News written by Andre Yoskowitz (February, 2008)

Recently, we have begun notifying you of the recent changes or updates to Afterdawn in an effort to keep you all informed.

For those that missed it, we recently expanded Afterdawn to Sweden, marking a third language for the site.

We have also added a number of guides aimed at playback of all types of video files on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Finally, the staff has been updating the Glossary section since the beginning of the year with many Glossary items added and others completely revamped.

Now for the new news :)

In an ongoing effort to improve and update our P2P guides the staff has completely revamped a couple of the most popular P2P guides, with aims to update all of them.

Using and Maxing out your download speeds with uTorrent- This guide has been completely updated even down to the structure of the guide. uTorrent is the most popular torrent client so we hope this will be of use for many users and torrent fans.

The mobile phone carrier O2 has announced that it will be the exclusive carrier for the popular Apple iPhone in Ireland following its successful launch in the UK last year.

The official debut for the device in Ireland is slated for March 14th. The device will sell in O2's retail stores and also through "Carphone Warehouse" retail stores. The smaller capacity 8GB model of the iPhone will sell for €399 including VAT. The larger capacity 16GB model will retail for €499 including VAT. Obviously the device will work with both Macs and PCs.

The different service plans will be available from O2, with the cheapest beginning at €45. Each plan will have anytime minutes, text messaging and a 1GB data bundle at least.

More details when they become available.

According to new data figures from Enterbrain, the ever popular Nintendo Wii has dominated the Japanese console market again, outselling the next closest competitor, the Sony PlayStation 3 by an almost 4-to-1 margin.

As of February 24th, 331,627 Wii units had been sold in Japan, compared to 89,131 PlayStation 3s.

The PS3 has been closing the gap recently but the blockbuster hit "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" eliminated that, at least for the month. The game reached one million units sold in 11 days, and has now sold 1.33 million.

As always, the Microsoft Xbox 360 lagged terribly behind in the region and shows no signs of improvement.

After it announced in mid-January that Skype would be heading to European PSPs, Sony has confirmed that the wireless communication package Go!Messenger will also hit European PSPs by the end of the week.

The package, jointly developed by Sony and BT lets users "send voice, video and instant messages to other Go!Messenger users from any wireless Internet connection, and will work over wireless Internet - including that provided by the 2,500-plus BT Openzone hotspots around UK city centers."

The service is free in theory but you will need to purchase the PSP Go!Cam, which is a mic and video camera, if you want to use the package.

"Enabling more than 8.5 Million PSP users across the SCEE region to communicate with each other, through Video or Voice chat, truly confirms the always evolving nature and potential of PSP," said PSP European marketing manager Stephane Hareau.

Dreamworks Studios has announced that they are still "locked" into an exclusivity deal with Toshiba to distribute their movies on HD DVD only and would continue to do so until Toshiba tells them differently.

"We have a partnership with Toshiba and have an obligation to see this through," DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said.

"As you know, we have been well-compensated for our support. It really is in their court at this point to really declare what the next step will be. We're poised either way to jump into the marketplace when the conditions are right to do so," he added.

Katzenberg's comments seem to imply that all the past rumors were indeed correct and Dreamworks and Paramount were paid over $150 million USD to go HD DVD-exclusive for 18 months. It seems however that Paramount had a different clause in there contract because they recently dropped HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

Just 3 days after it blocked access to the popular video sharing site, Pakistani officials have lifted the ban on YouTube, citing that the "anti-Islamic" video clips had been removed.

The so-called "anti-Islamic" clips were trailers for an upcoming movie by the Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilder. The movie allegedly will show Islam as a fascist religion and that has proven to incite violence, especially towards women.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) issued notices to all 70 Pakistani ISPs telling them to ban access to the site, but that ban has since been lifted. As the PTA says, the "totally anti-Quranic... very blasphemous" video has been removed despite the fact that other Wilder clips still remain available.

At its annual retail and publisher conference Sony America has announced that new PlayStation 3 and PSP bundles will be hitting retailers beginning in April.

They company also announced that the wireless DualShock 3 controller will finally be available in North America starting in April for the MSRP of $55 USD.

The first new bundle will include the 80GB model, a DS3 controller and "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" for $499 USD.

In June the company will be releasing a special limited-edition PSP bundle that will include "a copy of the God of War: Chains of Olympus PSP game and a "deep red" coloured PSP handheld with a silk-screened image of Kratos on the back of the unit. The Pack will also include a UMD of the movie Superbad as well as a PSN voucher to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops." The suggested retail price is $200 USD.

"Working closely with our retail and publishing partners and sharing our hardware and software roadmaps at Destination PlayStation gives us a great opportunity to outline some key milestones for the year," said SCEA CEO Jack Tretton.

"In response to incredible demand, we will be manufacturing more 80GB PS3s for North America and the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots 80GB PS3 bundle is an ideal way to offer that continued value to our consumers. Read more...

Sony has announced that its first Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players will be debuting this summer.

The BDP-S350 will be Sony's first new player since the demise of HD DVD last week and will feature an Ethernet port allowing it to connect to a home network. Curiously, the player will not be able to access online Blu-ray content until Sony releases a BD-Live upgrade for the player. The company says the player will retail for about $400 USD. The new BDP-S550 will cost about $100 more but will be BD-Live capable from the get go.

Both players will be the first of Sony's line to have picture-in-picture (PIP) content although some Panasonic players already have the feature meaning the new players are not the first of their kind.

Acer, the large notebook manufacturer has announced that it will be "pushing" Blu-ray notebooks beginning in the Q2 of this year.

The company, which had been signed to both Blu-ray and HD DVD, also predicted that the initial boost in Blu-ray sales would be seen in notebooks and not in standalone players.

Scott Lin, president of Acer, said the company's reasoning for the notebook push was that "most homes do not yet have Full HD (1080p) ready TVs, a notebook with a Blu-ray disc drive and full HD panel will have more advantages over a stand-alone player."

There are little details known about the specs of the new laptops but there will be a gigantic 18.4-inch screen model as well as a 16 inch model. Both will have 1080p Resolution.

PLDS, the joint venture between Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions, has announced the DX-4O1S, a new, faster BD-ROM external drive set to hit stores by April.

The player is only a BD-ROM however and will not having burning capabilities. The drive works via a USB connection making Blu-ray playback very simple. The drive can also read DVD+/-R(W) and CD-R(W) media at high read speeds.

