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FileShareFreak has a very interesting report out today about Cinavia DRM, which is a new audio watermarking technology that takes aim at pirates, and those trying to playback movie downloads via their PlayStation 3s.

The site says the watermarking works by "comparing the source of the audio to the format in which a movie was released (ie theatrical or commercial disc), and if the watermarked audio source detects a difference, the movie will either be mute (but most likely not play at all)."

To date, it has been found in a TS version of "The Wolfman" that has been popular via P2P and torrent sites.

"Movies protected by Cinavia technology carry inaudible codes embedded by the copyright owner in their audio tracks that indicate where and how they are allowed to be used. For example, movies that are being released to theaters can carry a Cinavia code that indicates that they are supposed to be duplicated by professional replicators and played back on professional projection equipment only," reads the official site.

A couple of days ago we reported that iPad manufacturer Foxconn was having an "unspecified production problem," and there might be shortages of the tablet in March.

The report came from an investor note by Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who said Apple was hoping to ship 1 million, but might only have 300,000 available by launch in late March. Misek even said launch could be pushed back until mid-April, until 1 million units were available.

Today, Taiwanese component makers have denied those rumors, saying their supplies are on schedule.

"Our supplies are on schedule and Foxconn should be able to ship 600,000-700,000 iPads in March and one million units in April," reads the Digitimes report.

They also do not expect Apple to delay the launch.

Last year, The Pirate Bay infamously got "purchased" by little known company Global Gaming Factory for $7.8 million, however the deal never went through.

It appears, (via TF), that GGF had an even more ambitious offer in the works, 20 million euro for giant torrent indexer Mininova.

Today, it was revealed, from sources close to GGF and Mininova including CEO Hans Pandeya, that a deal was set in place for "no less than 20 million euros," but fell through when Mininova lost its court appeal in the case brought against it by anti-piracy agency BREIN.

"I’m going to buy Mininova too and eliminate all the competition," Pandeya had told one-time partner Wayne Rosso before the appeal fell through. Clearly however, Pandeya could not have afforded Mininova, as he couldn't afford Pirate Bay.

Posted through the official channels, Apple has a new job listing posted which all but confirms that the company is looking to expand the iPad iBookstore globally.

The listing, reported by macrumors, is for a manager in the "Asia Pacific & Canada iBooks division."

The listing says: "The role includes: working with management, regionally and in Cupertino to determine strategies and priorities for iBooks in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries; identifying content providers to target, establish and develop relationships; working with legal and production teams to finalize relationships and secure content; and coordinate launches with partners, production, and marketing. This role will also be responsible for marketing the books offering on the iBooks store by coordinating with Apple's production teams, the marketing team, and the production and marketing teams of partners.
The successful employee holding the position will be based in either Markham, Ontario (outside of Toronto) or Sydney, Australia."

According to a new NPD report, gamers spend the most time online via the Xbox 360 compared to rival consoles, averaging 7.3 hours per week.

PC gamers came in second at 6.6 hours per week, and the PS3 came third at 5.8 hours per week.

Overall, hours spent weekly on online games has increased 10 percent year-on-year, from 7.3 hours in 2008 to 8 hours in 2009.

Additionally, 20 percent of all games bought by online gamers were digital downloads, up from 19 percent in 2008.

Adds NPD Group industry analyst Anita Frazier: "The installed base of video game systems continues to grow, the platforms available to play games continue to expand and the options for content acquisition have never been greater, especially online. And yet, effective monetization of many forms of online gaming continues to be a topic of much debate and discussion within the industry."

The data was collected from 18,872 online gamers.

The popular Hulu online video service has been dealt something of a blow by Viacom. The service will soon be without The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report after failing to secure the rights to carry the shows after March 9.

Hulu's senior vice president of content and distribution, Andy Forssell, confirmed that the shows will no longer be available on the U.S. service after March 9. Hulu offers programming to viewers for free, while using advertisements to generate revenue. The revenue is shared with content owners like Viacom's Comedy Central.

Hulu is jointly owned by General Electric Co's NBC Universal, News Corp's Fox Entertainment and Walt Disney Co's ABC. It will continue to negotiate with Comedy Central to resolve the dispute.

Other disputes have emerged between content providers and video delivery outlets recently too. ABC on Monday threatened to remove content from services run Cablevision, while Fox and Time Warner Cable Inc resolved a similar dispute.

Argos has "sort of" entered the pre-owned games trade in the United Kingdom. The catalogue-driven retailer is trialing a system where customers get vouchers in return for certain pre-owned video games. Only 27 of the chain's 735 stores are taking part for now, and the company has no plan for expanding the trial yet.

Only selected PS3, Xbox 360, DS and Wii titles are being accepted -- all listed here -- and they have already been assigned a value. Grand Theft Auto IV will get you £11 in vouchers, while Assassin's Creed II will get you £22.

"Argos can confirm it is trialling a trade-in service for video games in a few stores in the North East region commencing in March 2010," an Argos spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz.

The movie industry has been hoping that digital downloads of movies will make up for lost revenue of falling DVD sales. In 2007 and 2008, legal movie downloading surged as more and more high profile players entered the market. However, while 2009 saw growth, it was way below analyst expectations and industry experts warn that the financial downturn doesn't explain it all.

A new report by Screen Digest showed movie downloading revenues in the U.S. of $291 million, way below the predicted $360 million haul. The total for 2008 hit $219 million, almost double what it was the year before. "The market just cooled off," said Arash Amel, a research director with Screen Digest. "This wasn't caused by economic factors . . . the level of interest in digital downloads just isn't there."

