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Big Irish crackdown on net piracy

The move could have implications across Europe

The Irish Republic has begun a piracy crackdown which could see customers cut off from the net for a year.

The country's biggest net firm Eircom has begun sending letters to those identified as illegal file-sharers.

It is the first nation to implement such a system. France is also planning to introduce a similar policy.

UK watchdog Ofcom is due to publish its code of conduct for how UK ISPs should deal with net pirates later this week.

Duke Nukem developer goes bust

Work started on the title back in 1997

Veteran games developer 3D Realms has closed down because of a lack of funds.

Founded in 1987, the firm popularised the concept of shareware gaming and produced the seminal Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein 3D first-person shooters.

The company was working on a follow-up title, Duke Nukem Forever, which after being in development for 12 years has become the object of industry derision.

Publisher Take-Two says it will no longer fund development of the game but retains rights to the title.

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Court jails Pirate Bay founders

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

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Pirate Bay confident of trial win

The Pirate Bay founders will receive a verdict on Friday

One of the founders of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has said he anticipates victory in the court battle over alleged copyright theft.

Peter Sunde said: "We are quite confident we are going to win."

Mr Sunde said the site would continue operating even if he and his three co-defendants were found guilty on Friday.

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users.

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Spam 'produces 17m tons of CO2'

Percentage of green house gas emissions per spam message

A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes.

The "Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam Report" estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year.

This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found.

Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy.

The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam.

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Amazon blocks Phorm adverts scan

The ad-serving system profiles the sites people visit online

Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads.

Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.

It has proved controversial because it scans almost all sites a user visits and there is an ongoing political debate about how a user gives consent.

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Streaming games service launched

The service will be available later in the year and charge a monthly fee

After seven years in stealth mode, a Silicon Valley start-up has launched a "revolutionary" video game service that offers new competition to consoles.

OnLive, which launched at the Game Developer Conference, promises to deliver on demand video games via the cloud to the PC, Mac or TV.

The company said it can provide high quality gaming on low end machines.

"We think this moment, this day will be remembered as the beginning of a new era," said OnLive boss Steve Perlman.

"This is huge. This is transparent cloud computing. This is really really important for the industry.

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New guidelines on behavioural ads

UK ISPs stand to make a lot of money from targeted advertising

The online advertising industry has launched a set of guidelines for a genre of adverts that have been causing controversy.

The code of practice drawn up by the Internet Advertising Bureau looks specifically at behavioural advertising.

This form of advertising delivers ads based on people's browsing activity and is therefore far more targeted.

UK ISP BT is planning to roll out such advertising developed by US firm Phorm.

The guidelines which have been signed by key players including Phorm, AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo agree on three core commitments:

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Pirate Bay joy at charge change

Two of the defendants argued their innocence on Sunday in a webcast

Half of the charges levelled at the founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site have been dropped.

Swedish prosecutors dropped charges relating to "assisting copyright infringement" leaving the lesser charges of "assisting making available copyright material" on trial day two.

Pirate Bay co-founder Frederik Neik said it showed prosecutors had misunderstood the technology.

The music industry played down the changes as "simplifying the charges".

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UK will not legislate on piracy

David Lammy does not want to be heavy-handed with teenagers

The UK's Intellectual Property minister David Lammy has said the government will not force internet service providers to pursue file sharers.

There had been mounting speculation about government legislation on the issue as the music industry steps up its fight against the pirates.

Other countries, such as France, have supported tough action on file-sharers, who the industry claims cost them dear.

But Mr Lammy said legislation would be too complex.

"We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms," he told The Times newspaper.

Talk of the government forcing internet service providers to evict file-sharers from their networks grew last year as the British Phonographic Industry adopted a tougher stance.

The BPI, which represents the UK music industry, favours a "three strikes" policy, where file-sharers offenders are initially sent warning letters. Persistent offenders could be thrown off the network.

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