Topic: News

Joint efforts by relevant Chinese departments have cracked 172 wet piracy cases and closed down 76 websites in a three-month crackdown over on-line piracy across the country, according to the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC).

According to a scan from the upcoming March issue of PlayStation Magazine, Sony is planning to launch a full-frontal assault on Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

An Aussie faces extradition to the US to face piracy charges after the FBI claims he was the leader of a $6.5 million software copying racket.

A Louisiana man is suing Apple claiming that the iPod is "inherently defective" because it can pump up the volume to ear-damaging levels and that Apple hasn't done enough to warn him of the risks.

Three men were arrested when pirate DVDs worth more than £500,000 were seized in north-west London. Kent Police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) have also raided an address in Burnt Oak, Kent.

Nobody was ever arrested for leaking the secret source code for parts of the Windows operating system in 2004, but a hacker who sold a copy online afterward was sentenced to two years in federal prison Friday.

Ten internet service providers have been ordered to hand over the details of 150 UK customers accused of illegally sharing software.

Microsoft have released an official update to the Xbox 360, patching in improvements to a number of different facets of the console.

An "extremely critical" security vulnerability has been discovered in AOL's Winamp digital media player, relating to the way the software handles filenames that include a computer name. An exploit has already surfaced for the flaw, which affects version 5 of the software.

RiDisc, under the Risafe brand, have introduced a novel, efficient and highly cost effective way of storing all your discs.

DVD dynamo Flash has posted his latest review for Plextor 16x DVD+R which he has put through all the usual and highly rigourous tests. Of the disc he concludes, "This disc looks nice with its gold finish making it look the part of another quality disc". You can read his review here.

Western Digital (WD) has upped the capacity of its Caviar Serial ATA desktop hard drive range to 500GB, pitching not only the part's storage but also its low power consumption and low operational noise level - features it also highlighted for its new 120GB Scorpio 2.5in notebook drive.

The English High Court has ordered two men to pay a combined £6,500 in damages after deciding they illegally distributed music through P2P file-sharing networks.

The successor of the popular DVR-110 series, the DVR-111 / DVR-111D DVD burners from Pioneer will be released in Europe soon after mid-March. The device writes a full DVD disc in less than six minutes.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said on Friday that beating software piracy in China and India and getting compliance up to U.S. and European levels would take 10 years.

Taiwanese DVD maker Ritek released a warning advising consumers that faked DVD-R media have appeared in Japan under the Ritek label.

The new low-budget film from director Steven Soderbergh promises to shake things up in the movie industry. In the US, Bubble opens in theatres on Friday, Jan. 27, the same day it is broadcast in HDTV. Four days later, it comes out on DVD, effectively obsoleting the traditional 'window' between a film's cinema and DVD releases.

Citing sources inside Microsoft, it has been claimed that the software giant is working on plans to develop its own portable digital media device to rival Apple's iPod.

Ritek, one of the top two makers of optical discs in Taiwan, on January 24 announced it obtained certification for 8x DVD+R DL (single-sided double-layer) discs from Royal Philips Electronics last week, becoming the only the third company to receive such certification.

It's been a fairly tough start to the year for both Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360, but it looks like Sony's woe may be a touch worse.