News archive (8 / 2008)

Nintendo has now raised it forecasted profit for the fiscal year by 26 percent, citing exceptionally strong sales of the Wii and DS around the world.

The company expects its net income to jump 59 percent to JPY 410 billion, the equivalent of 3.8 billion USD for the year ending March 31st. Nintendo believes sales of the Wii will grow 42 percent for the year and has reversed previous comments that the DS will see sales drop offs.

"This is a very big, positive surprise,'' noted Koichi Takatsuka, a senior fund manager at United Investments. "It looks like Wii and DS are selling well, especially in Europe.''

The news prompted Nintendo's stock to jump almost 10 percent on the Osaka Securities Exchange.

Limewire has announced that they have added 1.2 million legal, DRM-free tracks to their offical store, with the tracks starting at $0.27 USD per track.

As a P2P device, Limewire is by far the most popular with some reports saying as high as 18 percent of all personal computers have the application installed. Today's news however marks the third time they have expanded their legal download store, this time signing a deal with "The Orchard“, a distributor of 1.2 million songs from Indie labels.

Greg Scholl, President and CEO of The Orchard, added, “We’re pleased to support the LimeWire store, a retail offering that protects copyrights while fairly compensating artists and labels. This exciting entrant to digital retail offers us a unique opportunity to connect our clients with an online audience of potentially millions of new customers.”

Although tracks are $.99 cents individually if you have a "Platinum" subscription plan, you can download 75 tracks for $19.99 a month, for an equivalent of $.27 cents per track.

General Motors has announced that it will begin offering optional radios in its 2009 models that include USB ports that can be used for media devices such as the Apple iPod.

The radios will let users play music and charge their media devices without the need for special car adapters. The USB ports will be identical to those found on personal computers.

Currently three models have the radios but the company says at least 5 new models will be getting them for 2009. Those that currently offer them are the Chevrolet Cobalt, HHR and the Pontiac G5. The new models will be the Pontiac G6 and Solstice, the Saturn Sky and Aura, and the Chevrolet Malibu.

Making the offering even more interesting is that you can navigate the libraries of your media devices using the radio's controls and electronic displays making browsing much easier than using the actual device.

Rival car maker Ford has had USB ports in a few of its cars for over a year now, the product of a joint venture with Microsoft.

The private torrent tracker AradiTracker has been closed down by its administrators, exactly one year after having legal action pursued against them by the anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

Last year BREIN forced the shut down of six torrent trackers and had their webhost LeaseWeb hand over all personal details of the administrators of the sites including that of AradiTracker. Surprisingly though the site was only down for a day then reappeared on a new host and seemed to have survived the attack.

Today however the tracker was again down and all visitors received a homepage message saying that the site would not be back.

TorrentFreak was able to find more details, getting in contact with a staff member of the site. The staff said “Early Thursday morning (BST) legal action was taken directly against Araditracker. For the moment we are unable to divulge details. As a direct result the decision has been taken to close the site. It is very unlikely to return as a torrent tracker.”

Walt Disney Studios has announced that it plans to release a set of five Blu-ray "Platinum Hits", a collection of animated classics from the studio.

The studio is one of the staunchest supporters of the HD format and the new decision is based on the company's efforts to "accelerate consumer adoption" of the format. The studio says the five blockbusters will be released over the next 2 years.

The movies are 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' 'Fantasia,' 'Fantasia 2000,' 'Pinocchio' and the 'Beauty and the Beast' although it is unclear in what order they will be released. On October 7th 'Sleeping Beauty" will be released to begin the "Platinum" line.

There was no other details except that each title will be two disc and include extensive bonus features as well as BD-Live interactivity.

"BD Live is not a niche product," added Bob Chapek, president of Disney Home Entertainment.

According to a new leak, the next Zune update will mainly just offer higher capacity drives with not much else.

The leak shows the official boxes of an updated 120GB Zune, as well as a 16GB flash-based Zune each of which are almost identical to their lower capacity predecessors with the exception of glossy surfaces.

Microsoft did not comment on the leak but did say that the hardware upgrades would be part of "a larger strategy in the fall that includes software upgrades." It is still unclear what these upgrades will be however.

The Zune upgrades come at the same time as rumors swirl about upcoming iPod upgrades that will offer completely redesigned iPod Classic and iPod Nano lines.

Picture thanks to original source here:

Sony is at the heart of another Blu-ray patent lawsuit, this time by Orinda Intellectual Properties USA.

According to an August 20th court filing, Orinda is claiming that Sony infringed on patent 5,438,560 which is a patent pertaining to different methods of recording and reproducing information via Blu-ray optical discs.

Orinda made sure that all subsidiaries of Sony were included in the suit, including Sony Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Orinda wants a full injunction on manufacturing, sales and distribution of Sony Blu-ray standalones, computer drives and the PlayStation 3. Orinda also wants royalty payments.

"Orinda has been and will continue to be damaged as a result of Defendants' infringing conduct," the company said in the filing. "Defendants' infringing conduct will continue unless permanently enjoined by this court."

Last May, Sony was sued in a similar fashion by Target Technology but the suit was eventually thrown out.

Panasonic has announced that they will be bringing Blu-ray recorders to a few European markets soon, marking the company's first endeavor into the BD writing market in Europe.

The company currently sells BD burners in Japan, Australia and the US and has announced at the IFA event that they will be bringing products to France and the UK later this year.

Using the recorders users can record HD TV streams to BD while keeping the high quality. You can record to the built-in HDD or to burn in SD to DVD or VHS.

Takuya Sugita of Panasonic's network business group added that France was selected as the initial launch market for Europe because of the availability of a a bunch of "free-to-air high-definition TV channels."

The Stockholm District Court has delayed the upcoming trial against the admins of the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, citing that gathering damage claims has taken longer than expected.

Swedish authorities filed charges against the admins in January but as it stands now there is still no set date for any trial.

“The process has taken a lot of time. First, it took time serving judicial summons to the defendants and then we had to gather damage claims from the complainants,” said Anita Thimberg, a clerk at the Stockholm District Court.

It has been hard to get all the lawyers, defendants and complainants to schedule a time period when they are all available and Thimberg says that the trial will need a week most likely. “We’re approximating between six to ten days,” she added.

The four men charged, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and businessman Carl Lundström were each charged with multiple counts of facilitating copyright infringement and were asked to pay $188,000 USD fines. Each also faces up to two years in prison. In addition to the trial, the MPAA is demanding $15.4 million in damages, the IFPI is demanding $2.5 million in damages and the Antipiratbyrån asked for $1.1 million.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer was recently asked if the PlayStation 3 was suffering as a result of the Nintendo Wii's very strong sales but he said it was not despite the fact that Nintendo probably has the "superior business model".

"The Wii is a well-made device that has found a new target group. For a while, we held the same target group with the SingStar karaoke game. But perhaps we neglected to pursue that avenue," Stringer said. "PlayStation games are rather designed for those who play a lot. Although it's a different strategy, it pays off. We currently have a production bottleneck with the PlayStation 3."

"You also know, however, that our business model is not perfect, and that we make a loss on every console we sell," he confessed. "Nintendo makes money with the hardware alone, which may be a superior business model. But the Wii is not succeeding at our expense - it is not hurting us."

In a decision that should bode well for larger video sharing sites that are in legal trouble such as YouTube, a federal judge has absolved Veoh of any responsibility in the unauthorized posting of copyrighted video clips.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd threw out the copyright infringement lawsuit brought forward by Io Group, the adult video maker. Veoh is a site that streams ad-supported shows but the porn company sued the site in 2006 after they claimed they found 10 clips of their films posted without authorization.

The Judge ruled that Veoh had in fact complied with federal laws by "promptly" taking down the videos after receiving complaints from Io.

In an almost identical suit, Viacom is suing YouTube for $1 billion USD alleging that the site is a breeding ground for unauthorized clips of hit shows such as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "SpongeBob SquarePants".

There also 12 or so smaller sites facing similar lawsuits.

"This ruling is a big boost for YouTube," added Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the EFF.

"Once content has been identified as infringing, Veoh's digital fingerprint technology also prevents the same infringing content from ever being uploaded again," wrote Judge Lloyd in his decision. "All of this indicates that Veoh has taken steps to reduce, not foster, the incidence of copyright infringement on its Web site."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has promised to fix the recently discovered security flaw that would allow access to a pass locked iPhone

“The minor iPhone security issue which surfaced this week is fixed in a software update which will be released in September,” added Apple representative, Jennifer Bowcock, in an email.

The exploit would allow for access to the locked iPhone by simply "pressing the emergency call button at the unlock screen, followed by two taps on the home button." You would then be taken to a private iPhone 'favorites' page without having to type in the unlock code normally necessary.

You can then head over to the owner's address book and use any URL to launch the browser or mail application. You can also send SMS messages and view bookmarks, emails, and text messages stored in the phone. All without entering the unlock code that is specifically designed to keep others out.

For temporary protection however, you can set your phone to have double clicking the home button take you to the home screen where you will need the unlock code.

Comcast, the United States' largest ISP will begin bandwidth caps for its subscribers beginning October 1st.

The company says users who exceed 250GB of data for a month will receive a warning and then have their service cut off for a year for a second violation.

The usage policy for the ISP has been updated today however the bandwidth cap policy will not begin until October 1st. Making the decision even more terrible for users, Comcast will not provide any official way to meter your bandwidth use and instead says to "search online for bandwidth monitoring tools."

Comcast offers justification for the cap by saying, "250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:

-- Send 50 million e-mails (at 0.05 KB/e-mail)-- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)-- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)-- Upload 25,000
hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)."

In an interview with GI.biz, Nintendo has denied all comment relating to stories that a new redesigned DS handheld is coming next year, with two touch-sensitive screens.

Any talk is "rumour and speculation" said a Nintendo spokesperson.

According to industry sources, the new DS would have larger screens in addition to the touch-sensitivity, but there was not much more information available.

Sales of the handheld have stalled in Japan but continue to sell well in both Europe and US.

In other news, the Sony PSP continues to sell well in Japan reaching its 10 millionith unit sold on August 24th. The handheld went on sale in the region on December 12, 2004.

Sony has announced the release of the KDL-40ZX1, they world's thinnest LCD TV ever made at a tiny 9.9mm thick.

The LCD is full HD 1080p capable and includes 120Hz MotionFlow for improved image quality during fast action scenes.

Sony says the TV has a 3000:1 contrast ratio and a very decent 178 degree viewing angle. The TV also includes a wireless HD base station that should, unconfirmed however, have a range of 20 meters.

Included in the base station is 3 HDMI ports, 2 component, a S-Video, VGA input, USB 2.0, LAN and a phone jack. The screen itself only has 1 HDMI and 1 USB port making the TV even tinier.

In a move that can only be described as strange, Panasonic has launched a new personal video recorder in Japan that includes both a Blu-ray writing drive and more strangely, a VHS deck.

The recorder can be useful though, as I am sure there are many of us out there that have personal videos of family still on VHS however to see a VHS deck next to a Blu-ray recorder is something you don't see everyday.

In addition to the deck and the drive, there is a built-in 320GB HDD for storage and TV recording as well as a USB 2.0 port and an SD card slot. There are two HDMI connections, digital and analog TV tuners and second generation MPEG-4 AVC H.264 encoder chips. There is also an ethernet port and Panasonic says a video download service is coming soon.

According to an ELSPA, Gary Boulter of Bristol has pleaded guilty to 23 counts of commercial piracy for his part in selling counterfeit games, films, music and pornography.

Boulter was sentenced to 15 months in prison for violations of the 1994 Trade Marks Act and the 1985 Video Recordings Act and he was also fined 22,500 pounds to help pay back the court costs of the prosecution.

"I congratulate South Gloucestershire Trading Standards and local Police for successfully shutting down Gary Boulter's criminal operation," noted Michael Rawlinson, managing director of ELSPA. "ELSPA would like to thank the efforts of everyone concerned in their attempts to protect legitimate local traders and remove illegal products from the marketplace."

Boulter's home was raided in December 2005 and agents found over 2300 counterfeit PS2 and Xbox games as well as movies, music CDs and porn with a total value of over 50,000 pounds. The amount of copied discs was substantial enough for commercial piracy charges.

Last week we reported that mobile phone carrier Orange was paying actors in Poland to stand in iPhone lines to create phony demand.

There was worry that the Apple iPhone 3G was not selling very well in Poland but that Orange did not want to show weakness in that respect.

It turns out however that Orange is denying those rumors and is saying they have not and will not hire actors to create phony demand for the device.

According to an Orange official, "As part of the excitement around the launch of the iPhone, some of our team have been joining customers outside our shops. Their aim is to welcome people to the Orange shop, share in their excitement and give information about Orange tariffs. The rumors in the Polish press are untrue."

The same spokeswoman added that "sales were strong" in the country.

FBI agents have announced the arrest of a blogger whom they claim has been streaming songs from the still unreleased new Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy."

27-year-old Kevin Cogill was arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. FBI agents say Coghill had nine unreleased Guns N' Roses songs on his site in June.

Although the songs were taken down later, Coghill was still arrested after admitting to posting the songs on his site.

"Chinese Democracy" was set for release in 1997 but has been delayed by the band time and time again over disputes with the lead singer.

Immersion has agreed to settle a long-standing legal dispute with Microsoft over the "rumble" feature of its Xbox controllers.

The software giant was sued in 2002 over the alleged patent infringement and then agreed to pay Immersion $26 million USD to settle out of court.

Immersion also sued Sony over the same issue and the suit was resolved last year with Sony agreeing to pay Immersion $22.5 million over the next three years and almost $100 million in royalties and patent license fees.

However, making the news today is the fact that Immersion's settlement with Microsoft included a clause that the software giant would receive a slice of of any settlement with Sony, with a minimum of $15 million USD as the payout. Because Immersion felt their deal with Sony did not trigger the clause they refused to pay Microsoft. Microsoft then sued and have now won.

"We are pleased to resolve our outstanding dispute with Microsoft and to put this litigation behind us," said Immersion president and chief executive Clent Richardson.

Epson has announced the release of its latest combo projector, the MovieMate 55 which offers a CD/DVD player in addition to the actual projector.

The company says that video can be played from iPods and music can be played from any media device. PCs and gaming consoles can be connected and viewed through the MM55 as well as picture CDs and content from USB flash drives.

The projector features "a new E-TORL lamp is used and is claimed to output 1200 lumens in both color and white light."

Electronista adds that the projector "produces a 16:9 aspect ratio image. A 60" size can be obtained when the MM 55 is placed 6 feet away from the screen, or a 120" size when placed 12 feet. The CD/DVD player is standard definition (480p) progressive scan. Sound is output through two 8 watt speakers."

Federal Judge Neil V. Wake is set to reverse a previous decision that had ruled against the RIAA in the case of defendant Jeffrey Howell. Howell's case has been at the center of the "making available" point.

The case took a turn for the worse when the RIAA claimed that Howell had taken steps to remove all evidence of Kazaa from his computer despite "repeated and explicit warnings about the obligation to preserve evidence."

In April, the same judge ruled in favor of Howell, stating that the labels "hadn't provided adequate evidence that Howell had infringed their copyrights." Wake added that although the RIAA claimed Howell had 42 songs in his Kazaa shared folder, Judge Wake said that it could not be proven as infringement unless there was proof that someone actually downloaded the shared files. The key point however, was whether Howell had actually purposely shared the files or whether Kazaa had put them there automatically.

Because he erased the hard drive however against the judge's orders, it appears that the RIAA may win this case after all and Howell will not get a chance to argue the "making available" point. Unfortunately.

