Online shopping threat exaggerated - report

Online shopping is not quite as fraught with risk as some would have us believe, according to online retailers in the UK. A recent APACS (Association for Payment Clearing Services) report showed card-not-present (CNP) fraud, which includes online shopping, added up to more than ?90m - an increase of 29 per cent - during the first six months of 2005. However, Internet fraud itself only rose five per cent, although it remained the largest part of CNP fraud. ...more

New technology claims to make DVDs 'uncopyable'

Copyright protection specialists Macrovision have come up with a system which, they say, will eliminate the vast majority of casual DVD piracy on PCs. The company says that the system, known as RipGuard DVD does not require any additional hardware or software on a PC, but any attempt to rip a DVD will simply cause the ripper to crash. Macrovision, understandably, isn't keen to discuss how RipGuard DVD works beyond saying that it uses the Universal Disk Format for DVDs to prevent the file being ripped to the PCs hard disk before it can be copied to a blank disk. ...more

Disney asks YouTube to crack down on copyright misuse

A senior Walt Disney executive said she sees limits to how long her company will tolerate copyright infringement of its programming by users of Google's online video sharing site YouTube. Anne Sweeney, the head of Disney's entertainment and news television properties, said YouTube needed to do more than enforce its take-down policy in response to complaints about video piracy from media owners such as Disney. 'We've had the phone calls, which are when we see clips of our content going up,' Sweeney told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. ...more

UK games chart: FIFA 07 holds off Pro Evolution Soccer 6

EA's FIFA 07 football game (DS, GBA, GC, Mob, PC, PS2, PSP, Xb, Xb360) was the Christmas number one and has now held the top spot going into 2007, according to the ELSPA UK games chart. Its footballing rival, Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (PC, PS2, Xb360, DS, PSP), climbs one place to number two. EA's street racing game Need For Speed: Carbon (DS, GBA, GC, PS2, PSP, Wii, Xb360, Xb, PC, PS3) completes the top three. ...more

Movie studios line up for Apple's iTunes

Two Hollywood movie studios have intimated that they plan to join Disney and sign up to sell feature film downloads through Apple's iTunes Store, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. In a note to investors, Munster did not name the studios, saying only that he had met with executives from four of the six major studios and that two had said they expect to sign up within six months. Munster said that he believes that three concerns are behind the studios' reluctance to sign up immediately: the potential for retaliation from DVD retailers; unspecified DRM issues; and Apple's insistence on a rigid price structure. ...more