Music sales strong despite downloaders

The downloading of music over the Internet has not had the expected impact on UK music sales, according to new figures released by the BPI. Music industry bodies, such as the BPI and the IFPI, have spent much of the past year predicting doom and gloom for the music industry, and laying the blame squarely at the feet of computer users. However, sales figures for 2002 show that album sales have remained strong. ...more

P2P company to offer legal file sharing of Sony material

The p2p landscape is beginning to shift following the music industry's victory over Grokster on Tuesday. Mashboxx, one of the biggest P2P networks has signed a deal with Sony BMG Music to license its music. According to Mashboxx, this is the first deal of its kind. ...more

FTC spotlights Google's DoubleClick deal

Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick is now being looked at by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has asked for additional information about the deal, the search giant confirmed today. Following news of Google's intentions to buy the web ad specialist its rivals came out in droves to voice their concerns about how it could affect the market and, ultimately, users. ...more

Pirate software in UK worth over $1bn

Software piracy in the UK declined slightly in 2004 but 27 per cent of software on computers was illegal, according to the Business Software Alliance's Global Piracy Study. The value of pirated software was put at more than ?1bn. The UK remains below the European average of 35 per cent. ...more

Russian computers may be susceptible to a new virus concealed in bitmap images

The virus is a Trojan - named Agent - that infects computers running the Russian edition of Windows 2000 with IE 5 and 5.5 when the victim clicks on a bitmap image attached in an email. Microsoft has yet to issue a patch for the flaw in the handling of bitmap images, according to Kaspersky - a Russian antivirus company - and it has been exploited as a direct result of the leak of part of the Windows source code. ...more