Philips has announced that they will demonstrate 3D on Blu-ray later this week at the IFA 2008 event.

The demonstration is set to show off the company's new 2D-plus-Depth format which can be added to Blu-ray to immerse the viewer in 3D.

The company says that now with theatrical releases of films in 3D growing, consumers will want the same experience in their homes. Using the 2D-plus-Depth format on Blu-ray users can watch the films either on stereoscopic displays, with the red/blue glasses, or on auto-stereoscopic 3D displays where you do not need the glasses.

Jos Swillens, CEO of Philips 3D Solutions added "this demonstration of 3D on Blu-ray is a clear proof point of the flexibility and sustainability of our 2D-plus-Depth content format. It can bring high quality 3D content to the home on a variety of displays and offers a solution to the need for interoperability in 3D".

Philips 3D displays are normally used for professional use in gaming applications at casinos as well as digital signs and billboards. Because of special WOWvx technology, no 3D glasses are needed.

LG and Quanta Computers have finally settled their long-standing disagreement over patents relating to DVD-Rom drive data transaction in notebook computers.

The settlement will have Quanta pay LG royalties for the use of four separate patents relating to DVD-Rom drive data transaction and two pending lawsuits will be dropped in exchange.

There was no word on how much the royalty payments would be but the US District Court for the Northern District of California has confirmed that suits were dropped.

The first suit was filed in 2001 and the second one a few months ago.

The DISH Network has announced that they will become the first in the industry to offer all SD and HD transmissions in the MPEG-4 AVC standard.

Although competitor DIRECTV already offers all HD programming in the MPEG-4 AVC they only offer a portion of their SD programming in the standard.

At launch, only 21 markets in the US will have the full MPEG-4 AVC rollout with other markets receiving later.

"DISH Network once again leads the pack in providing customers with an unparalleled entertainment experience. Our complete MPEG-4 solution -- which will offer up to 150 HD channels by the end of the year -- uses the most advanced technology in the industry to deliver the best quality picture to any television set in the home, perfect for those who have or are considering upgrading to high definition," said Jessica Insalaco, Chief Marketing Officer for DISH Network. "We look forward to expanding this advanced service to more consumers throughout the U.S. in the coming months."

LG is set to release its latest network attached storage (NAS) solution which will offer an industry first, a built-in Blu-ray burner.

The N4B1 can accept hard drives up to four terabytes large and is optimized for small business users who need to manage large amounts of data. LG also offers an "Easy&Fancy web-based graphic user interface / Remote support to help solve more complicated issues" help bar that should make installation and management very simple for those who have never used a NAS before.

Another interesting feature is that of the ability to create a virtual disc library out of any Blu-ray, DVD and CD inserted into the Blu-ray drive. The NAS can create and store an image of the disc which will then be available to all users on the network. LG says this will save time as well as reduce wear on discs that may be used a lot.

After being blocked for a few days by the Chinese government, Apple's iTunes platform is back up and running in China but with any pro-Tibet downloads still unavailable.

The pro-Tibet download is what is suspected of having the service shut down last week although the Chinese government has not publicly stated why the platform was down.

The album, "Songs for Tibet," was made by the Art of Peace Foundation, an organization that supports Tibetan independence. The album has songs from various artists including Dave Matthews Band and Sting as well as a large speech by the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.

Michael Wohl, executive director of the Art of Peace Foundation added that the CD was created to showoff the limits of free expression in China and that over 40 US athletes in Beijing for the Olympics had downloaded the CD to protest the government.

Lucie Morillon, the U.S. representative for the advocacy group Without Borders, added that the "temporary inaccessibility of iTunes and continuing unavailability of "Songs for Tibet" is an example of the intolerance shown by the Chinese authorities toward Tibetan culture and dissident voices."

The nonprofit group the National Center for State Courts has released an "educational comic strip" on the unlawful file sharing of music which it hopes will drive U.S. students away from the "dangers" of illegal file sharing.

On Friday the organization said they had distributed 50,000 copies of the 24-page booklet to students across the States. The booklet, "The Case of Internet Piracy," however, is not at all entirely true, and instead reads as if the RIAA was writing it. Download an unauthorized track and head to jail, as well as losing your scholarship and your friends.

"The purpose is basically to educate kids -- middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television," said Lorri Montgomery, the center's communications director.

Wired gives a rundown of the entire booklet, which goes something like this:

"The piracy story has two plots. One is of the file sharer's grandmother fighting eminent domain proceedings to keep her house while Megan the criminal file sharer deals with the charges against her.

In an update to our article on Sony Ericsson starting a DRM-free music store, the company has announced that they will be opening the store in four countries to start, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The official site is available here: Sony Ericsson PlayNow.

To quote our original article:

"First announced in 2007, Sony Ericsson's DRM-free PlayNow Arena media download store is finally coming on August 25th complete with 1 million, DRM-free tracks at launch.

The tracks offered are from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI and the company says they hope to have 5 million tracks by the end of 2009 when they have gone global.

Martin Blomkvist, Sony Ericsson's head of content acquisition and management added that the store should help bring in extra revenue as well as "stimulate" handset sales for the phone maker.

"If we together don't work for finding ways to take away the obstacles of legal downloads, then, this industry from a digital perspective is going to die," Blomkvist said.

According to a new Russian newspaper report, the top three mobile phone carriers in Russia have agreed to distribute the Apple iPhone 3G in the country, selling 1.8 million units every year through 2011.

The paper, Vedomosti says that MTS has signed on to sell 1 million iPhones over the next three years while small carriers Vimpelcom and MegaFon have each agreed to sell 1.5 million units per year for the next two years.

Another interesting fact from the paper's report was that the phone would sell for the equivalent of $1000 USD without contract or $200 USD with contract.

Although the iPhone is not officially sold in Russia, unauthorized sales have been growing exponentially with industry experts saying sales of unlocked iPhones are at about 20,000 per month now in the country. With over 500,000 estimated iPhone users, Russia has the third largest population of iPhone owners in the world behind the US and China.

Earlier this year Pioneer promised that they would be releasing the most powerful Blu-ray player ever built by the end of the year and true to their word, the Elite BDP-09FD is now available, at the hefty price of $2,200 USD.

Until today the Sony PlayStation 3 had been arguably the most powerful Blu-ray player on the market and one of the cheapest, retailing for $400 USD for its smallest capacity model.

The new Elite however should blow the PS3's specs out of the water, although at $1800 more. The Elite is full BD-Live capable and comes with built-in 4GB internal memory for some of your downloading needs.

The player is not however, the sleekest Blu-ray player you've ever seen. It weighs almost 50 pounds and is much taller than an average player. It is however, very well built. Completely made of steel and aluminum the player is mounted to avoid any vibration. There are also no wires inside the player, all the connections have been physically mounted from the circuit board to greatly reduce noise.

Microsoft has partnered up with Rock the Vote to help the group reach its lofty goal of registering two million under-30 voters in time to vote for the next US Presidential elections.

Starting today, the political advocacy group will enable all Xbox 360 console owners to register to vote through their consoles. Rock the Vote will also introduce PSA video through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

XBL is estimated to have 12 million users, with over 8 of those active on a monthly basis and Rock the Vote is hoping their move will benefit the country. Rock the Vote's executive director Heather Smith added "We need to go where young Americans are, and there's no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE."

On the other side of the spectrum, Microsoft will be hitting both the Democratic and Republican conventions to "educate" politicians on gaming and the Xbox 360's Family Settings which they claim will help keep all inappropriate material out of the reach of those under 17.

Three more software counterfeiters have pleaded guilty to charges of piracy and agreed to forfeit over $1 million USD in cash and computers. Each faces up to three years in prison.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the three men, Thomas Rushing III, 24; Brian Rue, 29; and William Partridge, 24; brought in $2.5 million USD in revenue over the last 28 months however the courts said it was closer to about $1.2 million USD.

The men used a few different online shops including valuesoftwaresales.com, esoftwarevalue.com, allsoftwaredownload.com, and priceslashsoftware.com to sell counterfeit copies of Adobe Photoshop and Flash which are normally very expensive programs and are usually in high demand.

The DOJ press release says the three pirates promoted their businesses heavily using ads on search engine market share leader Google.

The three have so far plead guilty to 32 felony counts of software counterfeiting, piracy and copyright infringement. The counterfeiters were arrested after a lengthy investigation by the Business Software Alliance and Adobe.

Apple Inc. has set itself some high targets for the iPhone 3G model. After the model went on sale on July 11th, it quickly raked up 1 million sales. Analysts have made a wide variety of predictions about the potential success of the iPhone 3G model. The company intends to produce 40 million iPhone 3Gs in the next year, with analysts typically predicting about 11 million sales this year and 25 million next year.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has the most ambitious outlook for the iPhone 3G. Jaffray predicted that Apple will sell 13 million units this year and 45 million units next year. Of course,predictions could turn out to be way off the, but at least Apple's production plans seem optimistic.

Apple plans to manufacture between 40 million and 45 million iPhone 3G units in the 12 months through August 2009, according to a BusinessWeek source familiar with the plans. Apple boosted production plans due to stronger-than-anticipated initial sales for the phone. On launch day, the company had expected to produce 30 million units within 12 months.

Swedish BitTorrent tracker site, The Pirate Bay, is appealing against the decision of an Italian judge which ordered all ISPs in the country to block the popular website. The result of the block, which was praised by the FIMI group in the country, may not have been as intended however, as traffic to the site from Italy increased afterwards. Nevertheless, the administrators of The Pirate Bay feel the decision should be reversed.

The Pirate Bay's lawyers, Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi, have filed an appeal, seeking to do just that. "The decree can be defined as 'original' or 'creative' at best," the layers said. The administrators of The Pirate Bay have been accused of making copyrighted material available for illegal downloading on the Internet.

"Even the judge who issued the decree states that no infringing material is hosted on The Pirate Bay, which provides just a tracker search engine," the lawyers told TorrentFreak. "The judge tries to 'create' a sort of contributory infringement accusation against The Pirate Bay," they stated. The judge found that the tracker and search were absolutely necessary for users to locate the illegal content on single computers, as well as saying the name "The Pirate Bay" itself signals intent to infringe copyright.

The transition from analog to all-digital broadcasts will be completed in the U.S. by February 2009, and most Western European countries will terminate analog TV broadcasts by 2012, will help to drive a predicted demand for digital television services. Other factors will also drive DTV's penetration in the U.S. and Western Europe, such as the growth of bundle offers of different services, a demand for better quality and more content.

According to a Datamonitor report, DTV is expected to grow by an average of 12% year-on-year. It predicts that the 158 million households using DTV services in Western Europe and the U.S. in 2007, will grow to 274 million digital TV households by 2012. For most national markers, the significant increases will start to show within 12 months of the DTV transition deadline in the country.

Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) households in Europe and the US will increase from 26 million in 2007 to 55 million by 2012, according to the report. This will amount to an average annual growth of 16%. The report predicts a large migration away from free-to-air services as bundle packages and content are improved by more providers in the regions.

Verizon CTO Richard Lynch spoke about prioritizing Internet data packets at the Progress & Freedom Foundation's annual Aspen conference on tech policy. He was making his points public on behalf of the company following the FCC's recent order made to Comcast to turn over details on its "unreasonable network management practices" within 30 days.

Lynch said that Verizon's view is that network management is, and has always been, a requirement, even in the analog age. He explained that he believes time-sensitive packets should be prioritized over less-sensitive packets. For his example, he said VoIP data packets should be prioritized over P2P data packets.

Either way, he said that Verizon is always committed to delivering any data requested by customers. The question comes down to what packets would need to be delayed, but Lynch argues the 22ms delay would not be noticeable to most customers anyway. For Verizon, due to its fiber-to-the-home commitment, it doesn't suffer as much from congestion issues that badly affect other cable operators.

Lynch does not agree that all cable operators should have to guarantee delivering all packets without delay, and rejects the proposal that the companies should just keep investing money. He noted that Verizon invests $17 billion annually in its network infrastructure already, and aiming to develop a network that can deliver all data packets without delay at peak times is implausible considering traffic rises by 50% each year.

A Louisiana man has been sentenced to one year in prison by a federal judge today for pirating thousands of DVDs and CDs in his apartment.

Although the case was pretty cut and dry, (he was caught trying to sell them) there was something more notable to be taken from the case, that of the MPAA's valuation of the pirated discs, which has slowly fallen from $3200 per disc in 2006, to a current $14 per disc.

In the case of Tanner Hills, the MPAA concluded that the 2,896 counterfeited discs seized from his apartment were worth the equivalent of $39,791, for an average of about $13.47 USD for every CD or DVD.

Although you may be saying to yourself, "WOW that's a large number for old CDs or DVDs!", the value of pirated movies has actually fallen substantially since 2006 when the MPAA seized 6,200 pirated discs in Hong Kong and valued them at $20 million USD, for the astounding value of $3,225.80 each. Last year the MPAA seized 200,000 DVDs in an Australian sting and valued it at $16.6 million, meaning each movie was worth $83 USD.

You don't hear too much about HD DVD nowadays, but it appears Paramount has not completely forgotten about their HD roots.

Paramount representatives have now announced that their previously announced upgrade rebate will also include applicable HD DVD titles.

To quote our original article on the rebate:

Paramount Home Entertainment has announced that it will offer a rebate to consumers to replace some of their DVD titles with Blu-ray versions of the same movie. The rebate value is $10, and will be offered for select Paramount and DreamWorks titles. Certificates will be placed in the packaging of the Blu-ray products, which must be filled out and mailed in along with the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and Blu-ray versions. The receipt for the new Blu-ray title is also required.

Virgin Mobile has received US government approval for its long awaited takeover of Helio. The terms of the deal proposes that all of Helio's 170,000 customers are handed over to Virgin but that the acquirer actually must pay higher rates to Sprint to use its network for calls and data.

The deal will also reduce Helio's current debt as well as give Helio directors two seats on Virgin's board.

Virgin is mainly a prepaid service and the new deal will give it immediate access to a subscription-based service that also "supplies much more advanced data services, which include both Internet-based radio and video streams as well as GPS-aware apps."

Because the approval was so recent, Virgin had not yet set out a long-term outline for its plans involving Helio or any word on new phones or features.

In a recent interview with UK's Radio 1, Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis was asked about his thoughts on file sharing and piracy and he had a few interesting things to say including encouraging piracy, but only for a few rival bands in the UK.

When asked if he would be angry if the band's latest album had been leaked onto P2P networks he responded “no, it’s one of those things. If it’s out there and you can get it, you know, go ahead. I’m certainly not going to get into Lars Ulrich mode about this.” Lars Ulrich of course being the member of the metal band Metallica whose infamous anger at piracy led to the eventual shut down of the original Napster.

When asked if he followed the likes of artist Duffy who have admitted to downloading unauthorized tracks, Noel says he does not. “It’s well documented, I don’t even have a computer and I don’t get involved in that type of gear,” he told Radio 1.

His next quote however, was the real gem of the interview. Noel was asked about P2P in general and his thoughts on piracy of music as a whole.

The British government has apparently been caught breaching the copyrights of a WordPress theme used on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website although it appears the issue has been laid to rest at the present time.

The owner of antbag.com currently makes WordPress themes and gives them away for free under the Creative Commons 3.0 license which allows for others to use the theme as long as there is some sort of link and credit back to the creator. Anthony, the owner, places a link in the footer of every theme he creates that points back to antbag.

A couple days ago Anthony posted that his "NetWorker" theme for WordPress was being used by the British Government, but in total violation of the Creative Commons license. The theme had been modified and all links back to the creator had been stripped.

