According to the Associated Press it seems that Comcast is not the only company guilty of throttling P2P traffic, Singapore's StarHub, and Cox Communications were equal offenders as well.

Comcast has been seen as the main offender for the last few months and saw backlash from net neutrality advocates, customers and the even the FCC. The AP however, says that a worldwide study of 8,175 Internet users, showed that 3 companies were indeed blocking the traffic, and that Cox was likely the worst offender.

Of the 151 Cox subscribers, 82 had their transfers blocked, read the survey. The Cox interference however, was different than that of Comcast. Cox only blocked seeding of a file downloaded through BitTorrent, thus reducing the amount of people the downloader can share the file with.

Cox's subscriber agreement does state that subscribers are signing up for "protocol filtering," meaning that the company "prioritizes some forms of Internet traffic over others," but spokespeople have said that BitTorrent is not particularly discriminated against.

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AT&T, the iPhone's US exclusive carrier has announced that it will be limiting sales of the iPhone to customers, meaning only one phone can be purchased at a time.

The move is fueling more rumors that the upcoming 3G iPhone is coming soon and that Apple is low on inventory of the current generation which usually does not happen.

Apple's online store is completely sold out of the device as is UK's exclusive carrier O2.

"Effective immediately, customers can only purchase one iPhone device," the online advisory to AT&T store managers read.

If you still want the iPhone however, Apple has begun offering refurbished iPhones at huge discounts. The 8GB and 16GB models will sell for $249 USD and $349 USD respectively, over 30 percent off retail price.

Many are expecting the 3G model to launch in June at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference which recently sold out in anticipation of the launch.

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A federal jury has ruled in favor of a small Texas gaming company Anascape, announcing that Nintendo will have to pay the company $21 million USD for infringing patents while designing controllers for the Wii and Gamecube consoles.

The lawsuit was originally filed in late 2006 and was filed against Microsoft as well. The software giant however decided to settle the case out of court before the trial began.

Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta added that the company is looking to appeal and "expects the court to reduce the award significantly."

The patents infringed had to do with the designs of the Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers. Scibettra added the company was pleased that no infringement was found having to do with any motion-sensing technology, such as the Wii and Nunchuck controllers.

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Tanya Anderson, the P2P defendant that was accused by the record industry of stealing music but fought the charges and eventually won has just had another victory, having a significant amount of her substantial fees paid for by the bully record industry.

The music industry reps that originally sued her; Atlantic Recording, Priority Records, Capitol Records, UMG Recordings, and BMG Music wanted the usual settlement fund of about $3000 USD but Anderson denied their claims and took it to court. She would eventually have the complaints against her dropped, but not before she was over $300,000 USD in the hole with legal fees.

Because of the fact that the charges against her were dropped, she was entitled to make a claim for attorney fees and did see a victory, although not a full one. According to the judge presiding over the case, "Andersen now requests an award of attorney fees in the amount of$298,995.00 and costs in the amount of $5,387.05." The music industry however, fought back against that claim and got the award lowered. The judge ordered that "Andersen should be awarded attorney fees in the amount of$103,175. Andersen's Bill of Costs in the amount of $4,659 should be APPROVED."

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The pay-television companies have been actively searching and investigating websites that spread the word of set-top box modding. One of the sites, modshack.co.uk, was detected to illegally instruct how to bypass the set-top boxes' security settings. The two Brits responsible for the site were taken to court in 2006 for breaking the Copyright and Designs Act. Modshack.co.uk gathered nearly 27 000 pounds worth of donations from its users.

Carl Morgan Davison and Mark Taylor helped people via their website to bypass the security settings and therefore get a free access to digital pay-TV broadcasts from Virgin Media and BSkyB. The companies complained to North Wales Police about the service in the summer of 2005. Soon after the investigation began and resulted to a raid and eventually to legal action.

The court sentenced the two men to what Malcolm Davies, Virgin Media’s head of fraud security calls a "serious warning to others" -- a total of 15 months in prison. Carl Morgan Davison alias "Hairy Monster" was sentenced to 10 months and Mark Taylor alias "Novice Angle" to 5 months imprisonment.

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Limewire CEO George Searle has announced that the company hopes to share its ad revenue with record companies, with the record labels getting as much as 40 percent of the ad money.

