Black week for HP

HP's public image suffered several blows across the globe this week, with an intellectual property lawsuit against Asian print companies, strikes at its EDS division in England, and lower than expected first quarter earnings after a large payout to BSkyB, reports Computing.co.uk.

The troubled vendor is taking three Asian companies to court, alleging infringement of its ink cartridge patents and physical theft of print-head components. HP will not comment on the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, workers at HP's EDS unit in the north of England have been on strike to campaign for better job security and pay.

Security researchers fooled nearly 8 000 iPhone and Android users into joining a mobile smartphone botnet under the guise of installing an apparently innocuous weather app, says The Register.

Derek Brown and Daniel Tijerina, of TippingPoint's Digital Vaccine Group, carried out the exercise in the run-up to a presentation at last week's RSA Conference as an illustration of how easily social engineering tricks might be applied to Internet-enabled smartphones.

The duo's WeatherFist app obtained users' GPS coordinates and telephone numbers before providing local weather forecasts.

According to the head of Britain's biggest telecoms firm, plans to suspend the Internet accounts of people who download music illegally are unfair, writes the BBC.

British Telecom's chief executive, Ian Livingston, says illegal file-sharers should be fined rather than have their Internet accounts cut off.

He and other industry figures have written to the Financial Times urging changes to the Digital Economy Bill. The Bill is going through Parliament and was welcomed by the music industry.

Pink Floyd is taking legal action against EMI. The band believes online royalties have not been wisely calculated, and EMI hasn't been entirely fair in thinking it had the right to sell Floyd tracks individually via Apple's iTunes Store and other establishments for downloading, reports CNet.

This latter argument has been deeply felt by AC/DC, which refuses to allow its work to be sold via iTunes.

Pink Floyd's lawyer claimed EMI's reading of its contract with the band is that a prohibition against unbundling applies only to the physical product - not to the virtual paradise occupied by online sales.