"Due to recent market developments we can expect an increasing volume of movies to be released in High Definition on Blu-ray Discs", says Jelmer Veldman, European marketing manager at PLDS.

"The market adoption of Blu-ray as the optical disc standard for high definition content results in a growing demand for Blu-ray playback solutions. The portable external Lite-On BD-ROM drive allows users to playback their Blu-ray discs on any PC via a USB 2.0 cable," added the company.

Industry sources have said that Sony is planning to begin buying LCD TV panels from its rival Sharp, possibly as soon as April of this year.

Sony is currently running an LCD panel joint venture with Samsung but this latest move should help the company "secure enough panels to meet fast-growing LCD TV demand without heavy capital investments."

Currently, Samsung and Sony compete for the highest sales in the global LCD TV market, while Sharp lags slightly behind.

Sharp is currently building the world's largest LCD panel factory and the company hopes to boost its LCD output capacity by 50 percent over the next year.

The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) have revealed a new proposal that would allow all Canadian citizens to download as much unauthorized music as they please for the low, flat-rate of $5 CAD per month.

The new proposal, which will require federal approval to pass, will add a $5 CAD surcharge to your monthly ISP bill but allow unlimited music downloading from sources of your choice.

"That's a very reasonable amount of money to legally, without fear of any legal repercussions, to be able to download that and share it with [whomever] you want to and as many times as you want," said Eddie Schwartz, president of the songwriters' group. "On iTunes to download one album, it's $10. This is half of that and this is pretty reasonable to have access to the entire repertoire of Western music."

The organization plans to meet at Toronto's Ryerson University to launch the proposal while asking for an immediate amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act. The new right will be called the Right to Equitable Reenumeration for Music File Sharing and would allow the songwriters to collect fees from all Internet subscribers.

Pakistani officials have announced that the government has blocked all access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube because there have been a few anti-Islamic videos posted on the site.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) notified all 70 Pakistani ISPs that access to the site is to be blocked indefinitely.

The PTA revealed that the ban was mainly due to a "trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Quran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals." Governement officials would not elaborate further.

The group also urged YouTube fans to write to the site and request the removal of all "objectionable movies" saying that the government would unblock the site once the movies were taken down.

The banning follows recent decisions by Turkey and Morocco to block access to the video sharing site, both for similar reasons as Pakistan.

Microsoft has announced that will stop producing its HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360, citing Toshiba's end of support for the format as the key reason why.

The company said it would continue to provide warranty support for the 300,000 or so players that had been purchased to date.

"HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a High Definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room, along with playback of the DVD movies they already own," added Blair Westlake, a VP of Microsoft's media and entertainment group.

Microsoft was the second largest backer of the format behind Toshiba, and has said it will continue to look into how HD DVD technology, such as the interactive layer HDi, can be applied to other platforms.

Jello Biafra, the former Dead Kennedys lead singer, recently had a few choice words for the RIAA, going as far as to say that the group reminds him of the mafia.

“I have two different opinions on file-sharing,” says Biafra, “you may take from the big labels...because the only thing they do is steal from both the artists and the audience.”

Besides calling the big labels the "bad guys", he placed the "small guys" on the "good side." “Don’t take from the smaller, independent labels. Then fantastic bands would have to surrender way too early, because they can’t afford it,” he says.

“Support the independent labels, but the big ones –****’em. Anyways, I haven’t found anything in many years which come from a large label worth buying” adds Biafra.

Moving on to the RIAA, Biafra gets even angrier.

“The RIAA reminds me most of the Godfather,” Biafra says, actually going into a Marlon Brando impression, “we will sue you. If you want out of this without going to court, we can make an arrangement: Give us $5000. If not, you will find a horses head in your bed.”

In what seems to be a concentrated effort to jump start its new movie rental business Apple will be offering 99 cent rentals on iTunes once per week on a new movie.

The rental will be available on Thursday and the special pricing will run until the next Monday. The first movie available is The Hours which is available now.

Apple also announced that there was a small update to the iTunes platform, in which there are several bugfixes including a fix to make the service more compatible with the Apple TV interface.

According to a few reports and earnings from UK based ISPs, there has been a sharp increase in bandwidth costs thanks to the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC announced that in its first month of operation, January 2008, 2.2 million people watched at least one program using the service which led to almost a tripling in streaming costs for at least one ISP, PlusNet.

The actual cost per user per month for PlusNet rose from 6.1p to 18.3p, meaning the internet TV service is costing the ISP a hefty sum.

Ashley Highfield however, the BBC's director of future media and technology, has said that the iPlayer has "negligible impact on the UK internet infrastructure".

The high-end electronics maker Onkyo has also announced that it will be ending support for HD DVD and stopping all production of HD DVD players.

Although a couple of companies have recently decided to continue their support for HD DVD players Onkyo clearly felt differently following Toshiba's recent decision to end support for HD DVD. "As Onkyo manufactures HD DVD players with core parts supplied by Toshiba," Onkyo's statement read, "it will be difficult for Onkyo to continue its further development and production of HD DVD players."

Any future HD products will be made for Blu-ray, says the company, but it will offer full support for all its HD DVD products including after-sales service.

Microsoft's GDC keynote speaker, John Schappert has announced that the Xbox 360 has reached another milestone, over 18 million units sold worldwide.

"I think that we've sold 18 million, the last time I've checked. 18 million hardware units worldwide," said Schappert. He would not however, project sales for the rest of 2008.

The speaker also went on to say that the company would probably not even bother with an external Blu-ray drive for the console simply because the HD DVD add-on sold poorly.

"We have no plans to announce anything like that right now. But I'd also urge you to look at the attach rate for the HD-DVD drive," he noted. "It was a 3 percent attach rate...you also have to take into account how did the other accessory do when you look at the future."

Contrary to other decisions by major companies, the manufacturer LG has announced it will not be dropping HD DVD and will instead remain format neutral.

"LG believes that at this present moment in time, it is necessary to provide a player which supports both formats and therefore create simplicity and convenience for the existing HD DVD consumer," read a press statement.

LG is one of only two companies to offer a dual-format player, the somewhat popular LG BH100.

Daniel Aziz, marketing manager for LG Electronics added, "With the recent announcement from Toshiba, Blu-ray will now be the format that will pave the way for High Definition movies, however this does not rule out HD DVD immediately as there are still a number of consumers who have chosen HD DVD and begun to build a HD DVD collection."

Paramount has announced that it has become the final major studio to move to Blu-ray, after it had been HD DVD exclusive since last August.

"We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer," the studio said in a statement.