So not only had they stolen the theme, but were claiming it as their own and were not sharing it under a Creative Commons license.

After sending an email to the company who developed the site he learned that they "did some testing on the NetWorker theme but then rebuilt it from scratch." Unfortunately, says Anthony, “they failed to remove the credits in the CSS file that named the theme ‘NetWorker’ or to change the theme folder which is named ‘NetWorker-10′ (Networker version 1.0).”

As promised we have added a new guide on how to install Ubuntu on the Sony PlayStation 3.

The option to install a second OS on the PS3 is very simple when you know what to do and the guide will show you step by step directions from getting the Ubuntu ISO all the way through the installation of the new OS.

The guide naturally follows our recent guide on how to upgrade you PS3 hard drive because the new Ubuntu install requires 10GB.

After installation you will be able to use the PS3 as a computer including using OpenOffice, Firefox and VLC for your media needs.

If you are interested please check it out here: How to install Ubuntu on the PlayStation 3 .

Kodak has begun ordering 7.6-inch OLED displays from Chi Mei EL (CMEL) to use in new digital photo frames, reads reports from Taiwan.

CMEL is an OLED manufacturer and is owned by the larger manufacturer Chi Mei Optoelectronics. Production on the new OLED displays is expected to begin in September with shipments to Kodak beginning in November.

It appears these digital photo frames will be aimed towards the higher end market as OLED technology is still expensive when compared to LCD and plasma. In terms of benefits however, OLED is far ahead with less power consumption, richer colors, deeper black and thinner overall space consumption.

CMEL currently has an OLED capacity of 100,000 units and is set to install a second production line to house production for Nokia in 2009.

On Wednesday we reported that the ISP Comcast had set up a proposal for a new traffic 'throttling' system in which the heaviest users would see their top speeds reduced for periods lasting up to 20 minutes at a time.

Today however, Comcast has responded by saying they have yet to make a final decision on how they will manage network congestion from here on in.

The ISP has been under scrutiny since it was revealed they had throttled traffic speeds of BitTorrent and other P2P users without telling customers they were doing so. The case went to the FCC which found Comcast guilty of breaking net neutrality laws. The ISP now needs to set up a new traffic management plan and submit it to the FCC before the end of the year.

The main proposal has been that of slowing the Internet of heavier users at times of congestion, which it claims will keep the "service" flowing for all customers. "It's the heaviest of users that are directly contributing to the degradation of the service for the other people on the network," said Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman.

According to a market source, Apple has agreed to a distribution deal with Russian mobile carrier Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) that will bring the iPhone to the world's second fastest growing market for cell phones.

"MTS has made an agreement with Apple on the sale of iPhones," the source said. "Sales are likely to begin in October."

MTS is Russia's largest mobile phone carrier and is controlled by the gigantic Russian services conglomerate Sistema.

Although the iPhone is not officially sold in Russia, unauthorized sales have been growing exponentially with industry experts saying sales of unlocked iPhones are at about 20,000 per month now in the country.

Both Apple CEO Steve Jobs and MTS CEO Mikhail Shamolin both recently made comments regarding the iPhone heading to Russia but no one knows the details behind the deal nor pricing.

We will keep you updated.

First announced in 2007, Sony Ericsson's DRM-free PlayNow Arena media download store is finally coming on August 25th complete with 1 million, DRM-free tracks at launch.

The tracks offered are from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI and the company says they hope to have 5 million tracks by the end of 2009 when they have gone global.

Martin Blomkvist, Sony Ericsson's head of content acquisition and management added that the store should help bring in extra revenue as well as "stimulate" handset sales for the phone maker.

"If we together don't work for finding ways to take away the obstacles of legal downloads, then, this industry from a digital perspective is going to die," Blomkvist said.

Prices are expected to be the same as rival iTunes, about 99 cents per track USD.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves has said in an interview that the company will not be dropping the price of the PlayStation 3 in Europe during 2008, putting any speculation to rest.

"There is no price cut," Reeves said. "We're not going to drop the price this year."

He later explained that software sales were very important to the company, more important so than the price of the hardware.

"Yes, absolutely, and I think it's the games for Nintendo," he said. "I think whatever price they're at, I think it's the games that have really, really driven it.

"We started off at the beginning of the year with GT5 Prologue, then we went to GTA IV, then Metal Gear Solid. There'll be LittleBigPlanet, and then we move onto PES and FIFA and all those.

A numbers of complaints from Chinese users who claim they cannot download songs from iTunes for their iPods has prompted a rumor that China may have blocked iTunes or certain iTunes content due to pro-Tibet tracks being available for download. The Art of Peace Foundation's new album "Songs for Tibet," was recently released on the service, and many feel that when it comes to the Chinese government, this is likely not a coincidence.

"The possibility of a block is high, and I'd say it should be due to a content issue," said Liu Bin, associate director of the Beijing consulting firm BDA. Danny Levinson, CEO of a digital direct marketing company in Shanghai, said that the core URL seems to be stopped on the China side, but worked when accessed from abroad.

As we have previously reported, Japan's trade ministry issued a warning on Tuesday that three fires have been linked to overheating iPod Nano units from Apple Inc., possibly due to a battery defect. Apple has responded by promising to replace faulty over-heating batteries from first-gen iPod Nano models in Japan.

"We will replace batteries of the first-generation iPod nanos with new ones if customers find that the batteries overheat," the Apple Japan spokesman said. The offer is only for batteries that actually do overheat. "We are still investigating the cause of the glitch, but we've identified one particular supplier of the batteries," the spokesman said.

Apple is aware of 17 overheating cases in the country related to the iPod Nano. The company sold 1.81 million of the models between September 2005 and September 2006. Previously, Apple warned that most models of iPod can overheat if they are charged in certain protective cases. The line-up uses Lithium-Ion batteries, which are common in consumer electronics products, and have had to be recalled by many companies due to overheating issues.

Anticipating the release of Apple Inc.'s multimedia / touch-screen iPhone in the country, the largest mobile phone operator in Poland is paying dozens of actors to stand in queues in order to get consumers attention. "We have these fake queues at front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone," a spokesman said.

The iPhone is set to make its debut in Poland in Friday, and Orange is the country's largest mobile phone operator. When launched in the United States, many customers lined up for extended periods of time to buy the expensive gadget first, but it must be a lot nicer to get paid to stand in line for one.

While around 1 million iPhones were sold over its weekend launch in the United States back in July, customers in Poland seem a lot less reluctant to buy into the high monthly charges that they will also get. T-Mobile is also set to launch the iPhone on Friday in the country, but has no queues outside its stores waiting for the phone.

Back in 2006, Dr. Marin Soljacic at the MIT Department of Physics and Research Laboratory of Electronics demonstrated the transmission of Electricity using using magnetic resonance. On Thursday, Intel was to demonstrate some progress in the wireless charging technology, which could be used to charge laptops, MP3 players and mobile phones without the need to connect any wires.

Intel was to demonstrate that it has cut the previous 50% loss in power to between 40% and 25% loss. However, Dr. Izahr Matzkevich, cofounder of wireless developer WildCharge, warned that the technology still has a long way to go before it becomes more efficient and more practical in use. Soljacic's original demonstrations could transmit electricity to portable devices up to 7 feet.

Present technology requires that wireless rechargers must be in contact with recharging bases or recharging mats. "Resonance technology like the MIT demonstration requires a heavy infrastructure -- right now, with coils of at least two feet -- to accomplish even a small distance," he said. "Add to that a 35 percent loss in power, this is not insignificant."

It appears very likely that new models of the popular iPod are in the works and that a price drop on the iPod Touch is imminent, putting it on par with the price of the iPhone 3G.

Inventory managers from retailer Target have noted that all current iPod models have now seen their status changed from "Active" to "Discontinued". Unfortunately, when using PDA scans you cannot see dates for new models so for now the date of the new models is speculation.

In the UK, retailer Argos has plans to clear out its remaining iPod inventory in anticipation of new models. Point-of-sale displays show price cuts beginning next week.

The new moves follow what Wall Street analysts have been saying for weeks. Many believe the Touch is now overpriced and Apple may lose their momentum in the media device market if changes aren't made. "We continue to believe Apple will need to reposition the iPod touch line in conjunction with its anticipated new product announcement in early to mid-September now that the iPhone acquisition price is lower," said Lehman Brothers analyst Ben Reitzes.

According to new reports, Apple is set to introduce a new unlimited music subscription service through iTunes dubbed iTunes Unlimited.

The service would begin in October and would begin with half of iTunes current catalog available at a flat rate.

According to MacDailyNews, the service would work like so:

- 256 Kbps music; highest quality digital music subscription service ever
- 50% of U.S. store available for iTunes Unlimited at launch, U.S.-only launch
- Available through iTunes or retail box a la MobileMe, funds applied through iTunes gift cards cannot be used towards subscription purchase
- $129.99 stand-alone or $179.99 with MobileMe, current MobileMe subscribers can add iTunes Unlimited for $99.99
- One-year subscription period
- Current a la carte options unchanged
- When signed in to subscription account, “Buy” is “Get”
- “Download and Play throughout iTunes Unlimited Subscription” or “Buy and Keep”
- “Buy and Keep” option available for downloaded subscription songs, purchased version replaces subscription version
- Late October launch with iTunes 7.8

Upon hearing that five game companies were planning to sue 25,000 UK citizens over piracy, EA boss Peter Moore noted that he is against the suing of consumers for illegal downloading. In his words, "it didn't work for the music industry."

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," he said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers.

"Yes, we've got to find solutions," Moore added. "We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It's absolutely wrong, it is stealing.

"But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money. I'm not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games."

Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G is being introduced to the emerging and rapidly growing Indian economy, with a very high price tag attached. Vodafone Essar will sell the 8GB model of the iPhone 3G in the country for as much as 31,000 rupees, about USD$708. The device will also be available from Vodafone Essar's largest rival in the Indian market, Bharti Airtel.

Both operators will make the phones available to consumers this Friday. Vodafone Essar will offer the 16GB version of the iPhone 3G for 36,100 rupees, about USD$824. In comparison, you can get an iPhone 3G in the United States for as little as $199 based on the circumstances.

Bharti Airtel will announce its price for the new iPhone model soon, according to a company spokesman. Apple just released a software update addressing problems with reception, dropped calls and other issues being reported from around the world.

Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 console has sold in out Japan. The console has performed terribly in the region compared to its competitors; the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) and the Nintendo Wii. Due to the interest in the Tales of Vesperia game title, Microsoft had an impressive week in sales, moving 25,000 units.

"Currently, the Xbox 360 is sold out, and retailers are unable to restock their supply," Microsoft Japan said in a statement. "This is a result of our own sales targets being exceeded by the actual customer sales. We deeply apologize for this inconvenience to our customers, retailers and business partners."

While the Xbox 360 has already outperformed its predecessor in Japan, it is only recently that sales of the console have begun to pick up, due to a select of JRPG releases. The original Xbox didn't sell through its original shipment in Japan. Microsoft seems genuinely unprepared for the growth in sales, and can only promise to get a new shipment to the country next month.

Motorola Inc. unveiled two new low-end mobile phones on Wednesday, featuring music playing and web surfing features. The company has had a tough year, failing to find a viable follow-up for the Razr. It will unveil 50 new devices this year to fight back against increased competition from market leader Nokia and others. The first of the two new low-end phones features music playing abilities and a camera.

The W388 will sell for under $100. The second new device, the VE538, is a low-end third-generation (3G) mobile phone that will cost less than $250. The phone features one-click mobile social networking, photo uploading and blogging. The products will be shipped first to the Asia-Pacific region before being offered worldwide.

"People don't buy products any more, they buy what those products can create for them -- solutions, dreams, whatever they are looking for in life," said Ian Chapman-Banks, the General Manager for Motorola's Mobile Devices business in Asia.

At the video game convention currently being held in Leipzig, Germany, Sony has announced a new version of its PlayStation Portable handheld games console. The PlayStation Portable 3000 is set to go on sale in Europe and the United States in mid-October. The new PSP brings improved support for Skype, contains a microphone and new screen offering better, tweaked more for improved usage outdoors.

"We believe that this will establish the PSP as a viable communication device," said David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, referring to the new microphone which will obviously help with Skype. The PSP 3000 will go on sale for €199, compared to the current slim model which sells for €169.

Apple Inc. has acknowledged that users are experiencing issues getting reception on their iPhone 3G handsets. It was revealed that the OS 2.0.2 software update was designed to fix problems with the iPhone 3G that have been reported from users around the world. A company representative confirmed to the Associated Press that the update "improved communication with 3G networks."

This broke the silence that Apple maintained about the reported problems, and confirmed the true intention of the OS 2.0.2 software update, which only had a description of "bug fixes", leading some to wonder what exactly the update changes. The results of the updates for users experiencing problems are mixed.

Some users report that the handset operates much better after applying the updates, while some still claim they have trouble finding a 3G network where there is apparently strong coverage. The put the problems to rest for good, Apple might have to wait on an update from Infineon, whose chip present in the iPhone 3G has been blamed in some cases for the problems.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) has announced a 160GB PlayStation 3 (PS3) model, which will launch in the PAL markets on 31st October for a RRP of €449. The console will be bundled with extra PlayStation Network content. The 160GB drive offers more than twice the capacity that current models are sold with.

For those looking to use a PS3 console as a home media center hub, extra storage capacity is important for large amounts of digital content. It allows for increased video, music, and photo storage as well as room to download even more games, game extras, playable demos, and trailers from PSN.

Lower prices and a better game line-up has helped to push the PlayStation 3 (PS3) further along in the console war between Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. The three are looking to sell the most hardware units and take the biggest chunk out of the multi-billion games market.

Read: How to upgrade your PlayStation 3 Hard Drive

Marking the second time this year that Nintendo has been sued over patent disputes relating to their controllers, Hillcrest Labs has announced they have filed complaints for patent infringement against the gaming giant.

The company says the motion sensing Wii-mote is far too similar to its own "The Loop" remote and is asking the judge to stop the import of Wii consoles into the US along with monetary damages.

Hillcrest claims it "owns three patents related to 'a handheld three-dimensional pointing device,' and another on a 'navigation interface display system that graphically organizes content for display on a television'."

"While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property rights," Hillcrest Labs added in a statement.

Nintendo of America said they have not yet received the filings and therefore could not comment.

Fresh off its 'scolding' for breaking net neutrality laws by throttling BitTorrent users, Comcast has a new proposition, one that will slow Internet for the ISP's heaviest users during periods of high traffic.

The heaviest users will see their top speeds reduced for periods lasting up to 20 minutes, which will allow service to other users to keep "flowing", says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior vice president and general manager of online services.

On August 1st the FCC found Comcast guilty of improperly blocking P2P and BitTorrent traffic and was given 30 days to provide details on how it throttled traffic as well as a proposal on how they would change the practices by the end of the year.

Bowling added that the new system would determine "in real time" whether certain users were causing traffic congestion and that the system would move away from focus on certain applications.

"If in fact a person is generating enough packets that they're the ones creating that situation, we will manage that consumer for the overall good of all of our consumers," Bowling said.

According to a report in The Times, five game publishers are set to sue 25,000 UK citizens over the downloading and sharing of pirated games.

The citizens will receive notices demanding a settlement of GBP 300 or be forced to head to court.

The decision comes on the heels of Topware Interactive's victory over Isabella Barwinska who was ordered to pay GBP 16,000 for her part in sharing a copy of the game Dream Pinball 3D.

