'Government should legalise private CD copying' - report

A think tank has asked the UK government to change a 300-year-old law that would allow private copying of music and films for personal use. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says that such a move would shield those who transfer their CDs onto their iPods and other MP3 players from prosecution. In its report, Public Innovation: Intellectual property in a digital age the IPPR urges the Government to create a legal 'private right to copy' that would allow people to make copies of CDs, or DVDs for their own use. ...more

Analysts praise BT Vision but warn of tough market

Analysts have expressed a cautious welcome for BT's new broadband TV service: BT Vision. Jupiter Research's Ian Fogg warned not to judge the success or otherwise of the new platform in the immediate future. He suggests the BT move to offer content was as much a push as a jump. ...more

At the service of applications

Borland's application server, AppServer 4.5, is now available and features support for the latest Java platform for enterprise-scale applications. As you would expect for an application server - which helps manage the deployment and distribution of an application - there are clustering, load balancing and fail-over capabilities. ...more

Motorola mobiles to play iTunes

Apple and Motorola have announced that from early next year Motorola phone users will be able to transfer music from iTunes to a new mobile version of the software on the phone. Music, including paid-for downloads from the iTunes music Store, will be transferred via USB or Bluetooth and the mobile player will be the standard music application on all Motorola's phones. 'We can't think of a more natural partnership than this one with Apple, the brand synonymous with easy-to-use, legal music downloading, and Motorola, the innovator in mobile technology,' said Ed Zander, Chairman and CEO, Motorola. ...more

New consortium formed to develop the PowerPC chip

IBM and friends have clubbed together to form Power.org - a joint effort to speed the development of the PowerPC chip and create wider acceptance in emerging economies such as China. The consortium includes a range of chip design, hardware, software, storage and network specialists such as AMCC, Bull, Cadence Design Systems, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Culturecom, IBM, Jabil Circuit, Novell, Red Hat, Sony Corporation, Shanghai Belling, Synopsys, Thales, Tundra Semiconductor and Wistron. ...more