Music publishers seek stringent punishment for websites disclosing lyrics

US music publishers are calling for the imprisonment of owners of websites that contain song lyrics, guitar tabs and musical scores. The Music Publishers' Association (MPA) says such unlicensed publication is illegal and that closing websites and fining their owners is insufficient punishment. MPA president Lauren Keise said: 'throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective'. ...more

First successful BitTorrent prosecution

A 23-year-old man from Virginia is the first person to be successfully convicted of helping to run a BitTorrent P2P node. Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in jail and five months home detention for his part in managing the BitTorrent node known as Elite Torrents. Stanley was also fined $3,000 and given three years probation. ...more

StreamCast adds eBay to Skype suit

StreamCast, the distributor of the Morpheus p2p client, has added eBay to the list of defendants in an attempt to hit the worldwide distribution and marketing of the Skype Internet telephony software. As we reported the lawsuit alleges that the sale of Skype to eBay was made possible by the misappropriation of the FastTrack peer-to-peer technology that Streamcast claims to own. 'We're taking action because we believe the rights to the Skype and FastTrack technologies were swept out from under our feet, and our 28 million Morpheus users were stolen from us,' said StreamCast CEO Michael Weiss. ...more

Creative launches GeForce FX cards

Creative Labs will launch its range of GeForce FX-based cards this June. nVidia's GeForce FX GPU is at the heart of the new graphics cards, able to perform graphics processes in numbers that boggle the mind. At the top end sits the 3D Blaster 5 FX 5600 Ultra with the power to chew through 88 million vertices/sec, push out a fill rate of 1. ...more

Scottish Police arrest suspect counterfeiter

A two-year anti-piracy operation in Scotland has lead to the arrest of a 35-year-old man and the seizure of an estimated ?250,000 worth of games, music and film discs. Most of the counterfeit software comprised PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube titles, and there was also evidence of consoles being 'chipped'. Trading Standards officers worked with ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) to target five locations in Dumfries and Galloway. ...more