocking."

"The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music," Davis wrote. Davis did deny a request for a new trial from Thomas-Rasset however, and has given the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) seven days to either accept the smaller penalty or ask for a new trial.

"Whether it's $2 million or $54,000, I'm a mom with four kids and one income and we're not exactly rolling in that kind of dough right now," Thomas-Rasset said. The Judge said that he came to the $2,250 fee by simply tripling the minimum $750 penalty defined by Federal law, but did indicate that he could have considered an even lower fine.

Sony has announced that the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has sold 3 million units in the United Kingdom since it was launched. "We'd like to offer a huge thank you to our retail partners in helping us pass the 3 million PS3 milestone," said Ray Maguire of Sony UK.

"The £249 price point is enabling us to reach a much broader audience and our line up of software, Heavy Rain, and God of War III - and that's just in Q1 - should help maintain the momentum." Back in July of last year, the console had reportedly moved 2.2 million units in the region, highlighting a very decent 800,000 units sold in the second half of 2009.

Around the same time, Microsoft had said the Xbox 360 was up to 3.9 million units in the UK, while in December of 2009, Nintendo revealed that the Wii had reached 6 million unit sales. The Wii is leading the market easily worldwide with 56 million units sold globally.

BACH Technology, a technology company based in Norway, Germany and China, which also has the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology as a partner, is pushing a new digital music file format that could be used with legal online music stores. MusicDNA focuses on embedding more content into the file, such as song lyrics and images, as well as making them capable of receiving media updates through the Internet.

The proposed file format has the backing of the original MP3 file inventor (who is a BACH investor). It would store MP3 audio but provide additional content to those that legally purchased it through the Internet. The original artist or record labels could "send" updates to the music file over time, whether it is information on tour dates or links to new content available on the Internet.

The user would be able to control the type of content that it would receive. Users that download the file illegally would not be able to tap its additional content features. The file would work as a normal MP3 file in a portable media player. BACH is in contact with record labels, rights holders and technology companies to plot a path forward for MusicDNA.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has said that global legislation aimed at tackling piracy is the key to the sector's survival. The trade group noted Spain as proof of a link between government inaction and growing music piracy. It said that Spain does not have laws in place to prevent illegal downloads, and pointed out that sales of music from local artists fell 65 percent in five years.

IFPI chairman John Kennedy described the situation in Spain as "almost irreversible". In the UK, the IFPI has thrown support behind the Digital Economy Bill, which contains measures that could result in music file sharers being disconnected from the Internet, and a controversial clause that hands power to change copyright laws to the Secretary of State.

"I hope they won't throw clause 17 overboard," Kennedy said. "We want this to be futureproof." Unsurprisingly, he also believes that suspension for persistent file sharers is a tactic that will be effective against online piracy. "If there is a risk of kids losing their internet connection, they will stop," said Mr Kennedy. He described the loss of the recent case against Oink (BitTorrent tracker) as a terrible disappointment, and added that it was an indication of how UK laws are out of touch.

The Chinese government has denounced criticism directed at it in a speech about Internet freedom given by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday. In the speech, Clinton has named China as a country that restricts Internet freedom, among several others. In her speech, Clinton also called for the Chinese government to investigate allegations made by Google that a China-originated attack on its systems targeted Chinese human rights activists, and to publish the results of the investigation.

"The US has criticized China's policies to administer the Internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement on the foreign ministry website. "This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations." When Google itself launched in China in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results, which included those related to the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests and Tibet.

Clinton acknowledged in her speech that the Internet was a "source of tremendous progress" in China, but warned that any country imposing political or commercial restrictions on the free access of information risked "walling themselves off from the progress of the next century." She called for tough action to be taken against people and states that engage in cyber attacks.

Microsoft released a patch for its Internet Explorer browser yesterday, aimed at protecting users of the software from vulnerabilities that were exploited in the recent Google China hack. The company claimed that hackers had targeted Google and at least 20 other companies in China by exploiting the browser weakness, and said the patch should be considered critical and applied as soon as possible.

