Topic: News

Canada's homegrown digital music store Puretracks has lifted controversial copy restrictions from a large chunk of its catalogue, adding its weight to a growing number of industry players that appear increasingly open to unfettered file-sharing.

Web company BitTorrent Inc, once scorned in Hollywood, on Sunday joined a number of providers in the nascent arena for legal downloads of movies and television shows with content from several key studios.

Sony have said it is going to launch movie download service for the PlayStation 3 which should allow them to acquire new content without buying DVDs or Blu-ray discs. The move will also make the PlayStation 3 console an entertainment machine rather than a pure game console.

US television conglomerate Viacom has signed a content deal to put its programming on Joost, the internet on-demand TV service from the men behind Skype. The agreement means that TV shows from MTV, BET Networks, and film studio Paramount Pictures will be made available to watch for free on the internet.

UK retail chain Makro has reduced the price of the premium version of the Xbox 360 console to £199, a reduction of £80. This means that the premium console is selling for the same price as the cheaper Core unit.

The shy and retiring, softly-spoken CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer is blaming software pirates for Vista's poor sales.

A fake DVD trader has been ordered to pay back more than £60,000 in profits or face a longer jail sentence.

Six independent filmmakers have debuted their made-for-mobile movies at the 3GSM World Congress. In November, Robert Redford's Sundance Film Institute and the GSM Association (GSMA) commissioned six filmmakers to produce five films exclusively for distribution on mobile handsets. Each was to be about three to five minutes in length.

Microsoft's MSN Soapbox has been in an invite only state for a few months now, but today video-upload enters its public beta phase.

More than half of the young people in the UK pay to download music, according to a new survey.

Virgin Media and Disney's Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) have announced a deal, that will provide content for Virgin's TV-on-demand service in the UK. The deal includes hit U.S. shows including Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds and Alias. The deal also includes high definition versions of all the shows except Extreme Makeover UK.

Slysoft officially releases AnyDVD HDSlysoft has announced the first official release of AnyDVD HD, with support for AACS and HD DVD. In a press release, the company takes pride in offering a product that enables average computer users to take advantage of their "fair use rights" easily.

Relentless attempts by those determined to undermine the copy-protection technology used on HD DVD movies continue to yield successes.

Eight months after the move to "educate children" on copyright law was started, the cartoon capers of Captain Copyright has been dumped by the group that started it.

Workplace smoking bans may be good for workers' health, but could open the back door to sneaky hackers.

Sharp has developed a Blu-ray Disc recorder that cuts costs by doing away with the tuner. Instead, the BD-HP1 will use the tuner present in a television set to record TV programs, the company said on Wednesday.

MySpace will use software to monitor videos posted to the site in a bid to block unauthorised use of copyrighted content. The social networking giant will use technology to analyse videos' audio tracks to identify infringing posts.

The well-known BBC consumer affairs show Watchdog has recently looked into a number of complaints about hardware faults on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, particularly complaints that it often packs up shortly after the warrantee runs out.

Pioneer today officially announced the availability of two new internal 18x DVD writers. The DVR-112 multi-format drive and, the DVR-112D dual-format drive, integrate a wide range of technologies to optimise DVD writing.

New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.