Colombia criminalises DRM cracking

Colombia is the latest country to criminalise copyright violations and introduce stiff new penalties. President Alvaro Uribe has signed laws that increase both the maximum prison term, from five to eight years, and the minimum term from two to four years. The laws also introduce criminal sanctions for the violation of technological protection measures. ...more

Freeserve courts Competition Commission

Freeserve appeals Oftel decision on BT Openworld's advantage. Monday will see the first day of a Tribunal hearing at the Competition Commission Appeal Tribunals (CCAT), where Freeserve will appeal against a decision by Oftel not to pursue its complaint of anti-competitive practices. Ultimately, the CCAT has the potential for a landmark case, as it could set a precedent for companies to appeal rulings made by the regulatory body Oftel. ...more

Firefox 2 goes public

The Mozilla Corporation has announced the release of Firefox 2, introducing anti-phishing protection, improved built-in search tools, changes to tabbed browsing, the ability to restore an interrupted session, better support for Web feeds, a spelling check and support for dynamic bookmark titles. The updated default theme refines the look of the buttons and other visual elements, attaching the Go button to the Location Bar and adding an equivalent button to the Search Bar. Several other buttons, such as the feed icon in the Location Bar and the search engine icon in the Search Bar, have been redrawn to make it more obvious that they are interactive. ...more

Sun bolsters x86 server line with AMD Opterons

Sun has expanded its Solaris x86 range with more AMD Opteron-based servers and workstations. New announcements include the Sun Fire V40z Server, Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation W2100z, which are now officially available. 'With Sun offering unparalleled leadership on operating systems, high-performance hardware and the Sun Java System software, including the Java Enterprise System and the Java Desktop System, I'm confident our newest systems based on the AMD Opteron processor will leave our competitors in the dark,' boasted John Fowler, executive VP of Sun's Network Systems Group. ...more

Printers strike over waste ink

PC Pro readers are up in arms after it emerged that leading printers stop working in as little as two years. Ray Marco contacted us after his two-year-old Canon Pixma iP1500 refused to print, after producing an error message which said: 'The waste ink absorber is full. Contact the service centre for the replacement of the waste ink absorber. ...more