Last year the P2P company said it was working on "integrating contextual text ads into its P2P client" and Searle tried to explain better. According to the CEO, "Limewire's 80 million users generate an estimated five billion search requests each month, putting the P2P client in the same league as search engine giants like Google and Yahoo. In fact, Limewire would be the third biggest search destination in terms of unique users, ahead of Live.com and Ask.com, if it was a website."

Limewire is definitely not a website though, and so far has not made one cent from its 5 billion searches. Searle hopes to change that now. "Limewire wants to incorporate contextual ads into its client within the next month. The ads will be at the top of the search results, but clearly marked as advertising. Ads will initially be used to promote Limwire's new music download store, but advertisers should be able to buy these spots soon as well."

Besides the new ad model, Limewire is also working on an interface redesign which will include a web browser.

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Samsung and LG have announced that they plan to develop a new device that will allow for DTV on cellular devices.

"LG and Samsung are already world-class in digital TV and mobile communications. Through this collaboration, we also have an opportunity to lead the North American mobile DTV market," said Woo Paik, LG president and chief technology officer.

There were no details or specifications on the product presented and there was no word on which standard was chosen to either. LG said there would be more details revealed later this year.

The proposed mobile DTV system will use current digital TV broadcast bandwidth and will not require the broadcasters to invest in much equipment.

"We will step up our effort to provide a technology that will benefit both consumers and broadcasters," added Park Jong-woo, head of Samsung Electronics' digital media division.

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Sony has reported that the PlayStation 3 is seeing gradually declining production costs and growing popularity of the console has led to a strong improvement on the company's balance sheet. Sony also noted that the company shipped about 37 million game consoles and more than 267 million games during the year.

Sony's "PlayStation" unit posted a $1.2 billion USD loss for the year, an improvement from the $2.3 billion USD loss the division posted last fiscal year. According to Sony, the decrease was primarily thanks to PS3 hardware reductions and the increasing sales of PS3 software and accessories.

For the fiscal year, there were 7.24 million PS3 units sold, up from 5.63 million in fiscal 2006. The PSP was even more popular, selling 13.89 million devices for a total of 41 million PSPs to date.

PSP software sales declined but PS3 software sales made up the difference. Total game units were 267.4 million, compared to 261.5 million in fiscal 2006.

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Microsoft has announced that it has moved over 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States, being the first next gen console to hit that sales milestone in the States. Overall Microsoft has sold 19 million units worldwide to date.

The software giant also added that the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV has pushed Xbox Live memberships to over 12 million players worldwide.

IDC research manager Billy Pidgeon added that the service was "the largest community in the connected console games sector," and said it represented "the greatest growth opportunity in the console market."

Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices VP Don Mattrick noted, "history has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry.”

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At last week's MEDIA-TECH Expo in Frankfurt, Germany, media analyst Richard Cooper of Screen Digest predicted that the struggling US economy will have a major impact on the growth of Blu-ray in 2008. During his presentation on the future of Blu-ray Cooper backed up his assertion with some interesting figures, largely from DVD sales, showing that US households have historically purchase more titles annually than those in Europe. Based in part on those figures he sees Blu-ray sales continuing to remain low during 2008.

As we reported last month, sales of Blu-ray players dropped significantly after the end of the so-called format war with HD DVD, and have yet to return to their January levels.

His presentation also included detailed analysis of the affect PS3 sales may have on the market. He pointed to a recent study showing use of the game console as a BD (Blu-ray Disc) player in the US increasing from the end of 2007 through the beginning of 2008 as good news for movie sales. Also of note, however, was the competition for consumer dollars between games and movies. Such competition could prove problematic for the Blu-ray industry as long as the game console dominates the player market.

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Last month the FCC issued nearly $4 billion dollars in fines to various retailers across the US for failing to label TVs without digital tuners. The labels are required by a rule adopted last May requiring retailers to label TVs with only analog (NTSC) tuners as incompatible with digital television (DTV) broadcasts. Starting in February of next year such TVs will require a converter box to receive over the air broadcasts.

Yesterday Circuit City filed papers with the agency claiming their fines, which total $712,000, should be thrown out because the FCC doesn't have any jurisdiction to enforce the rule. The company also alleges the agency acted improperly by not asking for public comment prior to setting the policy.

According to the filing, "Circuit City made extensive and good faith efforts to comply with this unprecedented regulation despite lack of notice or baseline for compliance." It also goes on to complain that errors were made by regulators in assessing the fines.