Symantec Corp. warned that others have now begun to exploit the flaw too, with at least 100 websites being discovered that use the IE weakness. The real threat from the flaw is that it can lead to virus infections without the user having to download and run any file, which is usually the case. The patch address eight vulnerabilities in the Internet Explorer browser.

The websites discovered by Symantec successfully attack Internet Explorer 6 only, but the security firm warns that attackers could target Internet Explorer 7 and 8 as well. The patch will be delivered to most users via Automatic Updates, but can be manually applied through Microsoft's Windows Update site too (you need to be running Internet Explorer).

Thanks to a $1.25 billion settlement between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in an antitrust battle, AMD has posted its first quarterly profit in three years. AMD did benefit from a lift in the computer market, with microprocessor and graphics chip unit sales increasing, although prices have fallen too. Revenue was up 42 percent over the same period of last year, totaling $1.6 billion (just ahead of the $1.5 billion analysts expected).

AMD admits that it would have last money if it wasn't for the Intel settlement. For 2009, AMD's net income was $304 million with revenue at $5.4 billion, compared to 2008 when AMD made a net loss of $3.1 billion with revenue of $5.8 billion. Intel reported last week its highest gross profit margin in the company's history with better sales in all of its major product categories.

The $1.25 billion settlement it paid to AMD brought an antitrust suit due to go to trial in March to an early end. AMD originally filed the lawsuit against Intel in 2005. The deal does not bring to an end other cases against Intel that AMD has been vocally supportive of. It has complained to antitrust regulators around the world about Intel's sales tactics, which it alleges are illegal.

Video-sharing site Vimeo has launched its own experimental HTML 5 video player. For users with the right browser, this means there would be no need for the Flash plug-in to play about 90 percent of the videos available on the service. However, Vimeo's staff blog was quick to point out that the new player is only in beta test phase, and suffers from several limitations, some related to browsers' handling of HTML 5.

Firstly, videos cannot be watched in full screen mode at the moment, due to browser limitations. Vimeo is working to at least offer full-window support within the next day or two. Users will not be able to embed the HTML 5 video player in external sites at the moment either. The player is also expected to be harboring some bugs for the moment too.

The positives that Vimeo highlights however are the immediate loading of the video player and instant seek abilities (no waiting for buffering). It should also provide smoother, less jumpy playback. In order to even test the HTML 5 player, a user would need to have the latest version of Google Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed.

Ericsson and 3 Scandinavia have unveiled plans to roll-out a worlds-first 84Mbps HSPA+ wireless network. The initial rollout will cover Denmark and four Swedish cities. HSPA+ networks that currently operate in Canada, for example, offer speeds of up to 21Mbps depending on conditions. In the United States, T-Mobile recently announced a similar planned network.

Real-world tests of the 21Mbps networks show the services achieving around 7Mbps speed. If a similar performance could be applied to the new Ericsson/3 network, it could result in speeds of roughly 28Mbps at realistic distances and network load. Of course, that is just speculation and the performance of such a high-speed network under heavy demand and in a variety of conditions could be much different than predicted.

Regardless, the availability of such a high-speed network will be good news for the near-future, especially for those in rural areas of some countries where broadband outside of a mobile network is impossible. Ericsson and 3 will also deploy 900MHz 3G networks in Sweden in a bid to boost coverage in remote areas, as existing higher frequency networks have left some users with poor performance.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Beijing to investigate the sophisticated hack of Google services during a wide-ranging speech about Internet freedoms and rights. Clinton brought up the issue of some governments attempt to erect "electronic walls" to block access to information to their Internet users. "Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century." she said.

She acknowledged that China and the U.S. had differing opinions on the matter, and said they would,"address those differences candidly and consistently." Clinton named China, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Vietnam as countries where there has recently been a spike in the threats to the "free flow of information". "They have expunged words, names and phrases from search engine results," Clinton said. "They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in nonviolent political speech."

Earlier on Thursday, a Chinese government official insisted that the Google hack issue should not effect relations between the United States and China. "The Google case should not be linked with relations between the two governments and countries; otherwise, it's an over-interpretation," the Xinhua News Agency reported Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei as saying.

The secrecy over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being negotiated by countries from across the world has hit elected MPs in the UK, who cannot get access to any ACTA documents. Junior business minister David Lammy said documents related to ACTA will not be put in the House of Commons library, due to the desire for other countries to keep the negotiations secret.