Topware is at it again, along with Atari, Codemasters, Reality Pump, and Techland and each have appointed the firm Davenport Lyons to take action on their behalf.

Roger Billens, a partner at Davenport Lyons, noted: “Our clients were incensed by the level of illegal downloading. In the first 14 days since Topware Interactive released Dream Pinball 3D it sold 800 legitimate copies but was illegally downloaded 12,000 times. Hopefully people will think twice if they risk being taken to court.”

The most popular download however was Codemasters' Operation Flashpoint, which was apparently downloaded 691,000 times in its first week according to the P2P monitoring firm Peerland.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) hailed the results of Operation Takedown on Monday. The effort against piracy over the summer brought in huge hauls of pirated materials and led to many arrests. In China, Malaysia, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan, 461 suspected pirates were arrested as part of the efforts. More than 7.5 million pirate CDs and DVDs were seized along with 1,000 burners.

The MPA conclusions show that 56 people were caught attempting to record movies in theaters, an activity known as camming or camcording, that is the main source of early pirate copies of movies. The MPA notes that "governments across the [Asia-Pacific] region began to tighten their laws on camcording," which involved public-outreach and award campaigns.

Police officers in plain clothes patrolled cinemas in Hong Kong, while staff used night vision goggles to monitor the crowds in theaters and look for recording equipment. Employees at movie theaters around the world are being trained to spot efforts at recording movies, and arrests carried out as a result have increased.

According to a leaked report, Yamaha will soon unveil its first Blu-ray player after staying out of the previous format war completely. The leak indicates that Yamaha's first step into the Blu-ray market will be its BD-S2900 player. The player is expected to be released at the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) trade show at the beginning of September.

Unconfirmed specifications that leaked for the player indicate that it will support Profile 1.1 titles, allowing users to watch "BonusView" features without having to insert the disc into a PC BD-ROM drive. The players supports output of 24fps (or "True Cinema") video at 1080p via HDMI and is also capable of upscaling standard-definition DVDs to HD.

Sony has confirmed that there will not be a price cut for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console at the games fair in Leipzig, Germany, next week. "It's not going to happen. If you're coming for that you'll be disappointed," Sony Computer Entertainment spokesman Nick Caplin said. Past price cuts for the PS3 have brought relief to Sony after a very shaky and poor start for the powerful console.

Sony had sold 9.24 million units of the PS3 in the 12 months ending March 31st, below the company's 11 million target but is currently on track for the current year's target of 10 million sales. After a decade of domination in the game console market with the previous two generations of PlayStation hardware, the PS1 and PS2, Sony is now locked in a battle with Microsoft and Nintendo to retain its title.

Japan's trade ministry has issued a warning on Tuesday that three fires have been linked to overheating iPod Nano units from Apple Inc., possibly due to a battery defect. Thankfully, nobody was injured in the three fires. In addition, Apple itself is also aware of two other cases where users of iPod Nano models had suffered minor burns, and confirmed that the likely explanation is a defect in the battery cells.

iPod Nano's known to have overheating issues were sold in Japan between September 2005 and September 2006. Apple will now co-operate with a semi-governmental body that specializes in product safety to determine the cause of the incidents, according to a trade ministry official.

"We are not in the position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation. But after several incidents like these, it would be appropriate for Apple to take some measures to raise the public's awareness," the official stated.

Pioneer's PDP-LX6090 KURO plasma flat screen TV has been awarded the prestigious "European Plasma-TV 2008-2009" award from the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA). The company made the announcement on Monday. EISA is the largest editorial multimedia organization in Europe, with a membership of 49 audio, mobile electronics, video and photo magazines drawn from 19 European countries.

Every year a panel of judges comprising the editors-in-chief from all EISA member magazines selects outstanding products and technologies across a wide range of audiovisual product categories. "The Pioneer PDP-LX6090 is a superb plasma TV whose advanced functions bring out the very best results from Blu-ray, DVD and standard TV signals. Thanks to an amazingly low black level – Pioneer calls it KURO – this set’s contrast ratio is sky-high. The result is an impression of immense depth and crisp detailing, to a level and quality not seen before on a plasma TV," the EISA jury commented.

Responding to a request from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to the Swedish government for assistance in stopping recordings of the ongoing Beijing Olympics being shared, The Pirate Bay temporarily changed its name to The Beijing Bay and sported a new logo. The IOC had asked the Swedish government for direct intervention aimed at the notorious public BitTorrent tracker.

The Committee claims that over 1 million downloads containing footage from the Beijing Olympics resulted from them being tracked by the Pirate Bay. Most of the video downloads were of the long and controversial opening ceremony to the games. A logo showing a pirate ship attacking the IOC logo with canons appeared on the popular BitTorrent tracker temporarily.

The Swedish government has charged the operators of The Pirate Bay with copyright infringement offenses, but no date has been set for a trial to begin yet.

Amazon has announced that they have begun yet another large scale Blu-ray disc sale, this time including 83 recent and older releases, all of which are 50 percent off MSRP.

The sale will run through August 29th and includes many types of genres stretching from TV show boxsets to horror collections.

A few notables are "Weeds" seasons one through three, "Mad Men" boxset, "The Bank Job", the "Pirates" trilogy, and the "National Treasure" franchise. Most of the films available are for under $20 USD, with only a select few being more expensive, usually because they include a digital copy of the film.

View the full list here at Amazon: 50 percent off Blu-ray sale

In other news, Amazon also has put the latest "Indiana Jones" film up for pre-order on Blu-ray marking the first time a movie from the franchise will hit physical media HD.

Topware Interactive has announced they have won over £16,000 from a British woman who was accused of uploading and sharing a copy of Dream Pinball 3D on file-sharing networks.

Three other alleged uploaders are still awaiting damages hearings. Now backed by this one victory, the company says it will go after thousands of other British citizens that are accused of sharing the game.

"The damages and costs ordered by the Court are significant and should act as a deterrent," said David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons, the firm acting on behalf of Topware.

"This shows that taking direct steps against infringers is an important and effective weapon in the battle against online piracy."

"This is the first of many," added Mr Gore. "It was always intended that there would be a lot more."

Topware's campaign against pirates of its Pinball game began early last year with over 500 letters sent out to suspected file sharers using eMule, eDonkey, Gnutella and other networks to share the game. The letters asked for £300 settlements to stop further legal action but at least 4 users decided to fight the charges. One just lost in court and now must pay over £16,000. Lets see how the rest fare.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it plans to boost the awareness of the digital switch-over across the United States, scheduled to occur on February 17th, 2009, not so far away anymore. Members of the FCC will travel to 80 cities across the country, attending meetings and public events. Some "soft tests" may be carried out in some areas to test whether consumers are ready for the switch.

"We intend to take whatever actions are necessary to try to continue to minimize the burden that's going to be placed on average consumers around the country," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said at a briefing. The switch to digital television signals frees up the public airwaves for other uses, such as by emergency services.

Publicizing the transition effectively is vital as millions of Americans own, and watch programming on analog TV sets, which won't be useful in the territory after February 17th without a converter box. The federal government is providing a $40 discount voucher for purchases of converter boxes as part of a $1.5 billion program.

Kifah Maswadi of Oakland, Florida was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay US$415,900 in restitution for selling pirate video games. Maswadi reportedly sold game console systems with as many as 75 preloaded games, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He received his sentence on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

He was indicted on January 24th, and then pleaded guilty to copyright infringement offenses on June 3rd, according to the DoJ. The "Power Player" handheld consoles he sold contained games mostly from Nintendo and its licensees. He sold the consoles during 2006 and 2007, allegedly earning $390,000 in profits.

In addition to his 15 month prison term, the Judge also ordered Maswadi to serve three years of supervised release and inform the public of the perils of criminal copyright infringement as part of 50 hours of community service.

U2 front man Bono recently was unaware that he was indirectly assisting in the leak of several tracks from U2's upcoming album, No Line On The Horizon. At his Villa in South France, Bono played the new tracks loud enough for a passerby to recognize the singer's voice and begin recording it. After recording the songs, the individual supposedly uploaded them to YouTube.

It seems that the upload didn't stay on the site for very long, and the tracks were probably removed once YouTube had been alerted to their presence. In total, there were four tracks, "No Line On The Horizon," "Sexy Boots," "Moment Of Surrender," and "For Your Love."

U2's manager Paul McGuiness is well known for his anti-piracy comments. He believes that Internet piracy can be fought by forcing Internet service providers to disconnect users caught sharing music, and more controversially that Apple Inc. and other digital music player manufacturers are wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits." He also criticizes the record labels for lack of foresight and planning, which he says led to, "a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."

In the most problematic territory for Microsoft's Xbox 360, the console briefly outsold the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console from Sony in weekly sales figures. Ever since the Xbox 360 launched in Japan, it has been largely ignored by consumers, who then preferred the Nintendo Wii and PS3 after their releases. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the temporary success doesn't guarantee any long term boost in sales there either.

Microsoft sold 28,116 units of the Xbox 360 in the week ended August 10, compared with 10,705 units of the PS3. The Wii was far ahead of both with 41,044 units. The reason for the Xbox 360 beating the PS3 console briefly in system sales is a game title: Namco Bandai's "Tales of Vesperia".

The reason these statistics are being reported by gaming sites is to emphasize how Microsoft's experiences of good performance in Japan have been few and far between. In North America the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has definitely found its punch too, and is closing the gap on the Microsoft system at the moment.

Tim Bucher, a former engineering executive at Apple, now employed by Dell, is spearheading a project at Dell that could mean trouble for his former employer. In November 2004, Bucher had a tense conversation with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in which Jobs remarked that people thought Bucher was sometimes manic depressive, and that he may be asked to leave Apple after being promoted only a number of months before the incident.

Bucher left Apple and soon after filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, denying the charges of mental illness. The case was settled in 2005 and Apple never commented publicly on it. Bucher is now spearheading a project at Dell that, at least on the surface, seems to be motivated by revenge. Bucher denies seeking revenge, and claims the project is strictly business and that he still has admiration for the Apple CEO.

Nevertheless, what Dell is currently doing (led by Bucher) is an attempt to rally together an alliance packed full of Apple's rivals. The project has a team of over 120, and will involve everything from mobile phone manufacturers to record companies. The goal is to create a broad standard to provide consumers with a bigger choice of where and how to buy and use digital content than currently offered by Apple.

The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) today released to its members the physical layer (PHY) portion for its third generation storage interface, which will be defined in the upcoming SATA Revision 3.0 specification. The new specification for the popular Serial ATA storage interface will double the maximum transfer speed from three to six gigabits per second (Gbps).

Developers can now begin designing products based on SATA 6Gbps technology as work continues on the SATA Revision 3.0 specification, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2008. Various SATA-IO work groups are engaged in the process of readying new features for incorporation in the final version of the SATA Revision 3.0 specification. These features will include advances for data streaming and better power management.

The new specification will maintain the low cost and low power for which the popular storage interface is acclaimed. In addition, backward compatibility with earlier SATA implementations will be maintained by keeping the existing SATA connector configuration, preserving its inherent cost-conscious design while minimizing changes to existing implementations and infrastructures. The same cables and connectors used for current SATA implementations can be used to connect SATA 6Gbps devices, although SATA-IO recommends utilizing quality components to ensure data integrity and robust operation at the fast 6Gbps transfer rate.

According to Pandora founder Tim Westergren, the hugely popular web radio site is about to go offline, citing new pressures from the record labels that will double royalties paid to the copyright owners.

To put this situation in stunning clarity, Pandora has over 1 million listeners per day but three quarters of all revenue for 2008 will got to paying off royalty fees. A recent decision by a federal panel will make those fees even higher by next year. By 2010, Internet Radio royalty fees will be about 180 percent higher than those of satellite radio.

Westergren adds,“this is like a last stand for webcasting, we’re losing money as it is. The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”

The decision was pushed by music licensing authority SoundExchange, which demanded more money for the labels without even seeing that Internet Radio stations have proven to be the most efficient ways of promoting music.

Toshiba has announced the availability of its first ever eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) DVD player which promises "near-HD" picture quality and a price half that of Blu-ray.

The XD-E500 has a $150 USD price tag and is aimed at the consumer who has a large DVD collection and is not willing to upgrade to Blu-ray players which cost between $300 and $500 USD.

Louis Masses, product planning director of Toshiba’s digital A/V group added however that XDE "is not meant to replace, kill or compete with Blu-ray" and that consumers should not look at it that way.

According to TWICE, the player uses similar upscaling technology already available in DVD players by Toshiba and others but the "XDE adds three user-selectable enhancement modes: sharp, color and contrast. Sharp mode improves edge detail by analyzing an entire image, then adding edge enhancements only in places where the image needs it, not across the entire image. Color mode also analyzes the picture and makes green and blue adjustments where needed to deliver more realistic greens and blues without looking artificial and 'without a tremendous impact on other colors.' It also improves flesh tones. Contrast mode lightens up dark areas in high-contrast scenes without washing out the light areas. With it, consumers see more detail in the darker areas of a scene."

According to Home Media Research compiled by the Redhill Group, it appears that Blu-ray sales are actually quite solid for the year, and up 300 percent year-on-year from 2007.

The research says that Blu-ray movies are selling at about 1.14 million per month on average for the year, for a total of about 8 million. The combined total for 2006 and 2007 was about 6 million discs sold.

The latest numbers completely contradict ABIresearch's recent projections that Blu-ray was seeing a "lukewarm response" from consumers and that the PS3 was the "only bright spot" for the format.

ABI's survey was conducted in April, a month after Toshiba decided to stop production of rival HD DVD and it seems that sales have skyrocketed since then with only one format on the market.

Andy Parsons, Senior Vice President, Product Planning, Pioneer Home Entertainment Group & U.S. Chairman, Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee, added strong reasoning as to why the ABIresearch study was not trust worthy, outdated and flat out wrong.

“ABI Research’s data appears to have been collected just after Q1 2008 when demand for Blu-ray was very high and supplies were low. With the abrupt end of the format war in February, hardware manufacturers and retailers were faced with a sudden, unexpected pent-up demand for players -- a phenomenon that was confirmed by retailers in subsequent press reports.

We have published a new guide today that we hope will teach our users how to upgrade their Sony PlayStation 3 hard drive to a higher capacity drive.

The guide will lead you from purchasing a new drive, to backing up your current drive and finally installing the new drive and all post-installation processes such as formatting the drive and restoring all your game save data.

If you are a PS3 owner and want to upgrade your hard drive, please check the guide out here at AfterDawn at: How to upgrade your PlayStation 3 Hard Drive

Also in store is a guide on how to use a partition on your drive to install an alternate OS, YDL or Ubuntu.

Mygazines.com, which launched only last month, and is still currently in beta, has drawn the ire of at least one media company, Time Warner which says it is already looking into ways to get the site shut down.

The site, whose tag line is "upload. share. archive." is a place where users can upload and share digital copies of magazines while others can read, comment and even create their own "custom" magazines using their favorite parts of other magazines.

The site is entirely free and does not even include advertisements meaning the owners are not making a profit on the sharing of copyrighted content.

Time Warner, owner of Time and many other high profile magazines, does not like seeing their magazines posted for free, especially with the ad pages stripped out. Because the site actively encourages its users to share copyrighted materials, it can be held liable in the US but therein lies Time's problem.

Mygazines is registered in Anguilla and hosted by the infamous host PRQ of Sweden. PRQ is owned by the founders of the The Pirate Bay, the public torrent tracker that remains in full strength despite years of American companies trying to get it shut down.

