Creative weighs options for MP3 player interfaces

Creative is considering its options after being awarded a patent for MP3 player interfaces which it claims covers the iPod and iPod mini. 'Apple tried to claim invention, but this patent dispels that,' said Craig McHugh, Creative's president. 'We are going to look at all the alternatives that the patent provides. ...more

Mobile messaging rivals sort out patent spat

BlackBerry maker, RIM, and Good Technology, maker of the mobile messaging software GoodLink, have resolved their numerous legal disputes. The two companies have signed a licensing agreement under which RIM will receive a lump sum payment for the first fiscal quarter of 2005 and then ongoing quarterly royalties. Full details of the settlement have not been revealed, but it should mark the end of a series of lawsuits between the companies. ...more

File-sharing fills the nation's MP3 players

Almost one-fifth of the music on portable players in the UK was obtained from file sharing networks, according to research published by British Music Rights (BMR), an umbrella organisation representing a number of composers', songwriters' and music publishers' bodies. P2P downloads made up 18 per cent of the digital tunes, with a further 11 per cent copied from friends' CDs'; 65 per cent were ripped from purchased CDs with the remaining six per cent from paid-for download. BMR has published the figures to garner support for a music industry call for a change in copyright law. ...more

UPDATED: SiteAdvisor software warns of untrustworthy sites

Five per cent of all Internet traffic goes to disreputable websites according to a survey by SiteAdvisor. For the past 11 months the company has been tracking Net usage with specially-developed Web crawling software and found that one in every 20 sites visited uploaded unwanted software to the visitor's PC, sent out spam or attempted to trick users into giving up sensitive information. They say that they visited 95 per cent of all websites during the survey, downloaded and tested 475,000 pieces of software and automatically filled in forms, each with one of 1. ...more

European e-commerce complaints leap by 75 per cent

Complaints about products bought abroad via the Internet leapt by 75 per cent across Europe last year. Almost half of the complaints related to non-delivery of goods, with 38 per cent concerning goods that do not arrive at all. The second largest number of complaints related either to goods being defective or not what was expected when they were ordered. ...more