"Although I am sympathetic to the view that ACTA negotiations should be more transparent and I have instructed my officials to press for more transparency, we are not in a position to place the drafts held by my Department in the Library," Lammy said. "Disclosure of any documents without the agreement of all our ACTA negotiating partners would damage the United Kingdom's international relations."

He continued: "This would harm our ability to protect, promote and secure an outcome in the UK's interest, and the premature release of documents that are not agreed and not fully developed may also have a negative effect on the Government's reputation."

The European Commission has approved Oracle's bid for hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems. The Commission granted Oracle an unconditional approval to take over Sun Microsystems, in a deal worth €5.17 billion ($7.75 billion), after previously being concerned about the proposition.

The takeover of Sun, which developers the popular Java programming language amongst other products, was approved the U.S. Department of Justice in July.

"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.

Sun Microsystems shareholders had also given their blessing to the buyout. Following concessions by Oracle last month, such as the extension of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses for up to five years, the EU Commission came to the conclusion that the deal would not have a negative impact on the market within Europe.

Nokia Corp. has dealt something of a blow to navigation players including TomTom and Garmin by announcing plans to release a new version of Ovi Maps that includes high-end walk and drive navigation at no extra cost to the user. The move, which could potentially double the size of the mobile navigation market, will bring high-end car and pedestrian navigation features to Nokia smartphones, such as turn by turn voice instructions for 74 countries in 46 different languages.

The Nokia move is probably a response to Google's move to offer free navigation on Motorola's Droid smartphones in the North American market. Nokia's decision to offer the services for free will help it to stay firmly on top of the Smartphone market that it leads, where it has lost some group to Apple and RIM.

Verizon Communications has confirmed to CNET that it has suspended the accounts of several file sharers suspected of sharing copyrighted content illegally. The ISP is known for issuing warnings to its customers when they are found to be sharing illegally, but until this confirmation it was unclear whether Verizon would suspend a customers. "We've cut some people off," Verizon Online spokeswoman Bobbi Henson told CNET.

"We do reserve the right to discontinue service. But we don't throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing. Verizon does not have bandwidth caps." At the end of 2008, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that it would cease filing lawsuits against individual users and had instead come to an agreement with several major Internet Service Providers in the U.S. to take another approach.

Mozilla Corp. is set to release Firefox 3.6 later today, coming just a couple of days after Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 2 was made available for download. The newer version makes dozens of fixes over the previous Firefox 3.5 versions. The updated browser will have better add-on support, with a new page to check all user plug-ins, alert when an update is available and then link to download it. This should help users to maintain security and performance of the browser.

According to a Mozilla video, which showcases some of the changes in Firefox 3.6 (below), the new browser version is now 20 percent faster than Firefox 3.5, which itself had dramatically increased speed over older versions of the software. HTML 5 is also more integrated in Firefox 3.6. Also added is support for Firefox Personas, a user-friendly way to change the entire theme of the Firefox browser.

Check out the Mozilla video on Firefox 3.6.

Virgin is planning to use packet sniffing software in order to measure the amount of illegal file sharing on its network. The software is called "CView", and it will be used to monitor traffic from about 40 percent of Virgin customers in the UK, none of whom will be notified prior to the test. However, the ISP stresses it is only measuring the amount of illegal sharing on the network, and it will not be collecting data that could identify an individual user.

The system uses Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to sniff files being shared through P2P networks, which can then be matched against a third-party database of music tracks to flag copyright violations. Customer's IP addresses will automatically be stripped from each packet of data and replaced with a randomly generated identifier instead. Virgin claims that the system will keep individual file sharers completely anonymous.

CView, the ISP claims, is being used simply to provide a statistical view of digital piracy on the network as opposed to becoming an anti-piracy tool aimed at identifying individual sharers for litigation. As for the law, Virgin Media does not consider the system to be in violation of UK or European legislation that protects Internet users' personal information because the system keeps each user anonymous.