"As we look to (begin) releasing our titles on Blu-ray, we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly."

There was no other details issued as to when the transition would begin nor was there word on what titles would be first released on Blu-ray. There was also no word on whether Dreamworks would be moving with its parent company but that announcement is expected soon.

A new article by the GlobeandMail is saying that Sony paid Warner Bros. in excess of $400 million USD to drop HD DVD and move exclusively to Blu-ray.

Warner's decision, a week before this year's CES started a downhill trend for HD DVD until finally the format died this week, with Toshiba confirming they will be dropping production of HD DVD players.

If the article proves to be true, then Sony may have paid a hefty price to win the format war, but being the proprietor of the format, the company could stand to make billions in the next decade; that is however if Blu-ray and physical media are even the medium of choice in the next few years.

Sony BMG has announced that it had signed a deal with Thumplay that will add another 7000 pieces of content to the growing mobile media service.

Currently the service offers 80000 ringtones, games, music videos, and wallpapers among its other content. The new content will be from artists and will be in many of the before mentioned categories.

"This deal reinforces Thumbplay's position as the leading U.S. provider of mobile content to consumers who are looking to discover and manage their personalized mobile entertainment experience," CEOI Are Traasdahl said in a statement.

Thumbplay is distributed through sites such as Qloud, MSN Mobile, and AOL and there are about 2000 different devices compatible with the service.

The service already has deals with EMI, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, and Universal Music Group accounting for most of its 80000 pieces of content.

Microsoft Canada has announced price drops across the line for all of its Xbox 360 models and it seems Canadian buyers will finally see prices more equivalent to their southern neighbors in the US.

The Xbox 360 Pro pack will drop to $349 CAD and the Elite Pack will drop to $449 CAD. The base-level Arcade model will see the smallest cut, from $299 CAD to $279 CAD.

Its US counterparts reached their current pricing model in late August 2007, and so far Canadian gamers have been forced to pay a large premium for the consoles, higher than even the discrepancy in the US and Canadian dollar which is now less than a couple cents per dollar.

Just 4 months after reaching 3 billion downloads the popular torrent site Mininova has announced that they have hit another milestone; 4 billion torrent downloads by its users.

Niek van der Maas, the founder of MiniNova had this to say about the latest milestone. “When we launched back in January 2005, we were the first BitTorrent site to offer a sophisticated search engine, sorting of search results, categorization, etc..We try to keep our lead by innovating and extending our website with new features. Many things changed in the past years, but one thing will always be the same: we try to offer the #1 P2P directory and search engine.”

The milestones just keep racking up for Mininova, and at an exponential rate as well. In May 2006 the site reached 400 million torrent downloads, and only 8 months later they hit the 1 billion plateau. By November of 2007 it was 3 billion. Read more...

Three months ago the immensely popular torrent tracker Demonoid was taken offline but it seems that many hopeful have something to cheer about as the tracker is responding for the first time since the take down.

Curiously, the the new tracker is hosted in Malaysia while the actual frontend of Demonoid and its subforums are still hosted in the US.

There has been no official word from the Demonoid admin team so for now this could purely be coincedence, but there is the possibility that the site has found a new Malaysian host and is preparing a comeback.

A few months back, Deimos, the lead admin for the site said there was a possibility for return but hope has been fading as the months past. “Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there’s some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help," Deimos said at the time.

Apple has announced that they have dropped the price of their popular iPod Shuffle model after growth drastically slowed for the last quarter.

The 1GB 2nd Generation Shuffle will now cost a reasonable $49 USD. The company also introduced a 2GB version that will cost $69 USD.

A company statement showed that the player saw slowed growth to 5 percent last quarter, compared to 15 percent for the year and a half preceding it.

"This makes the Shuffle more competitive in terms of a price-capacity ratio," NPD Group's Ross Rubin said in an interview from New York. "While Apple had a good holiday season, the market has been slowing down somewhat."

To date Apple has sold over 140 million iPods, including Shuffles, "classic" iPods, and the new Touch model.

BBC Worldwide has announced it has struck a deal with Apple that will allow users in the UK to download a few top BBC shows from the popular iTunes platform.

Each show will cost 1.89 pounds (about $3.70 USD) and will include such popular shows as "Torchwood," "Life on Mars" and "Spooks". Users can then watch the show on their computers, on TV via the Apple TV device or on Apple handhelds.

The new deal follows in the BBC's strategy to make its shows available for download after they have aired and the deal marks the first for a British broadcaster.

The downloads are available for free on BBC's own iPlayer for 30 days after they air and then will be available for purchase on iTunes.

"We want to give audiences a wide variety of options on how and where to view their favorite BBC shows," said Simon Danker, director of digital media at BBC Worldwide.

"With more people now choosing to watch TV shows on their iPods, fans of series such as 'The Mighty Boosh' and 'The Catherine Tate Show' can now enjoy those shows wherever they are."

Microsoft and Paramount have announced a new partnership in which the movie studio will offer films via the Live Video Store beginning on February 19th.

The first Title to hit the service will be the blockbuster "Transformers" and new and existing titles will continue to trickle in. New titles from Warner Bros. will also be hitting the service including Beowulf, and The Assassination of Jesse James.

"We're very excited to announce this new relationship," Paramount's Alex Carlos added. "We have lots of great content that fits this demographic. We're excited about digital distribution, especially being on a platform as elegant as Xbox 360."

And Robin Burrowes, Xbox Live UK marketing manager, continued, "This announcement gives our Video Store customers in the UK an even greater choice of entertainment, with a great level of HD movie quality, as always."

The store launched in the UK in December and allows users to purchase digital downloads of Standard Definition or High Definition movies. You have two weeks to watch the content or 24 hours to finish it after you've begun watching.

Motorola has announced that it will be completing its previously announced acquisition of Soundbuzz, the Singapore-based provider of digital music downloads. In fact, Soundbuzz is the leading provider for the entire Asian continent.

The companies did not disclose any of the financial terms of the deal but did say it had been in the works for a few months.

"Clearly, this marks a major milestone, as it positions Soundbuzz and Motorola to better participate in the ongoing growth in Asia's booming mobile music download market," Soundbuzz CEO Sudhanshu Sarronwala said.

The company's MotoMusic platform will now have 750,000 songs available for download in India, Southeast Asia, and Greater China.

Despite rampant speculation and rumor, it seems that Toshiba is not dropping HD DVD, or at least not for the time being.

