CRIA targets What.CD and SumoTracker
The Canadian ISP MoxioColo has been served with cease and desist orders from CRIA to shut down the popular torrent sites What.cd, SumoTorrent, BTMon and FullDls.
CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, was in the news last year as well for getting Demonoid closed down after it had moved to a Canadian ISP.
This time it seems that the ISP is not going to back down however, and Sean Corbin, CEO of Moxie Communications added “We will not be following the request and will be fighting for the rights of our clients as to date laws in Canada protect them. We have looked into the matter and from what we understand these sites are not breaking any laws in Canada. If we do not comply they might bring legal action against Moxie Communications, as they believe without us these sites could not do what they do so therefore we are as bad as they are.
Back to you CRIA.
Netflix to stream movies through Xbox 360?
Analysts at Wedbush Morgan Securities have reported that there is the likely possibility that Netflix will strike a deal with Microsoft to stream movies through the Xbox 360.
The report came after the investment banking firm looked through comments made by Netflix management. If the report turns out to be true, the popular online rental service would be able to stream movie directly to million’s of consumer’s gaming consoles.
“As we have speculated in the past, we believe that one of Netflix’s partners is Microsoft. We arrive at this conclusion based upon Netflix management repeatedly mentioning ‘Internet enabled video game consoles’,” said a Wedbush Morgan statement.
“While there are three such consoles, only one - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 - has a sufficiently large installed base to make sense from a streaming partnership with Netflix.”
“The competitive advantage of such an alliance is clear: Netflix customers who are Xbox Live members will have the ability to stream online content through their Xbox 360s directly to their televisions. The ability to do so is available without the Xbox 360, but requires a measure of technological sophistication and a high tolerance for failure,” it added.
The “measure of technological sophistication” would most likely involve Roku’s new Netflix set-top box which allows users to stream movies to their TVs using Netflix’s Instant Watch feature.
In January, Netflix gave a survey to subscribers on whether they would like the possibility of having movies streamed to their consoles.
At least 100 WiiWare games are currently in development
Nintendo of America’s senior director of project development, Tom Prata, has revealed that there are at least 100 WiiWare games currently in development.
Citing WiiWare’s early success, Prata also explained that the developing games are the products of “working with developers… to bring the products to consumers in a timely manner”.
“Currently, there are about 100 games in development for WiiWare at various stages of completion,” Prata added.
WiiWare, which was launched in the US last month with six games, in Japan in April with nine games, and Europe on May 20th with eight games has seen early success, especially for the game LostWinds.
3G iPhone will only be £100 in UK?
According to internet and print reports, it appears that the 3G iPhone could hit the UK with a £100 price tag, thanks to carrier O2 subsidizing the cost of the phone.
Apple could be using this new strategy with O2 to help boost sales and help the company hits its 10 million iPhone sales target for the year.
Although still not officially confirmed, Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the 3G model at this years WWDC08 developer event on June 9th.
In the UK however, the Times says “a source close to the deal” has revealed that the model will hit shelves in early July.
Ben Wood, a CCS Insight analyst, added: “They are also looking for more flexibility on how the operators can price the iPhone, although I am not convinced that they will let them have open season on the price, as they have a lucrative iPod market to protect”.
“New Xbox Experience” coming November 19th
Microsoft VP John Schappert has confirmed today at the Tokyo Game Show event that the Xbox 360 “New Xbox Experience (NXE)” dashboard revamp is coming on November 19th to 26 countries and in 19 languages.
The NXE will completely transform the intrerface of your console but the biggest change is the move to cover flow-esque navigation, working the same way Vista’s Aero task switcher does. From there you can cycle through various channels (avatars, demos, new movies, Netflix, etc) and it appears there will be an expansion of channels, from the current 5.
NXE will certainly include Netflix support with the ability to stream over 15,000 movies, concerts and TV shows to your 360. You can also “stream the movie with up to seven other consoles in a ‘party’ you can also haul around the dashboard, in and out of movies or games.”
Blu-ray external drive coming very soon for Xbox 360?
