Courts block US record industry bid for P2P names

A US Appeals Court has ruled the US record industry cannot compel ISPs to reveal the names of alleged illegal file sharers. The St Louis court upheld an earlier ruling that the ISPs are merely a 'conduit' for illegally shared files and not directly repsonsible under the terms of the 1988 Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This decision means that the Recording Industry Association of America will have to continue going through courts on a case-by-case basis to identify file sharers, a more time consuming and expensive process. ...more

Study shows .info domain is a Net ghetto

The .info domain is the online equivalent of an unsafe neighbourhood, according to a new study. The latest SiteAdvisor report from anti-virus company McAfee found that registering at a site or downloading a file can be significantly more risky when done at certain domains. ...more

Revenues up but Novell stays in the red

Novell has reported stronger than expected revenues for its fourth quarter financial results. Its $320m in revenues was up from last year's $301m, and beat analyst expectations of just north of $300.39m. ...more

Nude Dutch phone frenzy

Nudity, it seems, is on the rise for people who spend their time sat in front of a computer screen, as a Dutch call centre is advertising for staff that want to work naked. Holland, with its multi-lingual workforce and attractive rates of taxation, is a popular location for international call centres, resulting in a shortage of applicants for new posts, but the naked opportunity has succeeded in attracting a rush of highly-qualified applicants, according to Reuters. There could be quite a few from Yorkshire, if results of a survey by NOP for AOL are to be believed. ...more

Video streaming future for Flash?

A leading industry figure has predicted a surprise victory in the battle for supremacy of the streaming video market. Ed McGarr, vice president for sales and marketing at Sorenson, said in an interview with Streaming Media World that the three existing players, Microsoft's Windows Media, RealNetworks' RealPlayer, and Apple's QuickTime, have been joined by a fourth contender, Macromedia's Flash, which has the potential to end up as the market leader. 'Pretty much the de facto standard video format is going to be Flash, and we're the codec behind Flash' McGarr said. ...more