The corporation has released a brief press release this morning in an effort to put a damper on the rumors that have been spreading since the giant retailer Wal-Mart decided to go Blu-ray exclusive beginning in June.

"The media reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment," read the complete statement.

This latest statement could simply be a way to stall before the decision to drop the failing format is officially made, but for now HD DVD fans still have some hope.

Rapidshare has announced that it will indeed be appealing a recent German court ruling which has the potential to have the gigantic file hosting site shut down.

Last month the court ruled that Rapidshare must block access to any musical works that are represented by the German music rights group GEMA. The ruling even went as far as to say that the courts can "take measures that might have the risk of making Rapidshare's service substantially less attractive or even close it down completely."

A company representative has now said that "Rapidshare wants to clarify the legal situation for hosters", and will be appealing the ruling. The representative also argued that it would be next to impossible to filter its uploads because users can rename files, split them in pieces, or save them as different formats before uploading. Continuing on, the spokesperson added that not all uploads can be considered illegal or unauthorized as music fans can be using the host to have backups of their own MP3 collection without sharing the links.

According to 9to5mac, Apple is preparing to drop the prices on its very popular iPhone and iPod Touch models, possibly as soon as next week.

The rumored price cut will be $100 USD for both the Touch and the iPhone and the smaller capacity 8 GB Touch will be completely dropped from the line just as the 4 GB iPhone was last year.

If proven true the price cuts will mean the new 16 GB iPhone will cost $399 USD and the 32 GB Touch will cost the same, a very reasonable price considering models touting half the memory capacity sell for that same price currently.

The price drops should make way for "pricing space" for the upcoming 3G iPhone slated for release later this year.

First reported by the Japanese public broadcaster NHK and later confirmed by Toshiba itself, the next-gen format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray is finally over, with Toshiba planning on stopping production of HD DVD players.

The battle, which has raged on for the last couple of years, has often been compared to the Betamax-VHS battle of the MID 1980's and has slowed down the development of what movie studios hope will become a multi-billion dollar industry over the next decade.

The final blow to HD DVD and Toshiba took place yesterday when the mammoth retailer Wal-Mart announced they would go Blu-ray exclusive beginning in June. Other recent news, such as Best Buy and Netflix's decisions to support Blu-ray must have also weighed heavily on Toshiba's decision. Read more...

According to the NPD Group, year-over-years sales for the US videogame market fell 6 percent to $1.18 billion USD for January 2008.

Software sales for the month increased 11 percent however, to $610.6 million USD, but NPD's Anita Frazier attributed that increase mainly to higher prices, such as the expensive "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" bundles that both sold very well.

Hardware sales were down a hefty 25 percent to $377.8 million USD with the Nintendo Wii leading the Pack again with sales of 274,000 units. Notably though, the Sony PlayStation 3 took second place with 269,000 units sold, placing it just ahead of the

Hardware sales were down 25 per cent to USD 377.8 million, with the Wii once again leading the pack with sales of the PS2 (264,000) and the Microsoft Xbox 360 (230,000).

"Based on this month's results, software sales are off to a fantastic start," said Frazier. "Accessories are also very hot, so the industry looks to be pretty healthy out the gate."

Now that it seems that HD DVD's time is running short, Disney is running a rebate program on a good amount of its Blu-ray titles.

In a few titles, such as 'The Rock,' 'Crimson Tide' and 'Con Air', there is an included insert that offers a $10 USD rebate for consumers who've purchased both the standard-def DVD edition and the Blu-ray edition of the same title.

For the rebate to work, buyers must send in both UPC codes, the original insert, as well as a copy of the original receipt before December 31st 2008.

When asked about whether the program would be expanded, Disney said "that the studio does not comment on sales initiatives or strategies."

It seems that over the course of the last month, HD DVD has been taking loss after loss, but it seems the giant retailer Wal-Mart has finally put the final nail in the coffin.

The company announced this morning that it has chosen sides in the next-gen format war and that by June it will only be stocking Blu-ray Disc players, completely dropping HD DVD in the process.

Susan Chronister, of Wal-Mart's video division wrote in her blog earlier this morning that the company made its decision following Best Buy's and Netflix's recent decision to snuff HD DVD.

"By June, Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines and, of course, standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players," Chronister said. She then added, "if you bought the HD DVD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard-def movies, and make space for a (Blu-Ray Disc) player."

It seems that Nintendo of America has asked the U.S. Trade Representative to "encourage" international governments to take a harsher stance against piracy of Nintendo video games and systems around the world.

Filing a "Special 301" process with the Trade Representative means the group will "solicit input from the public to underscore specific areas of concern."

Although China remains a primary source for the manufacturing of pirated Nintendo console games, the report says Korea is emerging as the leader for distributing the games over the Internet. The report also said that "despite aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by the company", Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and Hong Kong remain saturated with pirated goods or serve as major "transshipment points for global distribution of illegal goods."

"The unprecedented momentum enjoyed by Nintendo DS and Wii makes Nintendo an attractive target for counterfeiters," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "We estimate that in 2007, Nintendo, together with its publishers and developers, suffered nearly $975 million USD worldwide in lost sales as a result of piracy. Nintendo will continue to work with governments around the world to aggressively curtail this illegal activity."

Google has announced plans to enter the Chinese online music market for the first time by joining up with the popular Top100.cn, which allows users "to listen to and download licensed music files for free".

The reports come via the major portal Sina.com and the portal added that the venture should generate revenue through online ads on its music search pages.

Google nor Top100 would confirm or deny the rumors however.

The new venture should help Google compete with the market leader Baidu which holds 60.1 percent share of China's search market and has become very popular "by providing search services for and access to music files, or mp3s, many of which are pirated." The popularity has however been monitored by the international music industry, especially the IFPI.

The IFPI has recently claimed that over 98 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated and that the legal music market, a meager $76 million, stands as less than 1 percent of the global market for sales.

In what can equate to an "I told you so", director Michael Bay has spoken out again about Blu-ray and its recent "victories" over the rival HD DVD format.

Earlier this week, both Netflix and Best Buy seemingly chose Blu-ray as their HD format of choice although Best Buy said it will continue to stock both. Bay, taking the time to knock HD DVD had this to say at the Visual Effects Society’s sixth annual award show, “Blu-ray’s better, and I told everyone ... I was very vocal about it. I knew HD [DVD] was not going to make it.”

Ironically, despite his support for Blu-ray, his best selling HD Title is far and away Transformers which is available on HD DVD. Read more...