Adobe Systems has issued updates for Shockwave 11.5.2.602 and earlier on the Windows and Mac operating systems aimed at patching serious security bugs with the player. The bugs could potentially allow malicious code to be executed on computers that use the software. The integer overflow and buffer overflow flaws are fixed by an upgrade that Adobe is strongly urging all of its users to install.

It estimates that ShockWave has been installed on over 450 million Internet-enabled Desktops. In order to install a newer version of the Shockwave player however, users need to manually uninstall the older vulnerable version of the software, reboot and then install the newer version. Other Adobe products use automatic update utilities to get newer versions, which will ensure a much higher rate of patching then manual installation.

The update will install Shockwave v11.5.6.606.

More info: http://www.adobe.com/products/shockwaveplayer/

A new plug-in for Skype being marketed by Startup Vivu brings multipoint videoconferencing to the Skype software; adding functionality that has been absent so far from the service. Failing to deliver multipoint videoconferencing has been viewed as one of Skype's biggest shortcomings, and Vivu is hoping to capitalize on the vacuum. "The flaw in Skype's video strategy right now is that it's point-to-point only," said Irwin Lazar, an industry analyst with Chicago-based Nemertes Research.

The VuRoom plugin allows several people to take part in a video call using Skype, which the number of participants limited by available bandwidth. Vivu CEO Sudha Valluru said that the service will allow for up to 8 participants for broadband users before a degradation in quality would become a problem. The participants' feeds will be shown in a browser window that will pop up when the call begins.

The plug-in will cost a user US$9.95 per month for unlimited use. Not all participants in a videoconference need to buy the plug-in; only the user who initiates the call. For other participants, the requirements are just Skype, a webcam and a browser. The plugin also allows participants to show PowerPoint presentations on screen, or to stream their computers' desktop.

Companies that market the 25 year old classic, Tetris, are expected to announce that the game has reached an impressive 100 million mobile downloads -- paid mobile downloads at that. Since it's creation in 1984, it has had a long life, exploding with its role in the success of the Game Boy, released in 1989.

Ever since it rose to worldwide popularity, it had stayed around one way or another, racking up millions of players.

Tetris' playing format (doesn't need explanation!) makes it very suitable for mobile devices in particular, and it is not surprising that it has hit such a significant milestone on such devices. It's neat, familiar interface, combined with simple control requires, means it is suitable for a very wide range of mobile phones and other devices made by a wide range of CE companies.

EA Mobile, an arm of Electronic Arts Inc., currently licenses Tetris from Blue Planet Software. The official announcement of the sales milestone is expected on Thursday.

Google Inc.'s YouTube online video service announced on Wednesday that it will offer five films from the Sundance Film Festival (2009 and 2010) for rental from this Friday until January 31st to U.S. users. In addition to the titles offered in partnership with the Sundance Film Festival, the site will offer a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, in the weeks after.

"These are early days and in the coming weeks we'll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing," the YouTube blog reads. "And making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work."

The announcement states that owners can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration, when and where their content is available and will keep 100 percent of the rights. The site will be seeking more Independent filmmakers to participate in the rental program as part of its "Filmmakers Wanted" campaign at the festival.

Apple has released Boot Camp 3.1 for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and recommends that all users update. The release officially adds support for Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate), addresses issues with the Apple trackpad and supports the Apple wireless keyboard and Apple Magic mouse. The infrared sensor on all Macbooks will also turn off now when it's not being used.

Apple had promised to add full support for Windows 7 through Boot Camp updated by late 2009. For those running Windows Vista, Apple has released the "Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade" tool to address a problem when upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

"Use the Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade Installation Utility before upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. This utility safely unmounts the read-only Macintosh volume on Microsoft Vista," An Apple support page for the tool reads.

Sony Corp. has announced that it is delaying the release of its anticipated motion controller for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. The announcement of the delay comes just a week after it was revealed the launch of the new Gran Turismo title would be delayed.

Adding motion control helps Sony's PS3 compete with the popular Nintendo Wii console and with the upcoming Project Natal system due to launch by year's end for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.

The launch of the motion control technology for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been delayed until there is adequate software titles available on the marker to utilize it, according to Sony.

While its projected release sometime in Autumn is less specific than would be desired, Sony did not set a date or timeframe for the release of Grand Turismo 5, which was due to be released in March.