According to an Xbit Labs report, the popular Xbox 360 console will be getting an external Blu-ray disc drive, and “soon.”
The report says that Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corp. has been contracted by Microsoft to begin manufacturing the drive and that it will sell for the cheap price of $100-150 USD, in an effort to stay competitive with the Sony PlayStation 3, which has a built-in Blu-ray drive.
Of course this isn’t the first time that we have heard of Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors but it is the first since June.
Microsoft did not comment on the report and has always maintained that their business model was geared towards digital downloads.
More background revealed about made up piracy figures
Yesterday we told you about a letter from the US Chamber of Commerce to President Bush in an effort to convince him to sign the annual attempt at draconian intellectual property enforcement legislation. The centerpiece of their argument to the President is a pair of oft-cited statistics claiming piracy has cost the US 750,000 jobs, as well as annual financial losses of $250 billion.
Now Ars Technica has published an interesting article that sheds a significant amount of light on the actual source of those figures and the closer you look, the less credible they look. That’s not surprising considering $250 billion is more than the combined US revenue of the music, movie, and software industries. It’s more than a little difficult to believe they’re losing more than they’re making.
A look at the sordid history of these numbers reveals just how useless they really are. To begin with they appear to have been extrapolated from the results of a survey compiled in the 1980s. The survey was conducted on a small sample of US businesses, with the resulting numbers then multiplied into an estimate of worldwide losses not from piracy, but from the IP laws in many countries, which are far less restrictive than in the US.
And even its authors apparently didn’t have much faith in their figures, noting that they “could admittedly be biased and self-serving.” Not exactly a glowing recommendation to take it seriously two decades later.
Although this doesn’t bring us any closer to real figures, it does reveal something that may be more important. If there is any real evidence compiled since this study it’s less compelling. Otherwise we wouldn’t keep hearing the same old story.
Exclusive ‘iTunes Festival’ announced
Apple has announced the acts that are set to perform at its iTunes Festival: London performance this year.
Among the notable artists are James Blunt, McFly, N.E.R.D., The Zutons and Chaka Khan which will perform live sets in front of about 1000 fans in Camden.
Each of the recordings will then be recorded and sold exclusively on Apple’s iTunes platform.
Other performers include Death Cab For Cutie, The Ting Tings, Feeder, CSS, I Was A Cub Scout, Jamie Lidell, and Pendulum, and a few unannounced artists.
British police arrest 6 former OiNK users
The British authorities have confirmed that at least 6 former users of the torrent site OiNK have been arrested, more than the single user that was reported on Friday.
All of those arrested were pre-release uploaders, people who shared full albums days or weeks before the official retail date. The arrest were all made between May 23rd and May 28th and include 5 men and 1 woman, all aged between 19 and 33.
Allegedly, all suspects were arrested on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” and were fingerprinted and forced to leave DNA samples.
The BPI left a statement about the matter, but for now most of the details remain vague. “The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.”
US HDTV owners don’t want Blu-ray
According to an NPD report, only 9 percent of US HDTV owners plan to buy a Blu-ray disc player in the next six months.
The survey by NPD was carried out in the middle of March, after Blu-ray killed off the rival HD DVD format. Although sentiments may have changed in the months since the survey was taken, I would assume the numbers are still pretty accurate, considering reports of Blu-ray sales show declining results.
The survey also showed that about 40 million US homes have at least one HDTV and that 9 percent amounts to a lowly 3.6 million units.
There was however, more interesting numbers to note. NPD added that only 45 percent of HDTV owners had even heard of Blu-ray or HD DVD meaning that 22 million HDTV owners were not even familiar with HD optical formats.
For their similar survey in 2007, NPD found that 65 percent of HDTV owners had not heard of the formats. A 10 percent increase over the course of a year? Clearly Blu-ray is not doing something right.
Most of the people surveyed also noted that they were more than happy with DVD picture quality and HD upscaling and that for now, Blu-ray was simply not worth it. However, of the people surveyed who had already bought into Blu-ray, 80 percent said their next purchases will be BDs rather than DVDs. Picture quality was the main reasoning behind that.