Nintendo has announced aggressive marketing plans in Spanish in an effort to grab Latin America's fast growing games market.

"The long-term economic potential of Latin America makes this an extremely important market for video games," said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime.

Nintendo did not give an exact date but said the campaign would aim at non-core gamers and would begin in time for the Christmas season.

The Latin American market has been growing steadily and has been gaining the eye of companies hoping to offset economic slow downs in the US and Europe.

Bill van Zyll, head of Nintendo's operations in Latin America, noted that getting in on the market now would be a primary objective for the company. Currently, the region's video game market is only worth $2 billion USD, compared to $57 billion USD globally but has been growing rapidly.

"Nintendo has experienced phenomenal growth in the region over the past few years growth that has even surpassed what we have seen in the United States," Fils-Aime added.

According to the latest DisplaySearch report, overall TV shipments for North America are up 28 percent year-on-year for the Q2, to 9.33 million units.

For the quarter, sales were up 26 percent, with LCDs seeing the highest growth at 52 percent. LCDs accounted for 7.5 million of the 9.3 million TV sales for the quarter and is the clear market share leader over PDP and CRT.

Samsung remained the market leader for LCD, with Sony close behind. LG Electronics, Sharp and Vizio rounded out the top 5, just as they had last quarter.

Panasonic was the leader in PDP (plasma) sales with Vizio close behind after seeing double digit growth in sales year on year. Samsung, LG and Sanyo rounded out the rest of the top 5.

Microsoft has announced that it is the first operating system developer to more completely incorporate Blu-ray support into its platform, with the addition of the Microsoft Feature Pack for Storage which will allow Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008 users to burn Blu-ray discs directly from the OS without the need for usually expensive third party applications.

The software giant says the upgraded storage patch will add the ability to "lock down removable storage with a certificate or password to prevent the theft of secure material and will also add new forms of Smart Card support for government workers and others that depend on the standard to access networks and data."

Although the update is still a test beta, it is expected the full release will be within 3 months.

This new approach from Microsoft should help to speed up the rate of adoption for Blu-ray hardware, especially as prices continue to lower for drives.

BusinessWeek is reporting that Apple will fix problems being reported with the iPhone 3G handset with a software update, rather than a more expensive approach such as a recall. Floods of complaints about problems using 3G networks, dropped calls and other issues spread across the Internet, cuing the blogosphere to debate and speculate on what might be causing the problems.

According to the BusinessWeek report, which cites two "reliable sources", the root of the problem is a communications chip made by Munich-based Infineon Technologies (IFX), already predicted in an analysis by Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities. The software on the chip apparently leads to problems when the iPhone needs to switch from high-speed networks to lower speed networks.

While there has been considerable Internet buzz around the problem, the sources say that only 2% to 3% of iPhone traffic is being affected. "This is a problem, but it's not a catastrophe," one of the sources said. Infineon spokesman Guenther Gaugler did not comment on the chip's performance in the iPhone but pointed out that comparable problems have not arisen because of the chips presence in other phones made for manufacturers such as Samsung.

Online DVD Rental service Netflix resumed normal shipping activities on Friday following a three-day disruption. Netflix has been in operation for over a decade, and this has been the worst incident it has run into so far, and only second overall after experiencing delivery problems in March earlier this year. The company's earnings are not expected to take too much of a hit from the incident, but some analysts warned that problems such as this always impact a company's reputation.

New users who were on a two-week trial when the problems occurred will have their trail extended by a week, while customers who have been affected by delays will receive a 15% credit to their next billing statement. "We don't have in our terms of agreement that if you miss a day you get a credit," said Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey. "We just do that voluntarily because it's the right thing to do."

Backlogged shipments were expected to get moving on Friday, with the possibility of rare exceptions. The outage hit about one-third of the company's 8.4 million customers, but Netflix will not provide any specific details on what actuall caused it, nor the total expected cost of the refunds and trial extensions.

BennyBaby, an amateur producer of videos he provides for viewing on Google Inc.'s video sharing giant YouTube, has filed a lawsuit seeking compensation for the traffic, and revenue, his videos have provided for the service. BennyBaby, real name Benjamin Ligeri, has produced videos which he claims have generated over 4 million views, with his most successful video clocking up over 400,000 views.

Ligeri tried to join YouTube's Partner Program but was denied. The partner program exists for video providers that generate a heavy amount of traffic generally, for which they receive a cut of revenue. Ligeri has sued YouTube, Google and others related, seeking $1 million in damages. "The main reason that serious content providers or Laborers, such as Plaintiff, provide content to YouTube.com at all," Ligeri alleges in the suit, "is to make a profit off of their creative work."

BennyBaby makes some big claims regarding the affect his videos have on the service. He estimates his videos generate about 11,200 views per day, and that would entitle him, apparently, to an unquestionable 1/9000th of the overall revenue. The lawsuit goes on to round this percentage down to 1/500th due to spam and porn videos it claims are flooded onto he service.

PC manufacturers including Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard are shopping around for better deals on Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo and BD-ROM drives. The leading ODM/OEM makers are defiant however, claiming that they are unable to keep component costs down, and so are refusing to lower the quotes for the PC vendors. Among the BD drive manufacturers are Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology (TSST) and Pioneer.

Pioneer focuses mostly on BD Combo drives while another manufacturer, Lite-ON IT, focuses on BD-ROM drives, while HLDS and TSST produce both. As it stands, ODM/OEM quotes for Combo drives lingers around $120 to $130 and the PC vendors seek a cut of $20 to $30. BD-ROM drives have ODM/OEM quotes around $95 to $100, and the PC vendors want a $5 - $10 decrease.

Warner Bros. is celebrating the company's 85th anniversary by offering 85 movie titles (including many classics) to the HD VOD line-ups of cable and satellite providers in the U.S. and Canada. Among the 85 titles are popular titles such as Full Metal Jacket, Casablanca, Million Dollar Baby, Risky Business, Training Day and Unforgiven.

Here is a list of the full 85 titles...

• Absolute Power
  
• All the President's Men
  
• An American in Paris
  
• Analyze This
  
• Any Given Sunday
  
• Arthur
  
• Beetlejuice
  
• Ben Hur
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Blazing Saddles
  
• Blood Work
  
• Bonnie and Clyde
  
• Casablanca
  
• Chariots of Fire
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Collateral Damage
  
• Constantine
  
• Cool Hand Luke
  
• Deliverance
  
• Devil's Advocate
  
• Dial M for Murder
  
• Dirty Harry
  
• Doctor Zhivago
  
• Dog Day Afternoon
  
• Enter the Dragon
  
• Eraser
  
• The Exorcist
  
• Fear dot com
  
• The Fugitive
  
• Full Metal Jacket
  
• Goodfellas
  
• Green Mile
  
• Grumpy Old Men
  
• Horror of Dracula
  
• I Confess
  
• Interview with the Vampire
  
• The Killing Fields
  
• Last Samurai
  
• Lethal Weapon
  
• Lethal Weapon 2
  
• Lethal Weapon 3
  
• Lethal Weapon 4
  
• Little Shop of Horrors
  
• Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
  
• Maltese Falcon
  
• Mars Attacks!
  
• Matrix Reloaded
  
• Matrix Revisited
  
• Matrix Revolutions
  
• Million Dollar Baby
  
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
  
• Natural Born Killers
  
• Ocean's Eleven (1960)
  
• Ocean's Eleven (2001)
  
• Ocean's Twelve
  
• Once Upon a Time in America
  
• Pale Rider
  
• Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
  
• The Philadelphia Story
  
• Presumed Innocent
  
• The Road Warrior
  
• Rebel without a Cause
  
• The Right Stuff
  
• Risky Business
  
• The Shawshank Redemption
  
• The Shining
  
• Singin' in the Rain
  
• Space Jam
  
• Spies Like Us
  
• Stage Fright
  
• Strangers on a Train
  
• Streetcar Named Desire
  
• Superman II
  
• Superman III
  
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
  
• Superman: The Movie
  
• Suspicion
  
• Three Kings
  
• Training Day
  
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  
• Troy
  
• Twilight Zone: The Movie
  
• Under Siege
  
• Unforgiven
  
• The Wrong Man

Paramount Home Entertainment has announced that it will offer a rebate to consumers to replace some of their DVD titles with Blu-ray versions of the same movie. The rebate value is $10, and will be offered for select Paramount and DreamWorks titles. Certificates will be placed in the packaging of the Blu-ray products, which must be filled out and mailed in along with the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and Blu-ray versions. The receipt for the new Blu-ray title is also required.

The rebate applies to purchases of the chosen titles before December 31st, 2009, and all rebate claims must be postmarked by Jan. 31st, 2010. The rebate will be offered first for Transformers, due out on September 2nd, followed by The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration on September 23rd, and then Sweeny Todd on October 26th. Other titles already announced are Stardust, Old School and Zodiac, which are not yet dated.

Owners of Blu-ray equipment are arguably more likely to buy new Blu-ray releases and than old catalog titles they already own on DVD. The Paramount rebate offer might provide enough incentive for viewers to upgrade their favorite DVDs to HD on Blu-ray. More offers such as this should, and most likely will be made by other studios over the next few years to push out more Blu-ray titles.

Citing thousands of file-sharing violation investigations that will take too much of its time, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia has said they will no longer prosecute misdemeanor file-sharing and will instead only prosecute "commercial-scale" file-sharing.

In an interview with Jetzt.de, Axel Steel of the office says a "commercial file-sharer is someone who shares over €3,000 of material". He feels that songs are worth one euro a piece and movies are worth €15. That is exactly the way it should be, not $10,000 USD a song, or whatever the RIAA feels like charging per song.

Of course you are steal breaking the law if you pirate music but the Prosecutor’s office does not have the man power to prosecute the expected 50,000 violations for 2008.

The official then went on to compare marijuana to file sharing saying "both are very popular among youths...it is illegal to consume it, but people do it anyway, and the authorities can’t be bothered in frying smaller fish as it’s a waste of time and resources. Going after the big distributors is the way to go."

According to the latest NPD data figures, Nintendo has dominated the US console hardware sales for the month of July, both with its Wii console and DS handheld.

For the month, the Nintendo sold 608,000 DS units and 555,000 Wii units, far ahead of the third place Sony PlayStation 3 which sold 225,000 units for the period.

Right on the PS3's heels was the PlayStation Portable, which sold 222,000 units.

Most notably for the period was that the Xbox 360 fell to fifth, selling 205,000 units despite a price cut and strong software sales.

Sony has confirmed that the upcoming PlayTV device will not be as great as it has been hyped to be, and will not be compatible with HD signals nor will it allow users to copy saved video over to the PSP, a PC, or any type of memory card or flash drive.

The PlayTV will allow users to stream live or recorded content to the PSP using Remote Play but that is the only way to move the content.

"With regards to PlayTV, you can not transfer content to your PSP, PC, or memory sticks. You can stream live or recorded TV content on your PSP via Remote Play only," said a Sony spokeswoman.

In regards to the device's incompatibility with HD signals, the Sony spokesperson said they are working on making it possible via a future firmware upgrade.

Last week we reported that large music studio Warner wanted higher royalties for use of their music in games such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

In a statement today, Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick has struck back at Warner, calling the company disrespectful.

Kotick added that Warner Music's comments were not "respectful of how much we've done to bring new audiences into the market". Kotick also added that his company and others had to invest heavily to make the games "fun to play."

"I think his view was...that [Warner Music] should be compensated the way they might for a performance on iTunes. But this is an entirely different business that is very technically complex. We're going to favour those publishers that recognise and appreciate how much we can add value to their artists," added Kotick.

"We're introducing a whole new group of artists to new audiences that is resulting in their iTunes downloads being exponentially higher than they would otherwise be, [as well as] new album sales and new merchandising opportunities."

If you're in the US it's hopefully no surprise to you that most analog TV signals will be turned off on February 17, 2009. Unfortunately the government has done a particularly poor job of educating the public about what (if anything) needs to be done to prepare.

Fortunately the information you need is easier to understand than you might expect. Our new guide, Preparing for the US DTV Transition, should answer most of them. It will walk you through everything you need to know to determine whether you're ready or not. If there are steps you need to take it will also explain them to you.

Whatever you do, don't wait until the last minute to prepare. If you wait too long you may suddenly find that you need a converter box or antenna that isn't in stock at your local retailer. In order to make sure you can watch TV with no interruption you should act as soon as possible. There are fewer than 200 days left.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has fully paid $108,000 USD restitution to P2P defendant Tanya Anderson for lawyer's fees incurred during Tanya's year long winning case against the group.

Over the years, the RIAA has sued tens of thousands of file sharers and many have settled for, on average, $3000 USD. However, a few accused file sharers have fought back and let the cases go to court. Recently the RIAA has suffered a few setbacks in their quest to stop piracy through lawsuits however, including the case of Tanya Anderson. Andersen was accused of downloading and sharing hundreds of rap songs under the username "gotenkito" but the RIAA failed to prove that she had any of the files or that she had even downloaded any of them at all.

Although Ms. Anderson won the case, and got paid for the RIAA's waste of the court's time it is important to note that Ms. Anderson's lawyer fees exceeded $300,000 USD and the $107,834 paid back by the RIAA will obviously not fulfill all her requirements. It does however set a precedent that will hopefully push more lawyers to take on cases for accused file sharers, seeing the amount of possible fees that can be had.

According to a Japanese press report, Sony's 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV will hit European customers in 2009, beginning in the UK.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun did not include a detailed launch plan nor a price for the TV at launch. The XEL-1 went on sale in Japan in December 2007 and in the US a month later.

OLED has been touted as the flat-panel display technology of the future, mainly because it does not require a backlight, making displays extremely thin and less power consuming. OLED displays also offer richer blacks and faster refresh rates then LCD or PDP, making pictures more vivid and bright.

Sony has not yet confirmed the report but did say that the XEL-1 had received a "positive reception" from its Japanese and US customers and it is considering expanding into Europe.

The one downside so far has been price. Retailing for about ¥200,000 ($1,829 USD) in Japan and $2,500 USD here in the States, consumers cannot justify purchasing such a small TV. In comparison, most 50 inch LCD TVs cost $1800-$3000 USD and the same for PDPs.

According to industry sources, Nokia has made OLED production one of the mandatory conditions for its selection of panel suppliers as it expects the technology to play a major role in the future of mobile phone handsets.

Although currently Nokia only uses OLED displays in three of its high end phones and in no other models, they see the technology as the future and need their panel suppliers to have development and production plans for OLED panels.

AU Optronics (AUO) and TPO Display, two current panel suppliers for Nokia also noted that they are beginning development of OLED displays. AUO had shut down its OLED line two years ago facing high production costs but costs have dropped and the chance of losing Nokia as a client will now have the manufacturer reopening the line.

Samsung SDI and Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) are the current major suppliers of small-sized OLED panels with the highest volume of sales.

Beginning today, DIRECTV, the US' largest satellite television provider, will add 30 additional HD channels to its service, bringing the total to 130.

More notably, the provider says it will begin to transmit all of its HD programming in superior MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), the first company in the industry to do so. By the end of the month all HD programming will have Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and by the end of the year DIRECTV promises to begin offering movies in full 1080p resolution.

The new channels include "Showtime Extreme HD, Showtime Showcase HD, Planet Green HD, ABC Family HD, additional DIRECTV HD pay per view channels and an additional 23 Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) in HD 24 hours a day."

