OEM quotations for 16x DVD burners, which had been remaining stable at US$60-65 for a few months, recently fell to US$55-58 due to increasing competition to meet orders from Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and other international PC brands, according to Taiwan makers of optical disc drives (ODDs).

CMC Magnetics, Ritek and Prodisc Technology, the three top producers of optical discs in Taiwan, will not participate in the ongoing cutting of OEM prices for CD-R and DVD+R/-R discs, according to the companies.

Illegal CDs, DVDs, computer software and games worth £10m have been seized in central Scotland. Twenty-eight people have been arrested in raids on houses and markets in Falkirk, Stirling, Tullibody and Grangemouth over the past five days.

Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites. Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

The portable playstation from Sony appears to be so rare and sought after that finding machines is turning into a quest, according to a report.

Press Release: DualDisc and DVD(plus) discs have until now been devoid of graphics, apart from limited text on the inner ring. Because both sides of these CD/DVD hybrids contain optical data, it has been impossible to apply graphics to them. But MediaCoat technology from Spectra Systems, a developer of systems for marking, tracking and authenticating documents and products, has opened the door to graphics, text and barcodes on the "play" side of a disc.

Pirated copies of the latest blockbuster films and computer games were back on sale at Ingliston Market in Edinburgh this weekend - just a week after a massive raid by police and Trading Standards officers.

Software pirates' increasing skill at creating counterfeit versions of Windows XP has prompted Microsoft to introduce a pilot program that offers to verify whether consumers' software is legitimate and replace fake versions with authentic goods.

A report from security firm Secunia described a hole in Winamp as "highly critical". The hole, reported by Brett Moore, describes a boundary error which can be used to deceive users into going to a malicious web site.

More than 200,000 pirated DVDs with a street value of more than $2 million (£840k) will be destroyed under supervision in Melbourne today.

Second-tier manufacturers of optical discs in Taiwan, faced with price cuts by competitors in China, have been forced to reduce their OEM quotations for 4x DVD+R/-R discs to US$0.15, a price that is lower than the industry's current average production costs of US$0.16-0.17, according to Taiwan makers of optical discs.

Rounding out its line of removable media, Sony Electronics is introducing the Sony Microdrive, a one-inch removable hard disk drive that will meet the increasing storage needs of many portable digital devices such as digital cameras and PDAs.

Global demand for recordable DVDs trails only CD-Rs and has become a driving force in the recording media business, an industry group concluded in its forecasts for global demand and production in 2005.

The US Congress is considering making fast forwarding through video advertisements a crime. Lawmakers in the land of the free have decided that it is costing their chums in the movie industry far too much money and want video fast-forwarders placed in the same league as pirates.

The death of the video cassette recorder appears to be in sight after the UK's largest electrical chain said it is to stop selling them.

Lite-On IT, currently the largest producer of optical-disc drives in Taiwan, has unveiled a new DVD recorder equipped with a built-in 160GB hard disc drive with the code name LWV-5045. The LWV-5045 will be formally launched in the Taiwan market at an initial retail price of NT$26,800 (£445) sometime next month.

The Guardian is reporting that according to Interpol the high profits and low risks associated with DVD piracy mean that 1kg of pirated discs is now worth more than 1kg of cannabis resin to criminal and terrorist groups.

Hard-disk drive maker Seagate has started shipping a drive targeted at PC video applications that offers 400GB of storage space, the biggest in its class the company claims.

China-based optical disc makers increased their CD-R disc OEM prices US$0.01, from US$0.08 to US$0.09, late last week, according to Taiwan makers of optical discs.

Even with retail prices for entry-level DVD recorders dropping from US$299 (£160) to US$149 (£80), global demand is falling short of original expectations during the traditional lead-up to the Christmas season, according to leading Taiwan OEM makers Lite-On IT and Eastern Asia Technology (EastTech).