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Following the example of western neighbor Sweden, Finland is about to get their own Pirate Party. During 24th and 25th of May Finnish Pirate Party will hold their two day constitutive meeting. Rick Falkvinge, the founder and chairman of Swedish Piratpartiet, will deliver a speech as one of the guests.

After the meeting they will start gathering the 5 000 supporter cards necessary to officially register the party. The organizers said that there has been a lot of interest towards the party and they except plenty of attendees. Everyone attending has been asked to enroll to avoid organization problems.

Finnish Pirate Alliance has interviewed Matti Hiltunen, the founder of Finnish Pirate Party. Here are some quick snippets:

Hiltunen was satisfied how the building of the party has gone so far and claimed that Pirate Party and its ideas will definitely stand out. Hiltunen continued that he is not interested to follow his colleague Falkvinge for the chairman position. He calls himself more of a philosopher than a politician and would like to continue to contribute as a party secretary. The party is looking for active supporters all around Finland from all social classes and age groups.

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WiiWare, which was launched in the US yesterday with six games, in Japan last month with nine games, is set to hit Europe on May 20th, with eight games, says Nintendo.

The games will be downloadable from the "WiiWare" section of the Wii Shop Channel and to purchase the games users will need to redeem Wii Points which can be bought online or at retail outlets.

There was no pricing details given but so far games have ranged from 500-1500 Wii Points ($5-15 USD).

According to the source, the European lineup will consist of the following eight games:

• Dr. Mario & Germ Buster (Nintendo, Puzzle, 1–4 players, 3+ PEGI)
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Square Enix, Simulation, 1 player, 7+)
• LostWinds (Frontier, Platform Adventure, 1–2 players, 7+)
• Pirates: The Key of Dreams (Oxygen Interactive, Action, 1-4 players, 3+)
• Pop (Nnooo, Puzzle/Shooter, 1-4 players, 3+)
• Star Soldier R (Hudson Soft, Shooter, 1 player, 7+)
• Toki Tori (Two Tribes, Puzzle / Platform, 1–2 players, 3+)
• TV Show King (Gameloft, Trivia, TV Quiz, 1–4 players, 3+)

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Take this with a grain of salt, but according to Blu-ray.com Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 USD Blu-ray player in select stores, a price over $100 USD lower than current entry-level players.

The site says that the cheaper players are showing up on Wal-Mart store shelves under brand names such as Magnavox and Sylvania but that they are in reality coming from Japanese manufacturer Funai which has been rumored for months to be working on a low-cost Blu-ray player.

Funai is known mainly for manufacturing low cost electronics, which in turn pressures the industry to lower prices for their name brand electronics.

Not much is known about the new players but the site says it supports the Profile 1.1 BD standard.

More information as it becomes available.

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The announcement earlier this year by Blockbuster that they were interested in buying the faltering Circuit City consumer electronics chain were largely greeted by skepticism over the video rental giant's ability to finance the $1 billion bid. But at least one major player, Hollywood Video founder Mark Wattles, is more optimistic about the deal's potential.

Wattles, whose Wattles Capital Management (WCM) holds more than 6% of Circuit City's stock, has a high opinion of Blockbuster's management. He told This Week In Consumer Electronics “I’ve competed against them and they have an exceptional employee hiring and training program.” He also described Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes as an outstanding chief executive.

Last week Wattles reached an agreement with Circuit City executives that will give WCM a voice on the company's board of directors in exchange for supporting the board's other nominees, avoiding a very public fight that would almost certainly be damaging to the company, at least in the short term.

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Over the past few years public libraries in the US have steadily increased the number of titles offered in that format. Some of the nation's larger libraries have in excess of ten thousand titles available. Also on the rise is the availability of downloadable titles, which comprise a much smaller, but growing area of interest among library patrons. Despite all this interest in digital video, it appears that Blu-ray has yet to make an appearance on the shelves of most libraries, and in fact doesn't seem to figure into most institutions' short term plans.

The results of a survey conducted by Reed Business Information indicate that only 3% of public libraries currently stock high definition titles, compared to 33% already offering movie downloads.

If the responses from many libraries are an indication the key issue that still needs to be resolved is consumer confusion about Blu-ray, rather than an actual rejection of the technology. Several reportedly weren't even aware of Blu-ray's recent "victory" over HD DVD in the so-called format war. Most said there was simply no demand for high definition discs at this time.

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