"Despite all the sound and fury of confusing HD claims from our competitors, our customers understand that DIRECTV is the destination for the most compelling and complete lineup of HD content," said Derek Chang, executive vice president, Content Strategy and Development, DIRECTV, Inc. "Our message is clear - DIRECTV is the content leader, and our delivery of the best quality HD via the most advanced technology is one way we continue to dominate this category and offer our more than 17 million customers nationwide an unparalleled entertainment experience."

Last month we reported that rumors were swirling that a new PSP model was already in production. Thanks to a new FCC filing, it appears a new model is coming, dubbed the PSP-3001.

Because all new products must undergo safety and interference testing if they include wireless components, the filing shows that the PSP will somehow be updating the wireless components of the PSP, possibly to 802.11g Wi-Fi from the current 802.11b.

The only diagram, pictured below does not show any of the rumored changes, including a mic, relabeled Home button, or camera. Gamers can expect a thinner model however.

Is this new third-gen PSP already in production and ready for the upcoming holiday season?

Citing increased demand from previous clients, Ritek of Taiwan has announced they will be doubling their monthly production output for BD-R (Blu-ray recordable) discs. An existing DVD production line will be upgraded and refitted to Blu-ray manufacturing for the expansion.

The new line will hit volume production by the end of the Q3 2008 and the new line will add a monthly capacity of 250,000 BD-R discs, double current max production.

Ritek added that most of the increased demand could be attributed to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and that the company even plans to add a third line by the end of 2008, ramping up production to 750,000 discs per month.

For the first six months of 2008, Ritek's market share of the global output of blank BD-R and BD-RE was 15.3%, in fourth place behind Sony at 20.7%, Panasonic at 24.7% and the leader TDK at 28.7%.

According to the IFPI, an accused Finnish file-sharer has settled his case for an undisclosed sum of money.

The man, from Helsinki, had had his internet connection disconnected after the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC) requested an injunction from the Helsinki District Court. The man was accused of uploading unauthorized copyrighted music.

The court then ordered TeliaSonera, the man's ISP to suspend his internet connection. The court cited provisions of Finland’s Copyright Act as the reasoning to allow the injunction.

The man admitted however that a family member had used his connection to upload a "considerable number of music files." The case is now settled and he has paid compensation for the uploads.

Secunia has issued two new ‘highly critical’ security alerts, one for uTorrent, version 1.7.7, build 8179 and the second for the official BitTorrent client, in version 6.xx.

“A vulnerability has been discovered in BitTorrent, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system,” the alert says.

The vulnerability was originally discovered by Rhys Kidd and says it "is caused due to a boundary error in the processing of .torrent files. This can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow by tricking the user into opening a .torrent file containing an overly long ‘created by’ field”."

“Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.”

The flaw is only confirmed in version 1.7.7 right now but may in fact affect earlier versions.

Secunia and uTorrent advise to upgrade to the latest beta, version 1.8.0 at least.

You can download 1.8 here at Afterdawn: uTorrent 1.8 latest beta

According to a new Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) consultation paper, the government plans to raise the maximum penalty for online copyright infringement from £5,000 to £50,000.

The new, larger fine would only be for commercial-scale infringement however, when the person actually profited from the accused infringement.

"This consultation takes forward Gowers Review recommendation 36, which recommended matching penalties for online and physical copyright infringement by increasing sanctions for online infringements," said the UK-IPO in a statement. The Gowers Review is a 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers that has so far been a basis for intellectual property policy.

"Several submissions have called for a change in the law to increase online infringement penalties to the levels of physical infringement," Gowers had said in his report. "The intention and impact of physical and online infringement are the same. Crimes committed in the online and physical world should not be subject to different sentences. Increasing the penalties for online infringement will therefore make the law more coherent."

Vudu has announced an interesting new feature today, one that it hopes will set it apart from the crowded networked media hub group that included the Roku Netflix box, the Apple TV, and countless others.

The company will offer digital movie renewals, allowing customers the option to pay a discount to finish the movie or watch it again. Users are normally only given 24 hours after they start a film to complete it, but now they can pay 99 cents for SD or $2 USD for HD anytime within the first week to watch it again, or complete it for the first time.

Vudu also said they would be launching a "99 for 99" channel in which a 99 movie rentals are discounted for 99 cents. The company promises to offer blockbusters films and will regularly change the movie lineup to keep interest high. In comparison, Apple only offers one discounted movie on iTunes, and switches only once per week.

Ray Beckerman, the high profile defense attorney who has spent countless hours battling RIAA lawyers in New York, has recently posted some advice to other defense attorneys on his blog, Recording Industry vs. The People. In light of the recent trend of judicial skepticism about RIAA claims he suggests that a good offense may be the best defense right now.

In particular the RIAA has been spending a lot of time defending their "making available" argument, where they claim that simply sharing files is enough to qualify as copyright infringement. MediaSentry, the firm that finds alleged copyright infringers for them and gathers the information used to get initial subpoenas is also under fire.

With all that in mind Mr. Beckerman is doing his best to help put together an effective strategy against the RIAA. In his August 12 blog post he said "this would be an excellent time to take MediaSentry's deposition, and find out where the truth lies."

Lite-On Technology Corporation, makers of numberous products both for their own Lite-On brand and various OEMs, is working on developing new networked audio products. The new audio products will use technology from BridgeCo, a company that specializes in products to connect consumer electronics to computer networks.

"BridgeCo's deep market knowledge and their extensive product testing, combined with the most extensive feature set available and the ease of enhancement, is allowing Lite-On Tech to confidently develop multiple and differentiated products for customers using JukeBlox," said Frank Lee, Vice President of Network Access Business Unit at Lite-On Tech.

JukeBlox is Linux-based, and includes standard functionality like an AM/FM tuner and alarm clock. It also supports both Pandora and Rhapsody. It features Ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB, and UPnP support for connections to individual computers or entire home networks.

CEA, the Consumer Electronics Association, is putting together a group to consider establishing industry standards for portable devices ranging from MP3 players to GPS units. The group will be leading a discussion at the CEA Industry Forum in October.

The primary purpose of such standards would be to ensure products from cars to home stereos could be have support for a variety of devices without the manufacturer needing to work individually with vendors of different gadgets.

Brian Markwalter, CEA vice president, Technology and Standards said "In many cases consumers would like to attach these devices to other CE products to enhance their experiences. CEA wants to explore whether industry technical standards might enable more robust connectivity between portable devices and other products, and whether such connectivity might help to grow consumers' interest in such products."

One potential problem for such a plan would be the dominance of the Portable Media Player (PMP) market by Apple's iPod. Apple has traditionally resisted the idea of using any standards besides their own, which enables them more control over third party support for their hardware. As the industry leader they're not likely to see open standards as an advantage.

Cable television providers and consumer electronics companies have been busy planning for a future where TVs and DVRs can not only decrypt cable signals using CableCARD, but also use Tru2Way to add support for features like Video On Demand (VOD). Meanwhile other companies whose interests lie in alternate transmission formats like IPTV are working behind the scenes to get regulations that would require an IP (Internet Protocol) interface as a mandatory feature for cable boxes.

Unlike much of the world, where cable television just uses another variant of the DVB standard, digital cable in the US is based on a standard called QAM, which is unrelated to either ATSC Over The Air (OTA) or DVB-S satellite formats. The interest by companies like Sony and Panasonic in making all-in-one devices that don't require a cable box has made both Intel and Verizon nervous enough to ask the FCC to look into regulations that would require some type of ethernet interface in the cable system.

Best Buy is set to become the first independent iPhone retailer, today announcing the availability of the phone in 970 of its brick and mortar stores. The move is the first time the phone has been available outside of Apple's or AT&T's retail stores.

"We had a lot of work to do, obviously, to get in a position where Apple and AT&T would feel good about Best Buy Mobile carrying it, and that's what we've done in the last 18 months," said Shawn Score, president of Best Buy Mobile.

Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris added that because of the company's good standing relationship (the retailer sells Macs and iPods as well), Best Buy can now sell the iPhone as well.

Just last week Best Buy announced that it had finished its conversion of in-store cell phone departments to the "Best Buy Mobile" brand. Computers were upgraded to handle cell-phone activation and employees received 250,000 hours of extra training.

Score added that the Best Buy Mobile brand was a joint venture with CarPhone Warehouse Group, which is Europe's largest cell-phone retailer.

The 970 new stores with iPhone availability are in addition to the 2,050 AT&T stores and Apple's 190 stores.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has revealed some stats on how successful the iPhone App Store is, one month after launch, and the numbers are pretty impressive.

There have been 60 million apps downloaded already, with a good number being free applications. However, the paid apps aren't doing too poorly, bringing $30 million in revenue for the one month period.

Although Jobs did not say how many of the downloads were paid downloads, it is safe to assume that the majority of the downloads were for free apps. Most of the apps range from .99 to 9.99 USD and we do know that Sega's $9.99 Super Monkey Ball sold 300,000 copies, 10 percent of all iPhone app sales.

A few of the other stats:

First Thirty Days: iPhone App Stats
Total Downloads: 60 Million
Total Revenues: $30 Million
Sales Going To App Developers: $21 Million
Sales Going To Top Ten Apps: $9 Million
Sales of Sega's Super Monkey Ball: $3 Million

US District Judge Xavier Rodriguez has lowered the fines that were originally imposed on 16-year-old Whitney Harper by the RIAA when she was accused of illegally downloading files from the Fasttrack network used by P2P clients such as iMesh and Kazaa.

The fines were lowered from $750 per suspected song to $200 after Harper explained she did not know she was accessing copyrighted material and instead thought that she was streaming the music, somewhat like Internet Radio.

The ruling is interesting because the RIAA can charge up to $30,000 USD per every "pirated" song but usually charges around $750.

To give a background on the case, in January of last year Warner Brothers, Sony BMG, Maverick, UMG, and Arista Records sued Steve Harper after MediaSentry said that someone on Harper's computer was downloading copyrighted songs from Fasttrack. Harper had of course not downloaded any such music, but his daughter Whitney had. By December she had been added as a defendant to the suit.

Group members of the The Allman Brothers Band have sued Universal Music for $10 million USD, claiming they have not received the correct amount of royalties for CD sales and digital downloads from services such as iTunes or Amazon MP3.

The lawsuit is seeking payments for sales of the band's songs recorded while it was on its first label, Capricorn Records, from 1969 to 1980. During that time the band scored its biggest hits, "Jessica," "Ramblin' Man" and "Midnight Rider."

The lawsuit claims that UMG "refuses to pay Plaintiffs at the correct royalty rate for its digital exploitation of the Capricorn Masters." The suit wants royalties for CD sales, digital downloads and ringtone downloads.

The band cites an agreement dated back to 1985 which was signed between them and Polygram, which was later bought by Universal. The agreement states that the band will receive half of profits "from the sale of records by third parties." iTunes is certainly included, although obviously not named in the original deal.

According to Cote Collaborative analyst Michael Cote, the Apple iPhone 3G has hit 3 million sales in its first month, strong demand that far surpasses that of the original iPhone.

"They are seeing unprecedented demand," says Cote, noting that sales do not appear to be slowing down either. The sales pace is a stark contrast to the downward trends in consumer spending across the board, in the US and abroad. Wall Street had anticipated 3 million total quarterly sales for the device but it is looking now like 5-6 million will be more accurate.

For comparison, the iPhone 3G sold 1 million units in 3 days while it took 74 days for the original iPhone to hit the milestone.

The new version does have a few advantages that is surely leading to its hot sales. The $199 USD price tag is half the price of the original iPhone. Touchscreen mobile phones are the hottest trend now for the market and the iPhone 3G gets to capitalize on that consumer enthusiasm. The phone is also now available in 22 countries, with releases set for 48 more countries before the end of the year. The original iPhone was only available in 4 nations.

We just received our review samples of Popcorn Hour A-110 Networked Media Tank and Popcorn Hour B-110 Mini-ITX motherboard. Both units came neatly packed in nice, sleek black boxes and included everything you need to get started.

You can find details of A-110 from our previous article.

While we go about testing the devices (including the previous, A-100 model), please enjoy the following unboxing pictures along with side-by-side comparisons with A-100. The differences are small, but perhaps significant to many. I personally welcome the switch from PATA to SATA.



If you can't see the slideshow above, you can view the gallery at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ketola/PopcornHourA110AndB110

TorrentPrivacy is a new product from the guys at Torrentreactor.net designed to keep your BitTorrent downloads and shares private. The product is a combination of an SSH tunnel tool, a pre-configured uTorrent client and remote privacy services. We'll take a quick sneak preview into how does it actually work.

Installation:
After registering yourself at TorrentPrivacy.com you'll be able to download the 1 Mb installation package. Installation directory cannot be changed from the default "c: orrentprivacy" but I'm sure there's a reason behind it. After couple of clicks through the installation you are presented with the one click setup. After few seconds of connecting with TorrentPrivacy servers a Launch button appears and you're ready to go.

Hitachi today announced the international release of its latest Blu-ray camcorder, dubbed the BD10HA, the North American equivalent of the camcorder Japan has had for months.

According to the specs, the new camera is 20 percent smaller than their current line and includes a seven-megapixel sensor that adds face detection as well as improved light sensitivity. In addition to full 1080p HD (1920x1080) video capture, the camcorder can take 6.2 megapixel still photos.

Making the camera more interesting is the fact that users can either record directly to mini recordable Blu-ray discs, to SDHC cards or to a built in 30GB HDD. The camcorder also includes "A 10X stabilized zoom lens and a mini-HDMI-to-HDMI video output are passed on from earlier cameras."

Whitney Harper has already admitted to sharing files illegally on a P2P network when she was 16, just as the RIAA claims. But that didn't stop US District Court Judge Xavier Rodriguez from ruling in her favor last Thursday. You see even though she was clearly infringing on copyrights she says she didn't realize it at the time, and according to Judge Rodriguez that means she can only be penalized for "Innocent Infringement."

Despite what the record labels would like you to believe copyright law isn't written with a one-size-fits-all approach in mind. To rule in favor of their lawyers in this case he would have had to agreed that any 16 year old understands copyright law simply because there are cryptic warnings on commercial CDs.

Clearly he didn't buy that argument though. In his ruling he said “Plaintiffs have not introduced any evidence to contradict that Defendant did not have an understanding of the nature of file-sharing programs and copyright sophisticated enough to have reason to know that her actions infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

According to the latest figures from Strategy Analytics, smartphone maker RIM saw the highest growth of US mobile phone makers for the last quarter while Motorola saw a sharp decline despite retaining the top spot in market share.

Year-on-year, overall unit sales jumped 5.3% to rech 42 million. The report cited product bundles and launches of new, exciting devices as the main factors for the increase.

Motorola, despite seeing a double digit percentage drop in market share, retained the top spot at about 26 percent, followed closely by LG at 21 percent.

RIM (Research In Motion) jumped from under 5 percent to over 10 percent market share in the quarter to see the biggest growth of any mobile phone maker for the quarter. The report cited RIM's successful push into the casual market which allowed to retain business users as well as attract new customers.

“RIM is the real story,” said analyst Bonny Joy at Strategy Analytics.

“This is not 11% market share in smartphones, it is 11% of all phones sold in the U.S.,” Joy confirmed. “Nokia has just over 9% market share here.”

Citing slow sales of their Zune media player, Microsoft is turning to Hollywood to license original content exclusive to the player.

According to a Reuters report, the software giant has been sending executives out to all the talent agencies and production companies available to find video programming that can be used exclusively on the Zune, or at least launched on the Zune exclusively at first.

Instead of just looking for traditional programs such as sitcoms, Microsoft is looking for "nonconventional" programming that will capitalize on the device's excellent social networking platform.