The decently popular website Play.com has begun offering high quality, DRM-free MP3 music downloads for the relatively low price of 65p in the UK, and the company says it will start with about one million tracks from EMI and indie labels.

The files, which will be 320kbps, should be playable on most if not all media devices on the market, due to its MP3 format. Apple already offers EMI tracks DRM-free as well but in AAC format which is mainly supported by its iPod line. The price is also cheaper and a Play.com spokesperson has said that "we're going to be cheaper than [Apple's] iTunes. Whatever price iTunes goes down to, we'll be looking to go lower."

In a recent decision, the EU has told Apple it must standardize its prices across Europe and so the tracks are expected to drop from its high 79p current price.

DivX has announced today that they have completed a licensing deal with Mtekvision, a global leader in advanced mobile semiconductor technology that will give rare DivX Mobile Certification to a new processor Chipset that will be used in upcoming mobile phones.

The MtekVision MV8722, which is a member of the Maple family of media processors will allow mobile phone owners with the chip to playback DivX video at resolutions of up to 720x400.

So far there over 100 million devices that are DivX Certified but mobile phones are only just beginning to receive the certification.

"Mtekvision is dedicated toward creating mobile solutions that foster a rich multimedia experience and allow users to benefit from superior portable technology," said Simon Morris, CEO, MtekVision Canada Ltd. "Offering DivX Mobile Certification enables us to provide our partners and customers with a valuable feature for ensuring the highest quality video possible across mobile devices." Read more...

After recent announcements that Best Buy had snuffed HD DVD and that Netflix would be dropping all stock of HD DVD, the HD DVD Promotional Group took time to make a statement about the future of the format and the recent decisions.

Clearly, the Group was upset over the recent losses (which seem to be mounting) and offered only this as a response.

"We have long held the belief that HD DVD is the best format for consumers based on quality and value, and with more than 1 million HD DVD players on the market, it's unfortunate to see Netflix make the decision to only stock Blu-ray titles going forward. While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail.

After last month's announcement that the Apple TV would see an update, the "Take 2" upgrade is finally available.

Users simply need to navigate to the Settings menu and hit Software Update. It will then download and install.

The new update, the first major update to the device, will offer new features such as "the ability to purchase and download video and music directly from iTunes instead of having to use a Mac or PC first."

The Apple TV now supports HD movie rentals through iTunes. The new service allows users to download movies for $2.99 for SD or $4.99 USD for HD. The videos can be played once and then expire after 24 hours.

Another new feature is access to photostreams on Flickr as well as on .Mac Web Galleries.

The upgrade is free to existing Apple TV users and is also included on all new units which now retail for $229 USD for the 40GB model or $329 USD for a 160GB version.

The ESA(Entertainment Software Association) had filed a new Special 301 Report with the US Trade Representative which shows the growing struggles for growth in the international video game industry thanks to ever increasing piracy.

The report specifically mentions a few countries where piracy is highest, notably Canada, China, Malaysia, Russia and eastern Europe.

Michael Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, explained, "Countries that support computer and video game piracy discourage publishers from establishing viable and legitimate markets. The Special 301 process sends a strong message to them to clean up their act to avoid damaging trade sanctions."

The ESA even went on to say that in some of the areas listed, piracy exceeded 80 to 90 percent. These included areas in southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central and South America. The ESA defines "piracy" as any "factory production of optical discs (such as CDs and DVDs); CD-R and DVD-R 'burning'; cartridge counterfeiting; Internet downloading and file trading; as well as Internet cafe piracy."

Although Tele2, Denmark's largest ISP, was recently forced to block all access to the notorious torrent site The Pirate Bay, it seems once again the admin team over at TPB are having the last laugh.

The access block, from a technical standpoint, is very elementary and the admins even created a site to help Danish file sharers break the block and access the site. A new blog post seems to prove that their method is working and that all the IFPI has done has given more publicity to the already hugely popular site.

"...the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI," reads the post. "Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter - our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk." Read more...

According to court papers filed late last week, the electronics manufacturing giant Samsung has had a class action lawsuit filed against it by early adopters of the BDP-1200 Blu-ray player which has had compatibility issues with a few Blu-ray discs.

The man behind the suit, a Connecticut man by the name of Bob McGovern, said he filed the suit "on behalf of thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands" of BDP-1200 buyers who only later found out that the player was "incompatible with numerous Blu-ray disc titles."

Although the suit does not mention which titles the player is incompatible with or what makes them incompatible, McGovern alleges that "Samsung was fully aware" of the problem at the time of manufacturing yet it has still not updated or repaired the player.

The Fantastic Four sequel, one of the problem discs was previously reported but Samsung said that the problems were fixed by a firmware update. This is clearly not the case for McGovern and many other early adopters.

The star hip-hop producer Timbaland has announced that he has made a deal with Verizon Wireless to produce the first ever "mobile album" which will be exclusively available on V Cast.

For the deal, Timbaland will produce one song per month for every month during 2008, each time working with a different artist and touring the country on the Verizon Mobile Recording Studio Bus.

The hitmaker says the deal will help him reach out to more fans because "every place don't get a CD (but) everybody has a mobile phone."

He also added, "Just producing a mobile album has never been done. I'm the first to ever do it."

Despite recent events in which artists have left labels in efforts to reach new fans, Timbaland says he will be sticking by Interscope. In fact, Interscope artists will be the only musicians he will be working with for his mobile album.

From Verizon's point of view, the deal is a "marriage of promotional opportunity and a large distribution platform," director of digital music Ed Ruth says. "Our goal is to show the music industry that we're truly a viable distribution platform for them."

After a multi-billion dollar failed experiment, Time Warner has made moves to rid itself of the still profitable, but quickly dying AOL dial-up internet division.

The company plans to keep AOL's Web-portal and advertising sectors and only sell its dial up internet access division which has been losing subscribers at an exponential rate. Time Warner's new CEO Jeff Bewkes had this to say at a recent conference call. “This should significantly increase AOL’s strategic options,” he said. It is notable to mention that at its peak in 2002 AOL had 30 million paying subscribers. It now has 10 million.

AOL has now been ramping up its advertising business but it still lagging behind the industry. For the Q4 2007, ad revenue for the company grew 18 percent while the industry averaged propelled ahead by 25 percent.

The separation of AOL from Time Warner's growing content business should allow the company to focus on stronger, more profitable businesses. A rival executive noted that Time Warner has wasted billions of dollars trying to find the Right business model for AOL. “Follow the money. Platforms, not content businesses, are where the money has been made on the internet,” he added.

