75 MPs back copyright extension motion

Seventy-five MPs have signed a parliamentary motion calling for an extension of the lifetime of copyright on sound recordings. The Early Day Motion, tabled by Labour MP for Linlithgow & Falkirk East Michael Connarty, argues that 'thousands of musicians and their record companies will lose out over the next few years because of the shorter copyright term for sound recordings relative to that granted to almost all other creators'. Currently recorded works are protected for 50 years. ...more

NTL gives customers Freeserve option

NTL and Freeserve have signed a non-binding wholesale deal for Freeserve to offer its 512Kbits/sec broadband service across NTL's cable network. To take up broadband with Freeserve using NTL cable, customers also have to sign up to fixed line telephone with NTL, in order to get onto the network, and can also take up digital services too. This is the first time that a broadband cable operator and UK ISP have worked together in this way and the agreement, being non-binding, means that further ISPs are invited to the party. ...more

TuneTuzer aims to clarify digital music soup

A UK man has set up a website that compares digital music stores, after realising that if he changes his portable music player then his digital music collection would become 'unusable'. Clifford Singer's TuneTuzer lists the stores currently operating in the UK and US, breaking them down by those offering pay-per-download and those that rely on a monthly subscription payment. Alongside each store he provides the file format used, the typical bit rate, standard prices for single tracks and albums and whether DRM is applied. ...more

BT charges users over its mistakes

British Telecom is to bill thousands of Internet users after discovering that it had been inadvertently providing them with truly free Internet access. Some of BT's telephone exchanges had failed to recognise the 0845 numbers used by subscribers to connect, and instead registered them as dialling a free 0800 number. Despite admitting that the whole affair has been due to its own mistakes, the telecom company still "needs to recoup the money", which is estimated to amount to around ?5 million. ...more

Olympus launches world's smallest D-SLR

Olympus today annouced a new edition to its E-System range and what it claims to be the world's smallest and lightest D-SLR camera. The new Olympus E-400 boasts a 10.0 million pixel CCD, 2. ...more