Richard Winn, director of entertainment development for the Zune added, "What we would be looking to do with any form of original content is the added component that Zune could provide that iTunes or any competing service couldn't."

Finding a way to separate itself from the rival Apple iPod is becoming paramount for Microsoft, especially as sales have slowed down to a crawl for the Zune media device. Since its launch in 2006, just over 2 million Zunes have been sold, whereas it is assumed that Apple sells 3.5 million iPods each month.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has confirmed that the company can remotely disable software purchased from the App Store.

Jobs said the mechanism was necessary because Apple may inadvertently allow malicious programs to be sold through the App store and those programs could steal user's personal data.

"Hopefully, we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," Jobs said in the interview.

Last week hacker Jonathan Zdziarski first discovered that the iPhone periodically checks back with a specific Apple web page which then sends back data of which applications should be removed.

"The idea that Apple can choose what functionality my applications should have frightens me," he said.

Although the mechanism can be disabled using the Pwnage Tool, the functionality still raises privacy issues that should not be an issue in the first place.

Last month Microsoft confirmed that it would be releasing a 60GB version of its Xbox 360 console, one that will replace the smaller capacity 20GB model.

The software giant has released more details today on the system, including the confirmation that the system will retail for GBP 199.99. Bundled with the console is a wireless controller, a headset and one month subscription to Xbox Live Gold.

Beginning on August 15th, the new model will be available alongside the entry-level Arcade model which will sell for GBP 159.99, and the Elite model which offers HDMI and higher capacity storage for GPB 259.99.

"No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver and we know consumers need increasingly more and more space to store the amazing digital entertainment content we provide," said Neil Thompson, senior regional director for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division. "Now the Xbox 360 has triple the space to house all your entertainment needs at no extra cost."

If you have an iPod Touch and want to take advantage of the new iTunes App Store you have to upgrade to the new v2 software (firmware 2.0). Unfortunately if you had jailbroken your iPod to load software you'll lose this functionality with the new software.

With WinPwn, a Windows port of Pwnage Tool from the iPhone Dev Team, you can create customer firmware from Apple's official updates and load it on your iPod to jailbreak it again. This will once again give you access to programs created by the independent development community that's grown around the iPhone and iPod Touch while allowing you to continue using the iTunes App Store and all the software found there.

Our new guide, Jailbreak an iPod Touch with v2 Software walks you step by step through the process of creating the new firmware and restoring it to your iPod using WinPwn and iTunes.

A couple of weeks back we reported that the UK ISPs had teamed up to fight piracy.

Since that announcement there has been mixed criticisms as to how efficient the industry agreement will be and how fast any type of ISP-level filter would be broken. 7Digital however, the online music download store, is going under the impression the deal will end all piracy and they want to use it to take over iTunes' number one spot.

A new proposal by the site would see it become the largest online music outfit, basically overnight, but will also require the new UK ISP deal to work, and work very well at that.

The new proposal would mean "broadband consumers would be able to purchase music files straight from the ISPs or subscribe to DRM protected music libraries and even allow ISPs to create their own download service like iTunes but without a heavy initial outlay. By acting a one-stop shop, the big music studios will not be compelled to discuss individually with the dozens of ISPs out there, leaving that to 7Digital."

If you are a Windows user and have ever had a discussion with a Mac user as to what has the superior operating system, you have undoubtedly heard the argument that OSX is less vulnerable to exploitation, hackers and viruses and therefore the superior operating system. That was never really a fair comparison however, as until recently, Apple never had higher than 10 percent of the market for desktops or laptops and virus makers or hackers normally aim for where they can hit the most people.

Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) security vulnerability analyst Cameron Hotchkies, speaking at the Defcon event, has said that hackers are increasingly moving towards OSX and iPhones, more so then Windows even, especially as the devices grow in popularity.

"There are more eyes looking over Apple products for vulnerabilities," Hotchkies said.

"It has slowly been growing as a target people are more and more interested in."

President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana has announced that in his country, drugs and piracy will be treated the same, with former narcotics officials set to go after counterfeit goods as well.

“This insidious crime of product counterfeiting has become a global phenomenon; it’s no longer the canker of the under-developed or developing world,” president John Agyekum Kufuor recently said, “The developed world is also battling with counterfeiting products albeit at a scale lower than in our part of the world”.

According to a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report, the Criminal Investigation Department of the police will begin to “handle counterfeiting and piracy crimes as drug trafficking” effective immediately.

There are however, many glaring problems with this latest announcement. Drug trafficking has never been adequately stopped, in any country in the world, and certainly a drug such as heroine or cocaine should be easier to find then a counterfeited software CD intended to look exactly like the original. Narcotics crimes are federal offenses everywhere whereas piracy is not, except in certain circumstances. Another bandage on a cut that will never be closed.

Originally posted by Peter Sunde in the official The Pirate Bay blog, it appears that the infamous torrent tracker has been blocked in Italy.

Giancarlo Mancusi, a prosecutor friend of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ordered the shut down of the domain name as well as the site's IP. TPB believes the shutdown has everything to do with the fact that Berlusconi is the most powerful man in the Italian media industry, an industry where many of the Prime Minister's companies compete directly with TPB.

Despite the Italian decision, the admins over at TPB have enacted a few countermeasures. According to Sunde, "We have already changed IP for the website - that makes it work for half the ISPs again. And we want you all to inform your italian friends to switch their DNS to OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. This will also let them bypass the other filters installed by the Italian government, as a bonus. And for the meanwhile - [ link ] works (La Baia means The Bay in Italian)."

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet has recently written an opinion piece in his blog about the RIAA and the MPAA in which he asks the MPAA to stop what they are currently doing and instead work to promote going to the movie theaters. Promotion over prevention he says, and I am sure many will agree.

"The MPAA is staring right in the face of a paradox and they must make a choice," Cuban says. "They can continue to invest in the war on Digital Piracy (as opposed to physical DVD piracy, which can be monitored and slowed by confiscating actual DVDs and duplication equipment), or they can invest in promoting the fun of going to the movies."

Cuban cites the story of the RIAA, which continues to wage its never ending war against file sharers of music, when he says that the MPAA may be making enemies out the same consumer it is trying to woo. "Invest in a positive message that can get people more excited about their member products and the unique experience offered in theaters." The MPAA should refrain from calling customers "pirates and crooks" as well. Name calling is never nice.

Sharp announced yesterday the availability of two new AQUOS LCD HDTVs,, tiny units measured at 20-inches and 16-inches. The LC-20E5 and LC-16E5 both have 720p (1366x768 resolutions) and have two HDMI connections.

The TVs have digital TV tuners built in, but can also be used as computer monitors depending on the user's needs.

Both displays feature "a contrast ratio of 1,200:1, brightness of 450cd/m² and a horizontal viewing angle of 176 degrees. Traditional RGB video, as well as S-video and component plugs are also part of the HDTVs' connections. A network jack and RS-232C input are also included, and the TV remotes can also control a connected Sharp Blu-ray player through CEC support."

BenQ has announced the launch of two new eco-friendly computer monitors, each of which uses 16:9 resolutions equal to the most popular 720p HDTVs.

The E900HD and the simpler G900HD are both 18.5 inches and have 1366x768 720p resolution. In an effort to be more "green", the company says the displays use a unique backlighting system that can "produce the same 300-nit brightness as most displays by using a two-lamp backlight versus the four that would otherwise be necessary." Full power consumption is then reduced to 30W and mercury levels are reduced by over 50 percent.

Each display also sports a nice 10,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 5ms pixel response time. Both displays also have built-in speakers or headphone jacks for private listening.

Each screen has HDCP encryption support to allow Blu-ray playback and had DVI and VGA ports.

Earlier this month, Frontier Online, a small US ISP that serves 24 states added new language to their terms of service agreement that appears to cap almost half of its users at a minuscule 5GB of data a month, including downloading and uploading.

"Customers must comply with all Frontier network, bandwidth, data storage and usage limitations," reads the new TOS. "Frontier may suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period."

However, after receiving tons of complaints, the ISP has now said its TOS means absolutely nothing and the company has created a new FAQ page to explain the 5GB rule.

Straight from the FAQ:

Question: If I hit 5GB will my service be interrupted?

Answer: No. Your service will not be interrupted at 5GB. You will continue to use our High Speed Internet service without disruption.

Digging deeper, TheRegister spoke to a company spokesperson. "In the past, we had a general statement [in the terms of service] that anyone using an excessive amount of bandwidth could be terminated. Now, we're saying exactly what we think is excessive," the spokeswoman added. "But at this point, we're not monitoring bandwidth. And we're not kicking people off if they use more than 5GB a month."

According to a new hardware-based monitoring project from the ISP analysis outfit Samknows, the ISP BT is throttling all of its broadband users, not just the heavy BitTorrent users. The throttling is occurring at peak times during the day when the most users are online.

In the evenings, when BT network load is high, even light users are seeing their "non-port 80 traffic" slowed down as much as 15 percent, says Samknows. Port 80 is used for HTTP web traffic and Samknows tests other ports to simulate P2P traffic, even for the casual user.

Samknows CEO Sam Crawford says, "Everyone knew that BT does traffic shaping. What's surprising is that they seem to do it to everyone."

After the report, a BT spokesperson confirmed the data. He did say however that the throttling only occurred for P2P applications and would not affect streaming services such as the iPlayer.

If you are one of the millions of Americans who have received a voucher for a government subsidized DTV converter you may be thinking you can just drive down to the store and pick up the unit you want. As I've recently found out first hand it's not quite that easy. The availability and selection of converters isn't nearly as good as the public service announcements make it seem. In fact you might not be able to find what you need locally at all.

Let's start with supply problems. After spending the better part of an afternoon tracking down a store near me that actually had them in stock, I've been calling various local retailers weekly to find out if this was simply a fluke. It's not.

In fact when I've inquired at various Walmart, Target, and Kmart locations the answer has been that they're out of stock most of the time. In just a couple of cases they indicated that the units come in at least once a week. At the majority of these national chain stores they apparently only receive them sporadically, and most of the time they fly off the shelves, often in less than a single day.

Warner Music Group has said that they want more money to paid out to have their songs licensed in music-based video games like the blockbusters "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."

Warner is the world's third-largest music company, behind Universal and Sony, and Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman compared the games to "MTV's launch 25 years ago or Apple Inc's iPod launch five years ago," and added "the amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small."

If Bronfman has his way, downloadable content may become more expensive, most likely slowing down a great source of revenue for the music industry. Thanks to its Guitar Hero franchise, Activision reported last month that sales were up 32 percent year on year and Harmonix also recently announced that over 12 million downloadable tracks for Rock Band had been sold.

Three teenagers in Atlanta, Georgia have been arrested on 57 counts of firebombing cars with Molotov cocktails over the last week.

Six vehicles were bombed and each teenager faces 19 counts including arson, criminal damage to property and possession of explosive devices.

When arrested however, the teens, ages 15 or 16, each said they learned "how to do it from playing the video game 'Grand Theft Auto'." After the incidents, investigators went to the local Wal-Mart and found receipts containing Sprite bottles, red rags and lighter fluid. Surveillance footage did the rest.

The incident is the second in under a week in which real life crime has been linked to 'Grand Theft Auto', Rockstar's exceptional PC and console game.

In Thailand earlier this week, the game was pulled from shelves after a taxi driver was killed in what the murderer called a "recreation" of a scene from the game.

Ubisoft has filed a lawsuit against Optical Experts Manufacturing (OEM) over the leak of Ubisoft's hit PC game Assassin's Creed which hit torrents a full two months before it hit retail shelves.

OEM had been contracted to reproduce copies of the game disc however Ubisoft claims "an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence" led to an employee of OEM taking a copy of the game home and posting it on the Internet 6 weeks before it was set to hit retailers.

The publisher also claims that OEM had contractually agreed to security procedures to prevent any leak but that they admitted to not following through on these "security commitments." One obvious security procedure was to never allow the game to leave OEM premises.

Ubisoft tracked where the pirated copy of the game came from online and found it to match the address of an OEM employee. A subsequent search of his home revealed a copy.

The NPD Group says the game was purchased 40,000 times through retailers as of June, but Ubisoft claims the leaked version has been downloaded over 700,000 times, costing the publisher a fortune in possible sales.

Yesterday, we reported that BitTorrent was laying off over 20 percent of their workforce. The original source was ValleyWag which has since updated their article with a statement from BitTorrent in which the company called the news "irresponsible journalism."

Part of the statement reads, "Contrary to published reports, we reduced less than 20% of our team and those impacted were distributed across our organization, rather than focused on a single department. Also contrary to published reports, the layoffs were unrelated to any ongoing discussions to divest a portion of our business."

From what can be assumed from the statement, a large percent of workers were indeed laid off, but not as high as the percentages posted yesterday. In addition, they were from across the board and not only in the marketing division, as was originally posted.

The company continued by pimping its "DNA" service and says high demand will mean less likelihood of layoffs for the future. "BitTorrent is seeing healthy demand for its Delivery Network Accelerator (DNA) service and its Software Development Kit (SDK), which brings rich Internet media to the TV. We are working with many online video, gaming, software and hardware companies to integrate BitTorrent technology. As such, our top priority is to deliver the most valuable and efficient solutions to the BitTorrent community and technology marketplace," the statement concluded.

Iomega announced today the launch of its latest product, the Screenplay TV Link which will also users to play multimedia content they have stored on external HDDs.

The device connects to the storage media using a USB 2.0 connection and has video outputs for HDMI, component and composite. Notably, the device can upscale SD content to 720p and 1080i HD.

Electronista says "MP3, AC3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (both AVI and VOB) and MPEG-4" are all supported and JPG for pictures. For audio playback, composite RCAs and a coaxial or optical connections are included.

As reported today around the Web, the Chinese TV network CCTV has signed a deal to use Mediasentry parent Safenet to protect their online transmissions of the Olympic Games with a new type of DRM protection.

At the same time, CCTV has made another announcement, that they are suing the Google-backed Chinese P2P platform Xunlei for Olympics-related copyright infringement.

CCTV claims that Xunlei broadcasted video of the torch relay with asking permission first and that the lawsuit should be a warning to others that they are not messing around.

The broadcaster has even allegedly gone so far as to create a dedicated Olympic rights protection center whose sole purpose is to prevent infringement.

"During the Olympics, the partners plan to establish a hotline to report copyright violations and designate space on their sites to announce copyright violators and their punishments."

The search engine giant Google has introduced a beta version of Music Onebox, a Chinese music service that will offer free, legal music and will compete directly with Baidu.

"We are launching Music Onebox to give users an easy and legal way to find the music they're looking for, and to give music labels and publishers a new channel to distribute, promote and make money off of their valuable music content," a Google spokesperson added.

The company says whenever users search Google for arists or bands they are redirected to www.top100.cn, where they can download or stream music. All ad money made by the site goes to the labels and publishers, and Google takes no cut.

Although the new service is meant to challenge Baidu, which has come under fire for linking to pirated material, the selection is so far very limited.

According to a study commissioned by the French anti-piracy outfit Alpa, French movie fans are illegally downloading as many movies as they are paying to see in theaters.

The study shows that in France, 13.5 million films were illegally downloaded through P2P while cinema ticket sales were only 12.2 million for the same period, the month of May 2008.

"This is a major phenomenon that could endanger the cinema and audiovisual industry," Alpa representative Frederic Delacroix added.

The study also added that over 10 million films are illegally downloaded each month in France hitting a peak of 16.6 million in December of last year.