According to the Nokia N-Gage website, users of the N81 mobile phone are now able to download the oft-delayed N-Gage mobile games platform as an open beta test.

The platform will allow mobile gamers to link up for multiplayer games and social elements in the same way Xbox Live does for Xbox 360 users.

The company says they are in the final stage before "full-scale deployment" and that the stage means increasing the user base.

For the beta, only the N81 and N 81 8GB are supported, as long as they are connected via service plans that support GPRS or have an accessible Wi-Fi connection. The company did note that the Chinese model of the phone is incompatible.

The games available now during the beta test are: Creatures of the Deep, Space Impact: Kappa Base, Block Breaker Deluxe and System Rush Evolution. 13 more titles will be released after full launch including FIFA 08, Brothers in Arms and The Sims: Pets.

Toshiba has announced that it has updated two models in its Gigabeat media player line, one in the T series and the other in the V series.

The new T802 is an upgrade to the T401 and will add 802.11b/g wireless as well as doubling the capacity of memory from 4GB to 8GB. Users will be able to browse the YouTube-like GyaO service as well as download movies and podcasts. The player will be available first in Japan on February 15th for the equivalent of $279 USD.

The new V81, an update to the V41, will also see a doubling in capacity from 4 GB to 8 GB. Another new feature is the ability to play copy-protected videos. The player will launch on the same day as the T802 but with a heftier price tag of about $326 USD.

Yesterday, the subscription-based online music retailer Napster announced that thanks to a 15 percent jump in revenue from subscriptions the company has posted a much smaller Q3 loss for 2007 than the comparable quarter a year before.

For the three month period that ended December 31st, Napster posted a net loss of $2.8 million USD, a huge drop compared to the $9.5 million USD loss they posted the year before for the same period.

The company, which survives primarily on its monthly music subscription service, announced last month that it will begin selling DRM-free tracks in MP3 format, putting another nail in DRM's coffin.

Napster also said revenue for the quarter was $32.8 million USD, up 15 percent from the comparable quarter a year ago. The company also stated that they finished the quarter with 743,000 subscribers, a minuscule decline from the previous quarter.

In an effort to fight back against the recent Danish ISP Block of its site, The Pirate Bay has launched jesperbay.org as a countermeasure.

The new site, named after the boss of the Danish IFPI, gives Danish users detailed instructions on how to get around the block and gain access again to The Pirate Bay.

One of the admins of TPB, Brokep, had this to say about the new domain name. “We’ll associate his name with something positive instead of his negative IFPI vibe.”

The admin team over at TPB has also asked other torrent site admins to help by redirecting all customers from the blocked ISP Tele2 to the Jesper Bay. The team even wrote a piece of code that can redirect all Tele2 users to the Jesper Bay so they can change their DNS.

The ruling which has caused the block was released last night and ruled that Tele2 "assists in copyright infringement" simply because they give their customers access to TPB. The ruling should result in more ISP blocks, and the IFPI has already announced that they will start similar cases in Norway and Finland.

The large retailer Best Buy has announced that it has stocked up on Digital TV converter boxes that are compatible with the US government's rebate program for the boxes.

Last month, the Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) began offering a $40 USD rebate off the purchase price of $59.99 USD for the box. It is important to note that the box will only be required for TV owners that do not have cable or satellite service. To qualify for the rebate, any consumer must simply apply for it via NTIA's web site.

In October, the retailer pulled analog TVs and analog tuner products from its shelves, being the first company to do so. The retailer also said it will be launching a dedicated toll-free number for Best Buy customers to call if they have any inquiries about the transition.

"The DTV transition is an event that is unprecedented in this country, and it will require a coordinated effort by broadcasters, manufacturers, retailers and the government," electronics chief Mike Vitell said "We take our role as a trusted source of information very seriously."

According to Motorola, the upcoming 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard should allow HD video to finally be available on cellular networks. Motorola promises to prove its theory next week at the Mobile World Congress.

The company also stated that they will demo the standard and show examples of HD video moving in both directions including something they call "HD blogging". Motorola will use LTE to stream live HD video to a set top box so that viewers can follow mobile phone footage in real-time. From the opposite direction, the standard will be shown Streaming an HDTV feed from home straight to the handset, cutting out the need for re-encoding.

Motorola also added that the very low lag times of LTE will make real-time actions finally possible. To demo their statement, the company will show off a racing game played online against other players. They will also show VoIP calls made using LTE.

Microsoft has announced that it has cut the price of its Xbox 360 HD DVD addon by $50 USD. The price cut follows recent decisions by Toshiba to drop prices on their HD DVD players.

The new price cut brings the price of the add-on in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to $129.99 USD. A few months ago Microsoft dropped the price of its add-on and promptly saw a surge in sales.

Earlier today, the huge e-tailer Amazon began selling the add-on for $79.99 USD and sold out within hours.

It is also important to note that every purchase of the add-on includes a free copy of "King Kong" on HD DVD in the box as well as an offer to get five free discs in the mail.

LG Mobile has announced that its very popular Viewty mobile phone has now become the first handset to become certified for recording video using DivX compression.

Although the list of DivX-certified devices continues to grow, the list of mobile phones is very short. There are only two phones that even support DivX playback, the Samsung SGH-F500 and SGH-F508.

The Viewty camera phone captures video at an abnormally large 120 FPS and a relatively large 640 x 480 Resolution. Besides adding better quality Compression the Viewty will no longer need to use conversion software that 3GP video needs.

According to DisplaySearch, Sony has jumped ahead in holiday quarter LCD TV sales while Vizio has dropped.

This quarter marks the first time Sony has been on top of LCD sales and DisplaySearch said the lead was built upon "top showings" in the 40-44", 45-49" and 50-54" categories.

Vizio, which has been on top for a few quarters now, fell to third place yet still posted 250 percent growth year over year and kept its share lead in the 37" HDTV market, selling almost twice as many TVs as the next closest competitor.

The market itself remained very close, with Sony leading at 12.8 percent of the market. Samsung was second at 12.3 percent, Vizio followed at 10.7 percent and Sharp rounded out the top four at 8.4 percent.

Sharp fell furthest for the quarter seeing almost flat quarter growth. Sony grew over 80 percent and Samsung grew over 50.

Microsoft has announced that it has made deals with Sony BMG and MTV to add their content to its free MSN video service.

Currently the service has offerings from National Geographic and ITN but will now add shows such as "Pimp My Ride" and music videos.

