EU turns its attention to music copyright

Undeterred by the defeat of the EU software patents directive, Europe is stepping back into the murky world of copyright enforcement - this time covering music, films and other digitised content. The European Commission has published a study on the workings of European copyright. It says there is a need to harmonise the various copyright mechanisms throughout Europe so that new services do not need to clear copyright hurdles in every one of the 25 member states. ...more

Christmas comes early for Windows Media Player 7 users

In a bid to swell users of Windows Media Player 7, Microsoft has released some timely 'extras', and they're free. First and worst up is Audio Converter 3.0LE, which transforms your MP3 tracks, quite uselessly in my opinion, to WMA files. ...more

Sony cuts down on Euro PS3 compatibility

When it launches on March 23, the European version of Sony's PlayStation 3 will play fewer PlayStation 2 games than models launched earlier in Japan and America. 'The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the US and Japan models,' confirmed a Sony spokesman. The PS3 was first launched in Japan and North America in November and the model that will be introduced in Europe will be designed differently. ...more

Next-gen graphics demand on hold until Vista launch

Nvidia has lead the way on DirectX 10 graphics technology with last week's launch of the DirectX 10-compliant GeForce 8800 GPU, and it has had a mixed reception - see the PC Pro and Custom PC write ups. According to graphics industry sources in Taiwan, however, demand for such high-end cards may not pick up until Microsoft's Vista is actually released. This is unsurprising given that DirectX 10 will only feature in retail copies of Windows Vista (excluding the Home Basic version). ...more

Microsoft beta tests integrated IM, telephony and video client

The Microsoft integrated communications client codenamed 'Istanbul' has entered private beta testing, said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit. The product is intended to bring together the various strands of office communication such as instant messaging, telephony and video into a single product. In turn, the single integrated system will provide added features and functions to Microsoft Office. ...more