Consumer confusion is believed to be a large factor in cooling demand. Different avenues provide movie downloads with completely different limitations. "Digital downloading is characterised by its restrictions - it's all about what viewers can't do, rather than what they can do," added Mr Amel.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has overturned a controversial law that retained communication data between citizens for anti-terrorism purposes. The court called the law a "grave intrusion" of citizen's privacy in its decision. The ruling is a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, which was displeased with it.

The Court said that the law needed to be revised, and that it did not correctly balance privacy rights for German citizens with measures to protect them from harm. Under the law, communication data by e-mail or phone was retained for possible use by law enforcement agencies, but the content of the communication wasn't itself retained.

Nearly 35,000 Germans had appealed to the court to overturn the law that stemmed from a Europe-wide data retention plan formed under the UK's EU Presidency term. Just the previous year, London had been the target of several terrorist attacks.

"The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data," the court said, adding that "such retention represents an especially grave intrusion."

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, the country's top security figure, expressed disappointment at the court's decision. "It would be inappropriate to criticize a ruling by the constitutional court, but I have to say that it does not instill happiness," he told reporters.

Spanish police have arrested men behind a 13 million-strong botnet used to spew spam around the world. All three men arrested were Spanish citizens, and none had any significant hacking skills. Over 13 million computers in 190 countries were believed to have been compromised in this case, with half of the Fortune 1000 companies and 40 major banks in some way affected.

The botnet was rendered inactive in December 2009 following action by the FBI, the Spanish Guardia Civil and security experts around the world. One of the three individuals gave investigators the break the needed when he inadvertently logged into the network without disguising his IP address. He was arrested in early February, and the other two arrests followed later in the month.

"This is very alarming because it proves how sophisticated and effective malware distribution software has become, empowering relatively unskilled cyber criminals to inflict major damage and financial loss," said Panda Security senior research adviser Pedro Bustamante.

Personal and sensitive information was harvested from the network by the three men, one of which had 800,000 pieces of personal data on his computer. The group made money by renting out use of the botnet to cyber-criminals that would use it to send out huge amounts of spam to Internet users.

Nokia Corp. announced on Monday that Skype for the Symbian platform has been released. This makes Skype available for 200 million smartphone users worldwide. Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users worldwide to use Skype on the move, over either a WiFi or mobile data connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G). It is now downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, Nokia's one-stop shop for mobile content.

Skype for Symbian will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. Skype will soon introduce this client to Symbian mobile devices from other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

Using the new Skype app for Symbian enables smartphone users to:

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad
• Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
• Share pictures, videos and other files
• Receive calls to their existing online number
• See when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM
• Easily import names and numbers from the phone's address book

The guys over at Ben Heck forums have put together another portable console mod, this time with the Nintendo Wii.

Created by modder "OMGPedoBear," the Wii laptop took three months to build, and includes a 17-inch LCD monitor

The modder added a bunch of fans, and has a full keyboard as well.

It's not the prettiest mod we've ever seen but hey, it works.

Video:

Today Western Digital announced a line of solid state 2.5 inch SATA hard drives called SiliconEdge Blue. The new drives include 64GB, 128GB & 256GB models.

The drives are intended to "accelerate SSD technology adoption by OEMs, technology enthusiasts, gamers and road warriors," said Michael Hajeck, senior vice president and general manager of WD's solid state storage business unit.

Traditional hard drives are arguably the weakest point in most computers. Reliance on mechanical parts makes them somewhat fragile and also limits performance.

The SiliconEdge Blue drives boast a sustained read speed of 250MB per second, compared to 100MB per second for Western Digital's fastest disk-based 2.5 inch drives in the Scorpio Black line. It's also a significant upgrade from 138MB per second for their best high performance desktop drive, the Caviar Black.

Sustained write speed isn't as good, which is normal for solid state storage. At 140MB per second it edges out the Caviar Black and handily beats the Scorpio Black.

Of course that performance comes at a steep price. The 64GB model has a suggested retail price of $279 USD. The 128GB model is priced at $529 and 256GB will cost you $999.

Microsoft is working on a mobile version of their Surface touchscreen interface. Called Mobile Surface, it uses a projector and camera to create an interface that reacts to movement in 3 dimensions, rather than the 2 like a touchscreen.

On Monday Seattle, Washington's TechFlash posted a video of a Microsoft researcher demonstrating the technology.



Don't expect to see this in any devices in the near future. At this point Microsoft is still figuring out what sorts of applications might be built around this type of 3D interface.

And of course, being designed with mobile phones in mind, it will require a smartphone designed to take advantage of it.

The first phones running the new generation of the Windows Mobile OS, Windows Phone Series 7, won't even go on sale until late this year. Mobile Surface is certainly much further away than that.

Hulu, one of the most popular online video streaming sites in the United States, had some bad news to note today, reporting that Viacom has pulled two of its most popular shows, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

"The Daily Show" is the third most-watched show on the site, and Colbert's show usually ranks in the top 7.

Viacom does say that they will not be completely getting out of the streaming business, however.

Reads the press release:

Comedy Central has made “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” available to consumers through Hulu since June 2008. Although that agreement has concluded, full-length episodes of each show will remain available at TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com, respectively.

Hulu was one of the many digital distribution partners we’ve worked with over the past few years to add new outlets for our valuable and powerful content and to help drive the businesses of our partners. We had a great experience with Hulu, and we hope to work with its team again in the future.

Hulu has around 44 million monthly visitors.