The deal with Sony BMG will put exclusive videos, backstage footage, interviews, and tour info on MSN Video.

"The music industry is facing tough challenges and it is all now about becoming a music entertainment company rather than just a record company", said Ulrich Jarkel, senior vice president, Digital and Business Development Sony BMG.

"The whole game has changed. We now have over 150 ways to access Justin Timberlake content for example."

MTV has made similar deals in the recent past, giving users access to South Park, Pimp My Ride, Punk'd, Cribs and Soapbox.

"This is one of our most important partnerships", said Gideon Bierer, senior vice president, Digital Media, MT, "we will be adding other MTV network brands in the future from channels such as Nickelodeon and Comedy Central".

Apple has announced that it has updated its iPhone and iPod Touch lineup by adding new models with double the memory capacity.

The new iPhone will feature 16GB of memory and will retail for $499 USD. The current 8GB version costs $399 USD and has been available since Q4 2007.

The new iPod Touch will have 32GB of memory and will retail for $499 USD. The current 8GB and 16GB models cost $299 and $399 USD respectively.

Apple said the new devices will be available in Apple's retail stores and online through various e-tailers. The new capacity iPhone will also be available through AT&T's online and retail stores. The new models will come with the latest firmware pre-installed meaning users will be able to rent movies from the iTunes movie rental service.

Despite being found not guilty in a previous case, China's most used Internet search site Baidu is in legal trouble again.

Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group have all sued the site again over illegal music downloads, deeming it a winnable cause after last month's ruling against Yahoo China. The companies are being represented by the IFPI which noted that the record companies had also sued Sohu.com, China's third largest Internet portal.

The IFPI has stated that China's market of legally distributed music files is a minuscule $76 million USD, less than 1 percent of the global market.

"It's a matter of great regret that, despite the clear precedent laid down by the Yahoo China judgment, those Internet companies are instead choosing blatant violation of copyright" and the litigation that accompanies it, said John Kennedy, CEO of the IFPI.

Starting March 1st, AT&T has announced that it will be raising the price of its three most common broadband Internet plans in most of the states in which it operates.

The new price hike, $5 USD a month, will apply to all states except for those that were acquired with the buyout of BellSouth. The hike will apply only to the three slowest broadband plans offered, the 768 Kpbs, 1.5 Mbps and 3 Mbps services. The new move should affect most of AT&T's current 14.2 million broadband customers.

Michael Coe, a company spokesperson, went to to say that "customers who signed up under special package promotional deals also avoid the price hike, at least for the term of their promotional deal."

Coe also said that the company decided on the price raise "to better reflect the value of our broadband service" especially as demand for broadband increases.

Less than a year since its release, Sony has announced that one million Sony PlayStation 3 users have taken part in the Folding@home technology, making the console the leading contributor to the effort.

According to Sony, that means 3000 PS3 users registered for Folding@home each day, equivalent of 2 new registered users every minute.

"Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users," said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. "Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe."

The Folding@home team has stated that a network of 10,000 PS3s can "accomplish the same amount of work as a network of 100,000 PCs." The team also noted that merely six months after PS3 joined the effort, the project surpassed a petflop, a milestone that had never been hit before by a computing network. Late last year, Guinness World Records called the project the world's most powerful distributed computing network.

In an update to our article here, the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has fought back against claims that it makes $4 million USD revenue yearly based on advertisments.

Arstechnica, speaking to Peter Sunde, one of the admins of TPB, has commented on the allegations from Swedish authorities. "They do not want to even talk about charges so it's easier for them to just try to throw dirt at their opponents and to be honest, the things they've found regarding money is not even money that all together has something to do with The Pirate Bay. And some of the money is accounted for twice, because the money has been taxed, then sent to another company because that was the company that took care of the payments, and then sent back for paying bandwidth."

Sunde continued on to say that the IFPI's claim that revenue exceeds $3 million on revenue was overstated. Without revealing financial details, he argued that the "site's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit". TPB, he says, operates at a loss.

Yahoo has announced that it is selling its digital music subscription service to Rhapsody America in an effort to revamp its struggling music strategy.

Yahoo Music will still offer its music videos, internet radio and music downloads but subscribers to the
Yahoo Music Unlimited service will be moved to Rhapsody. There was no financials discussed but Yahoo did say the deal is expected to close by the end of Q2 2008.

Music.yahoo.com is the most popular online music destination with 20 million monthly visitors but the subscription service only has 400,000 customers.

Yahoo senior vice president Scott Moore notes that the company decided to sell because "we made a strategic decision to focus on the mass audience".

Currently, Rhapsody has just under 1 million subscribers and the deal should make them far and away the market leader.

"This takes away a competitor, and gives Rhapsody potentially some marketing muscle," says Jupiter analyst David Card. "This is good for Rhapsody."

Amazon has announced that it has become the largest shareholder in the online DVD rental firm LoveFilm and that it will be rebranding its UK and German based DVD rental businesses under the LoveFilm banner.

After the deal is completed, LoveFilm's subscription base will increase to almost 1 million customers, mainly in the UK and Germany but also from countries such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Greg Greeley, Amazon's vice-president of European retail, said: "Our investment will enable LoveFilm to grow the business further and we are excited to be part of their future".

Amazon Europe has said it will continue to operate its current services in the UK and Germany for a period until it is completely rebranded under the LoveFilm banner.

Following Sony's recent decsion to create a line of Greatest Hits titles for the PlayStation 3 in Japan, the electronics giant has been quoted as saying that will most "likely" do the same for the European market.

In the past, Sony has re-released hit tiles under its Platinum or Greatest Hits line which gives the games a new lease on life at a very discounted price.

"We have introduced a Platinum range of best-selling titles for all of our platforms to date, and it is likely that we will do so in the future for PS3," said a spokesperson for the company.

"However, no decisions have yet been made on timing or line-up."

The first Platinum title that Japan will see is the blockbuster game "Resistance: Fall of Man".

So far, a Sony America spokesperson has said they had not come to decision on when the Greatest Hits line would hit North America.

Microsoft has announced that beginning on March 6th it will begin selling a cheaper Xbox 360 model in Japan.

The new model will have identical specifications to the Xbox 360 Arcade model which was released in the US late last year. It will include an HDMI output, a wireless controller, and a 256MB memory card instead of a HDD.

Microsoft says the new model will retail for JPY 27,800, about $260 USD, which is one-fifth less than the current lowest priced model.