American films were the brunt of the illegal downloads at 66 percent with French films coming a distant second at 19 percent. The blockbuster hit "Transformers" was the top downloaded film, with 3.7 million hits since October of last year.

During his keynote speech at this week's Gamefest UK event, David Gosen, Microsoft's VP of strategic marketing in Europe confirmed that his company will be investing heavily in the European market to make sure the Xbox 360 console becomes the "region's console of choice."

Gosen of course added that he believes the "Xbox is going to be the platform that wins this hardware generation," and that Europe was key.

"We're investing to win in Europe," he explained. "We can do better and we're incredibly well-placed to drive success in the region. We've got to make sure we tailor our resource needs to the games we are making."

A few of the company's plans including investing heavily in the Xbox Live's Marketplace and Arcade as well as external studio development.

"We're going to invest in more ways than we have before," Gosen noted.

Peer-to-peer company BitTorrent Inc. is laying off over a fifth of their employees. The company was forced to drop 12 of their 55 employees after a disastrous failure in marketing their online media store. According to Valleywag, the $15 million deal with giant electronics retailer Best Buy was cancelled, because of an FCC ruling on file sharing.

In addition to developing the widely spread and adopted BitTorrent-protocol, the company has collaborated with major movie and television studios such as 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central, Lionsgate Films, Paramount, Warner Brothers and Spike TV, as well as network device manufacturers D-Link and Buffalo. The aim of the collaborations was to distribute TV shows and movies legally via P2P networks.

According to Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business manager Kevin Salcedo, downloadable content for the Xbox 360 has so far brought in $240 million USD in revenue.

He also confided that games that have extra downloadable content see a 16 percent increase in their life spans.

Speaking at the Gamefest event Salcedo added that about $180 million USD of that total had been made in the last 12 months alone and that games that have downloadable content make $21 million USD more at retail, as long as the content is made available within 30 days of the game's release.

"Right now we have over 12 million users in over 26 countries, with USD 240 million in transactions revenue so far, with USD 180 million in the last 12 months alone," Salcedo said.

"On average, titles that have downloadable content on XBL marketplace have seen a 16 per cent [longer] period of people holding onto that title, which keeps them from selling to second-hand stores."

NEC Electronics has announced that it has successfully fitted "analog-to-digital conversion, HDMI output, and sound encoding/decoding", all the major functions of Blu-ray, onto a new single chip dubbed the EMMA 3PF.

The chip should being shipping in September and will help to reduce production costs of Blu-ray players and drives. NEC says the chip will "significantly" reduce the amount of physical space required for players so consumers hopefully will soon enjoy thinner, cheaper players.

Notably, the new chip will also include a multicore CPU that should greatly improve start up time for Blu-ray players, an issue that has bugged many buyers since Blu-ray players began hitting the market. The new chip supports Profile 2.0 and NEC says "monthly production is expected to be 1,000,000 units from the fourth quarter of 2008."

The daily video blog Rocketboom has announced it has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Television to have its distribution and ad sales turned over in exchange for a seven figure bonus and a share of revenue.

Rocketboom will then be distributed on Sony's Crackle video site and on the PS3, PSP and Bravia HDTVs with I-Link.

Andrew Baron, founder of Rocketboom adds that they went with Sony after deals with start-up ad companies like Federated Media failed and because Sony's distribution strengths. Baron also gets to stay in charge of his company.

Currently, Rocketboom has distribution through YouTube, iTunes, Tivo, and other outlets. Baron notes that Rocketboom is watched over a million times per month across all its channels.

According to the newly released MusicWatch consumer survey, commissioned by the NPD Group, Apple's iTunes platform is once again leading music retailers in the United States, at least for the first 6 months of 2008.

The report is based on individual digital music downloads and physical CD purchases.

Following (not so) closely are Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Amazon and Target rounding out the top 5.

The data shows the consumers continue to shift away from physical CD sales in large numbers and are moving largely to digital music. Amazon was the only company on the list to move, moving up one space and pushing Target back a space. That move can be attributed to the opening of the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store late last year.

“We expect Apple will consolidate its lead in the retail music market, as CD sales continue to slow,” said Russ Crupnick of The NPD Group. “Amazon’s CD buyers tend to be older, so they haven’t abandoned the CD format to the extent seen in the average music buyer. Plus Amazon’s successful introduction of its digital download store will help the company improve its position in the future.”

Just last month, we reported that Pioneer had developed a 400GB Blu-ray compatible disc. Today however, they have one-upped their previous announcement by announcing they have developed a 500GB disc that can be read by blue lasers and is technically compatible with Blu-ray.

The disc uses 20 layers at 25GB a piece to equal 500GB and has the capacity to store 10 times the amount of 1080p footage that current BD movies have.

"While Blu-ray discs (BD), offering both 25GB and 50GB, are sufficient for users' current demands, we envision the need for a technology that can support far greater capacities as HD streaming in particular becomes commonplace and users build larger files of digital content," said Pioneer multimedia division product manager Brendan Sheridan. "The multi-layered method is compatible with Blu-ray devices providing a long term future for the technology and is more easily produced when compared to competing technologies such as holographic storage."

MediaSentry is coming under more fire. This time it's Michigan Central University going on the offensive with a complaint to the state government. They're asking that the RIAA investigators be forced halt investigative activities until they obtain the proper licensing.

MediaSentry has insisted that they're actually exempt from the licensing requirement under Michigan law because they're only paid for their technical expertise. Despite backing this claim up, RIAA lawyers have also gone on the record characterizing MediaSentry as "not offering any expert opinions." Michigan officials have already sent a letter to MediaSentry suggesting they may need a license.

In the complaint, MCU's Assistant General Counsel asked that the Michigan Dept of Labor & Economic Growth "take immediate steps to issue a cease and desist letter to Media Sentry Demanding that they cease their ongoing investigations of Michigan residents until such time as they are properly licensed by the state."

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has inked a deal with Google to have clips and highlights of the Olympics shown on the video sharing site YouTube trough a branded channel.

"The IOC's priority is to ensure that as many people as possible get to experience the magic of the Olympic Games and the inspirational sporting achievements of the Olympic athletes," said Timo Lumme, IOC director of television and marketing.

"For the first time in Olympic history we will have complete global online coverage, and the IOC will have its own broadcast channel, which will make fantastic Olympic footage available where young generations of sports fans are already going for online entertainment," Lumme added.

The IOC says it hopes the deal will help it tap into the youth market of YouTube and the group will be offering three hours each day of content. The content will be a compilation of all the day's highlights and action.

The clips will begin on August 6th, two days before the start of the games and will be available at the branded channel at www.youtube.com/beijing2008.

According to a report from the P2P monitor Big Champagne and the UK’s MCPS-PRS royalty collector, Radiohead's latest album was downloaded by 2.3 million people via BitTorrent and P2P, for the two month period that it was available, legally and for free from Radiohead's website.

The huge number "far exceeds what outsiders have reported as the estimated download total from the bands official website, regardless of whether those downloaders paid or not”.

The report leads to more interesting questions, like why would users choose illegal free over a free, legal alternative. Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland says perhaps users were already downloading from P2P and could not be bothered to head to the legal site to download from there. There is also the chance that not to many people heard the news of the free release.

Even they believe that is wishful thinking however. The report says the real reason is instead that users have become so accustomed to P2P and BitTorrent that it appeals to them even more then a legal alternative. Illegal is "now entrenched" and the labels and business will face an uphill battle to change these habits.

The DailyMail has cited an “industry source” who claims that Apple is set to launch an 'iPhone Nano' in time for the holiday season.

The paper says "the product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain's Telefonica."

This rumor is not new, and is based mainly on the interpretation of a few of Apple's patent applications along with their lack of diversity in the mobile phone market. Analysts believe, if true, that the iPhone Nano will be a much smaller and thinner iPhone with limited features and will be aimed at more casual users as well as business users who simply want a more compact phone.

The lower price point should also be attractive to users who were on the fence about buying an iPhone and were turned off by the price.

This however is still a rumor, and Apple is not in the business of commenting on rumors. We will keep you updated.

According to a new research report by ABI research entitled "Blu-ray: Consumer Survey Results", the PlayStation 3 is the only 'bright spot' for the Blu-ray format right now, and without it the format would be struggling "mightily" to reach any consumer acceptance.

“While you might think gamers purchase fewer movie discs than others, we didn’t see any significant evidence of that in our results,” said ABI principle analyst Steve Wilson. “PS3 console shipments will go a long way to help bring down manufacturing costs and drive down Blu-ray player prices.”

Outside of these PS3 sales however, mass consumer adoption of Blu-ray is growing at a pace much slower then the industry would like, added ABI.

The report, which surveyed 1000 people, found that over 50 percent of the respondents had not plans to buy a Blu-ray player ever, and that an additional 23 percent are likely to buy, but not before 2009. Most of those polled also declared they would not upgrade simply because they do not have an HDTV and do not plan to buy one. Others simply felt standard definition DVD quality was "good enough." 50 percent of those polled rated Blu-ray quality as "much better" than standard DVD, but a large 40 percent said it was only "somewhat better."

Thanks to a new court ruling in favor of the cable company Cablevision, it appears that remote DVR (digital video recorders) are lawful after all.

The US Court of Appeals ruled that the "network DVR" which record the programs remotely to a computer and not to a hard drive on the device itself, do not violate copyright law and are perfectly legal to own and use.

The ruling is a striking victory for the cable company, and a huge blow to the TV broadcasters that sued to have the technology stopped. Cablevision now hopes to go on with their plans to offer network DVR services through their existing set-top cable boxes. No DVR necessary.

When the suit against Cablevision was initially filed, DVRs were only found in 1 in every 14 US homes but times have quickly changed and DVRs are now found in 1 in every 4 homes. Take note the suit was filed not to long ago, in May of 2006.

The plaintiffs in the case are Turner, 20th Century Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC. In March of last year, a lower court sided with the media companies alleging "the technology would be engaging in unauthorized reproductions and transmissions” of copyrighted content. The new decision however, declares that the technology would do no such thing, and “would not directly infringe” and copyrights.

Popcorn Hour has put two new items up for pre-order on their website today, including a revamping of their popular network media hub and a "barebones" version for users who want to use the hardware to build their own designs.

The new A-110 changes colors to a sleeker black and adds support for HDMI 1.3a output through Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Master Audio and other related lossless surround formats. The model also now has support for both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDDs, optical SPDIF for audio, and adds a USB 2.0 port to the back of the hub for users who want to keep it "hidden" from view.

Popcorn Hour continues to sell well and is in high demand due to its low price and its ability to support more formats then say, the rival Apple TV device. Popcorn Hour is one of the few media hubs with the ability to natively play Matroska and XviD and also offers direct access to YouTube and Vuze.

According to new border search policies disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents may take your laptop or other media devices for an "unspecified" period of time even without any suspicion of wrongdoing, in an effort to "prevent terrorism."

Additionally, the officials may share any content of the laptop or device with other agencies or private companies for "language translation, data decryption or other reasons."

The policies are dated as of July 16th by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the DHS says the policies have been in effect for "some time now."

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," adds Sen. Russell Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin who has vowed to look into the new border search policies. Feingold also plans to introduce legislation that will force the government to have "reasonable suspicion" for searches. The legislation will also limit racial and religious profiling during searches.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced the launch of a new software that they say will allows users to keep tabs on their ISPs and whether they are having their P2P transfers "throttled."

The new "Switzerland Tool" will probe at the user's network connection to check if the ISP has put any restrictions on P2P traffic.

"Until now, there hasn't been a reliable way to tell if somebody, a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall, or the Great Firewall of China, is modifying your Internet traffic en route," explained Peter Eckersley, the EFF Staff Technologist who designed the tool.

"Switzerland is designed to make general-purpose ISP testing faster and easier."

The tool follows the recent decision by the FCC that ISPs in the United States cannot "purposely" restrict any type of traffic. The US' largest ISP, Comcast was at the center of the debate when it was found to be throttling/limiting BitTorrent traffic.

According to a picture first submitted to VGC, the Xbox 360 should be getting a real price cut across the board in the US beginning on September 7th, one that should pressure the PlayStation 3 and possibly even the Wii into similar price drops.

If proven to be accurate, the Arcade model will drop to $199.99 USD, the Pro model will drop to $299.99 and the 120GB Elite model will drop to $399.99, the same price as the 40GB (and now 80GB) PlayStation 3 models that do not include backwards compatibility.

For years Microsoft has said that $200 is the "sweet spot" for console sales and price cuts on their console have proven to boost sales every time. After dropping their price to 199 euro in Europe in February sales doubled year-on-year for the six months following the drop.

The new price drop would make the cheapest 360 console $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii which has long had the lowest price point of the new generation of consoles. The move would also push the PS3 back to being the most expensive console relatively, despite its extra features, most notably Blu-ray playback right out of the box.

In April, Netflix noted that they would begin charging extra for Blu-ray rentals in the "near future" and it appears that time is now.

Although the pricing scheme is not set in stone, it seems that subscribers will see extra charges of $1 to $2 USD for Blu-ray rentals on top of their monthly subscription. The lower price bracket will most likely be for users who receive 3 or less movies out at one time and the higher bracket for users who receive 4 or more.

The pricing is still in "testing" and many users will not see these extra charges for now. I myself am a Netflix subscriber with Blu-ray enabled but have not seen any notice of extra charges.

Originally, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings justified the added charges by saying that "purchasing Blu-ray DVDs costs more, both at retail and wholesale, than standard definition DVDs," and that "consumers are used to paying more for high-definition content."

Citing the latest market reports available, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Asia Pacific vice president Tim Meade has confided that the company believes sales of Blu-ray Discs will beat out that of standard definition DVDs by the year 2011.

According to the market reports, global sales value of BD movies will rise from 9 percent at the end of 2007 to about 25 percent of all market share by the end of this year, and that the number was already at about 20 percent as of July. This could however, be due only to the expensive suggested retail of most Blu-ray titles.

In addition, the global sales of BD players (I'm not sure if PS3s are included in Meade's figures) in proportion to all video players, will rise to 15 percent from 7 percent year-on-year. Meade also noted that for the first half of 2008, sales volume of BD players increased 400 percent in the US and an astonishing 600 percent in Europe.

Google has acquired the web video editing company Omnisio and will use the acquisition to add new editing functions to YouTube.

Omnisio creates software that allows users to edit video clips as well as add captions and slideshows to footage. The acquired company is still new and just went public in March but each of the founders came from Stanford University and the company had full backing from venture capitalists.

None of the financial details were revealed but the sale is estimated at about $15 million USD.

YouTube first added edited functions to videos in 2007 but they proved to be limited and unpopular. "We believe we've only scratched the surface in terms of what's possible with online video, so stay tuned for other tools and features that will let you do even more with your videos," read the YouTube press statement.

The American branch of Capcom has revealed that sales of the PC version of Devil May Cry 4 have been "pirated to hell" and that Capcom Japan now refuses to release it digitally.

Capcom vice president of strategic planning Christian Svensson noted, "I'm not sure about how Capcom in general feels but it's not doing as well as I would like in the US at retail."

"It's such a good version and it really deserves better sales. I know it's getting pirated to hell and back (it was up on torrents literally the day it shipped)."

"I certainly have pushed for digital distribution on the title but Capcom Japan so far has not allowed it," added Svensson.

The VP also noted that Capcom hoped to eventually release all their US titles digitally, alongside their physical media brothers.

"For the record all Capcom Entertainment developed titles will be distributed extremely widely via digital channels (not just Steam or Direct2Drive, but more than a dozen partners across more than 100 sites/portals for everything we do).