News written by Matti Robinson (November, 2008)

Teosto (Finnish Composers' Copyright Society) has officially requested that USB drives and mobile phones with MP3 playback function should join the products -- such as DVDs and DVRs -- with a recording/storage device royalty fee. Teosto has been fighting for the right to add the fees to mobile phones for two years now and now they want both external hard drives and thumb drives included as well. The proposal will now travel to Ministry of Education where the final decision is made.

Teosto has claimed that extensive amounts of copyrighted recordings are copied to both USB drives and mobile phones each year and therefore the composers have a right for a proper compensation. The fees would increase mobile phone prices up to 12,60 euros (approx. $16) for music phones such as the Nokia's new touch-screen XpressMusic 5800 and presumably Apple iPhone.

Last year the same happened to HD DVD and Blu-ray discs that carry nowadays a fee of up to 1,89 euros per disc.

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Google-owned Youtube has introduced a new ad platform to turn the heads of advertisers. In addition to traditional text ads YouTube now allows search term based adverts that are displayed on the top of the search results. Like the ones on Google search the YouTube search term ads are separated from the actual results by their background color.

Costing Google a hefty $1.76 billion YouTube has not yet turned into a money making machine. However, the integration of the new ad platform was not as an easy task as one could've thought.

"In hindsight, it is a natural transition for YouTube to make. We've been working on this for months. The key was, we wanted to make sure we got it right. There are a lot of intricacies involved. YouTube is a video discovery platform. We've been integrating with Google AdWords for some time, and now we're at a place where it can be win and win," said YouTube product manager Matthew Liu to CNET News.

There are no limitations regarding who can buy the ads but due to the formula used to determine ad placements - combining popularity of the video and money paid - companies will most likely buy off the most popular search terms. There will be however a chance to buy yourself the 15 seconds - or minutes in this case - of fame.

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One of the largest BitTorrent sites on the Internet, TorrentValley.com, has been shut down in a raid by Bulgarian authorities. The so-called Cyber Crime Unit got tipped off by the Bulgarian Association of Musical Producers (BAMP).

"Torrentvalley was a major international source of copyright infringing material. This site was a gate towards more than 5 000 torrent-trackers from all over the world. The decisive action by the authorities shows that Bulgaria is no haven for copyright abuse in Internet and makes efforts to protect the rights of those involved in the creative industries," said the BAMP representative Ina Kileva.

The press release by IFPI estimates that TorrentValley aided the distribution of more than one million copyright infringing files.

This is not the first time Bulgarian authorities have acted against BitTorrent sites. In 2006 police arrested the admin of Arenabg.com, who was soon released due to lack of evidence.

Prologue

For some reason the ever increasing crowd of people in search for the ultimate media player have been disappointed by one application after another. The task is not a simple one for the developers as the complete package should feature an easy-to-use and comprehensive user interface, support for nearly every file format and punch to run the finest Full HD resolution. So far we haven't come across a device or program that fully meets these requirements. Xbox 360 let the XBMC fanatics down as did PS3 and its limited file support. PC hardware-based HTPCs usually require more or less advanced setups and UI lessons for the non-tech-savvy family members.

Plex is designed to deliver just about everything we need from a media player. Plex (OSXBMC) is a Mac OS X version of the XBMC media player (XBox Media Center) which was considered to be the best media player before it became obsolete due to a lack of support for Full HD video or digital video outputs. In addition, the hard to find Xbox needs to be modified with a modchip or a software mod to run XBMC. The developers of Plex promise a complete format support and an extensive appearance customization.

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Finnish Board of Film Classification has rated the DVD release of family drama series Little House on the Prairie banned for under 18 year-olds. The popular childrens television series got a red K-18 sticker which stands for: "The programme may be conveyed only to a person who has attained the age of 18."

The marketing manager of Universal Pictures Finland Meri Suomela told Reuters that to save money they did not sumbit the series to the inspection. The film board charges two euros per minute for inspecting. It would have cost Universal over 18 000 euros (over $23 000) for the 202 episode series. If a film or tv-series goes uninspected it is distributed as "Unclassified. Only for persons over 18 years."

Little House on the Prairie, which originally ran from 1974 to 1983, is shown by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE on Sunday mornings.