News written by Matti Robinson (September, 2009)

A Finnish textbook rental service Bookabooka.fi which allows students (and others) to rent, lend, sell or donate books has been partially shut down by the Finnish Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (TTVK). Bookabooka was forced to close its renting option due to a claimed copyright violation.

Bookabooka and TTVK are currently trying to find a solution that would satisfy both parties as well as the copyright holders. To settle it for now, Bookabooka offered to pay all income from rental books directly to a designated party.

The conflict was caused by copyright law which states that the author or other copyright holder has the right to determine whether the product can be lent or rented. There is no precedent on how this type of cases should be resolved, said Bookabooka in their official blog (in Finnish). Bookabooka does not own the books nor does it deal with shipment or money transactions, it only provides the information between the users.

The site is currently running without the renting option, but according to Bookabooka CEO Vesa Kaartinen, they are determined to figure out a way to reinstate the service as soon as possible.

Its seems increasingly improbable that the Global Gaming Factory X would acquire Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay. GGF was today kicked out of the Swedish stock exchange Aktietorget for giving investors false information. The company also broke several other rules within the stock exchange and therefore no transactions are allowed anymore.

According to Aktietoget, GGF gave false information about their financial situation and deals with media corporations. Aktietorget says GGF didn't have the money to buy TPB or deals with copyright holders it claimed to have.

The stock exchange of GGF came to a halt couple weeks ago when Aktietorget said the company "lacks the ability to inform its stockholders in a correct, relevant and credible way."

Head of GGF Hans Pandeya admitted that he gave out some misinformation but didn't do it on purpose. He also promised to pay out TPB by himself if the investors wouldn't join the purchase. However, Pandeya has over 100,000 dollars of unpaid taxes and can't turn GGF stocks into money because the company is no longer listed anywhere.

According to paidContent:UK, Spotify has been closing free European accounts that have accessed its song library from countries outside their advertisement reach. At least users in Ireland and Lithuania have posted Twitter updates stating that their access has been restricted. Neither of the two countries are officially supported by Spotify and the accounts have been created using a proxy loophole.

Previously Spotify has not restricted accounts that have changed their location from the proxied country to their actual unsupported country but it's obvious that the monetisation of the service is becoming increasingly important.

In an interview, Spotify spokesperson explained that they closed accounts simply because they can't provide ads to the countries. "These users got access to the Spotify service but were not being served any adverts, which fund it… The feedback we’ve received from these (users) has been mostly understanding as they realise we can’t simply give our product away for free." However, the company is hoping "to increase reach in Europe and elsewhere in the future."

Apple has reduced the prices of current generation iPods by as much as 30 percent. According to Engadget, Apple's official online store which is currently offline showed the price drop earlier today. The price cuts will almost certainly be announced at today's "rock and roll" event, held in San Francisco.

The price of the 2nd generation iPod touch 32GB was cut by a whopping 30 percent from $399 to $279 but other touch versions got hefty price cuts as well. 16GB touch dropped from $299 to $249 and 8GB touch from $229 to $189.

In addition the prices of 4th generation 8GB and 16GB nanos were slashed to $129 and $149 respectively. This makes the additional 8GB cost only 20 bucks more compared to previous $50 difference. The classic also received a $20 price cut to $229.

The rumors have it that the price cuts are making room for a new generation of iPods -- at least 5th generation nano and 3rd generation touch -- possibly announced later today.

Nokia held the opening keynote today in Nokia World conference. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki revealed the already exposed N97 mini -- the little brother of the current flagship -- as well as two new Xseries phones, X3 and X6.

As some of you might already know N97 mini features a 3,2 inch touchscreen, sliding full QWERTY keyboard, 8GB of internal memory, 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash, A-GPS, FM radio, WiFi, 3G connectivity with HSDPA, Bluetooth with A2DP and 3,5mm headphone jack. The brothers are pretty similar, but there are some differences as well. The N97 is a tad larger with a 3,5 inch screen, has a navigation pad on the left side of the keyboard, features 32GB of flash memory and is obviously more expensive. N97 mini has an estimated retail price of 450 euros (approx. $640) before taxes and subsidies.

X3 and X6 are the first devices for the Nokia's new line of phones, Xseries. Xseries is a follow-up for the popular XpressMusic series which aims to attract music enthusiasts.

The cheaper of the two, X3, is the first Symbian S40 phone to offer Ovi Store. The phone comes with rather basic features not supporting 3G connections, GPS or WiFi. The X3 slider however sports a 3,2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, stereo speakers, microSD slot and a price tag of 115 euros ($163) before taxes and subsidies.