Canadian rights bodies call for 'iPod' levy to be reinstated

The organisation that collects royalties for music recordings in Canada has renewed its campaign for a levy on portable music players such as ipods to 'compensate' rights holders for revenues it claims have been lost to private copying. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) wants staggered levies, ranging from CA$5 on players with up to 1MB of storage to CA$75 on those with more then 30MB, despite losing a 2005 court case which ruled that such levies are illegal. Canada's Copyright Board has long levied a small charge on blank media under the terms of the country's Copyright Act, and in 2003 extended it to digital players. ...more

Reference: Technology support lines for the Christmas period

It's Christmas day, you've unwrapped your shiny new gadget, rushing to get it out of its packaging in one piece, and now... ...more

University of Tokyo sets two new Net speed records

The University of Tokyo has broken two of the Internet2 Land Speed Records and has now set or broken 10 records for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks. The first record was set over a next-generation IPv6 network path over 30,000km long and crossing six international networks (over three-quarters of the circumference of the Earth). The Tokyo team successfully transferred data at a rate of 7. ...more

BT extends its broadband horizons

BT has announced an initiative to extend broadband services across the UK, by partnering with businesses and other organisations to enable ADSL services in what BT sees as 'previously uneconomic areas'. The company has also announced an SDSL pilot scheme in London. BT has so far resisted the enabling of exchanges with ADSL in areas where the company considers that the returns would not justify the investment. ...more

GoogleTalk IM service launches

As widely rumoured this week, Google has launched a beta version of its first 'communications' product GoogleTalk, a combined instant messaging and VoIP service. GoogleTalk is a free service for Windows based machines. It does not currently carry any advertising although this might change in the future. ...more