Since its launch in 2005, the company has sold 17.7 million consoles worldwide but has declined to give a regional breakdown. Regardless, analysts have continually shown that the 360 continues to struggle in Japan, selling as little as 300,000 consoles last year in Japan while the rival Sony PlayStation 3 sold 1.2 million consoles and the market leader Nintendo Wii sold 3.6 million units in the area.

Xunlei, one of the largest download service providers in China has today announced that they have lost a piracy suit brought forward by the Shanghai Youdu Broadband Technology Co.(Youdu) and will have to pay 150,000 yuan(20,833 USD) in compensation.

Xunlei had alegedly violated the "rights of network promulgation and reaping profit," off Youdu promulgation rights.

Youdu, which is a content provider for broadband users, paid 600,000 yuan to get the network promulgation rights for a Chinese blockbuster film. The agreement allowed the company to provide the movie for download for one month. Xunlei however did not have rights yet provided download links on its site for free.

In early June Youdu sued Xunlei asking for monetary damages and the case has finally been settled.

Despite a recent clearance on a wide array of HD DVD products Circuit City has said it is not going Blu-ray exclusive.

A representative did say however that the clearance price on the Toshiba HD-A3 and HD-A30 will continue for the time being however. The clearance prices are "inadvertent" to Circuit City's future in the next gen disc format war.

The rep also stated that the company will remain platform agnostic and that stores had experienced strong hardware sales over the past week.

The clearance sales has sparked rumors that the large chain would ditch HD DVD for the more popular Blu-ray format but those rumors have now been squashed.

In another round of price slashing, Amazon is offering over 50% off of over 100 HD DVD titles, including the ever popular 'Shaun of the Dead,' 'Elizabeth' and 'Inside Man'.

The promo was launched today by the e-tailer and the majority of the titles will now cost $14.95, almost as cheap as their Standard Definition counterparts.

The new sale comes on the heels of a price slashing by the now Blu-ray exclusive Warner which is still ongoing.

There was no word on how long this promotion will last but Amazon has called it a "limited time offer".

Benn Jordan, better known as The Flashbulb has announced that he has uploaded digital copies of his new album "Soundtrack To A Vacant Life" to the public trackers What.cd and The Pirate Bay as well as other trackers in an effort to bypass the traditional distribution methods of a new CD.

The digital download, which comes with an NFO file, starts with "hello listener...downloader...pirate...pseudo-criminal...", and continues, "If you can read this, then you've more than likely downloaded this album from a peer to peer network or torrent. You probably expect the rest of this message to tell you that you're hurting musicians and breaking just about every copyright law in the book. Well, it won't tell you that."

Jordan continues on to debate why anyone would even buy CDs anymore now that the world has moved on to a digital age. He believes the only reason is that fans still want to support their favorite artists but aren't given the proper options to do so. Read more...

It seems that Italian parliament has inadvertently legalized some music sharing over P2P networks.

The new copyright law, which was passed by both houses of the parliament allows Italians to share all the music they want over the internet as long as it is "noncommercial" and the music is "degraded" in terms of quality.

The original piece, printed in the Italian newspaper la Republica quotes Italian copyright attorney Andrea Monti as saying that "whoever authored the law failed to take into account that the word 'degraded' has a 'very precise meaning'." Currently, music sold on all major legal alternatives is degraded, usually to 192kbps MP3 or 128kbps AAC. The new law means that Italian music fans will be able to share their music libraries over P2P networks as long as it is not lossless.

Despite the fact that the law limits such sharing to "educational or scientific" use, Monti feels it will make prosecuting P2P users more difficult.

It seems that Warner's decision to go Blu-ray exclusive has swayed another one of its distribution partners to follow in its footsteps with National Geographic Presents confirming today that it will also drop HD DVD and move exclusively to Blu-ray.

National Geographic Presents, which is distributed under the wider Warner umbrella alongside New Line Home Entertainment, HBO Home Video and BBC Home Video has been format neutral so far, but has only released one film in both formats.

The company has said it will not be releasing a press release but has confirmed all reports that it will be dropping HD DVD. The move will go into effect beginning in April with the release of "Sharkwater."

According to T3 magazine, Sony is planning to release a new slimmer, redesigned PlayStation 3 console.

In the report, a source has said that the new updated design will be smaller, lighter and may contain a 160GB HDD. There have been other rumors recently claiming PS3s with larger capacity HDDs are coming but this latest rumor seems a bit far-fetched, considering how young the PS3 is.

Sony, as is policy, refused to comment. "We don't comment on rumour or speculation."

The rumor is not completely off base though. Sony has introduced slim versions of its PSP, original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 after production costs fell.

Although the PlayStation 3 had a slow start, after multiple price cuts and aggressive ad campaigns, sales have picked up and Sony has breathed a sigh of relief. The company has reported a 6 percent increase in its quarterly operating profit citing very strong sales in the video game market. Overall, net income in Q3 increased 25 percent to $1.9 billion USD and sales were up over 9 percent.

Sony Computer Entertainment, also known more affectionately as the PlayStation division, turned a profit for the first time since the PS3 launched thanks mainly to increased sales and reduction in production costs which led to price cuts. For the holiday quarter, Sony was able to sell 4.9 million PS3s worldwide.

Despite the high sales though, Sony also announced it would lowering its full year sales target from 11 million down to 9.5 million, a pretty significant reduction.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the ELSPA has refuted recent quotes about Nintendo DS piracy in North America and instead said the original story contained false quotes.

In The Sunday Post, ELSPA spokesperson John Hillier was quoted as saying "In America, it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s," while discussing the now infamous piracy cartridge that runs off microSD cards.

A new spokesperson has refuted that quote and instead said, "[John] didn't quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever."

"ELSPA would certainly never presume to comment about America or anywhere else outside of the UK," he added.

That article, said the ELSPA, is a poorly done mix of genuine facts, false quotes and a poorly translated article from Singapore.

"The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said."

Amazon has announced it plans to buy out Audible for about $300 million USD, expanding the company's interests in the digital audio market. Those familiar with the acquisition say the purchase will include all of Audible's cash and short-term investments.

For those unfamiliar, Audible offers a huge range of audio books from popular authors alongside a large library of newspapers, television and radio programs, magazines, and original programming. In the US, Germany and the UK, the site hosts about 80,000 programs.

"This deal brings together two pioneering companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience," said Donald Katz, founder and chief executive of Audible.com. "We are very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com."

The deal, which should close by mid-year 2008, will help Amazon in its recent trend of moving into the digital audio market, following the glaring success of Amazon MP3.