EU gets tough on e-commerce malpractice

The European Union (EU) is likely to introduce tighter regulation over the coming months to prevent misleading advertising and other unfair practices by e-commerce providers selling consumer electronics, reports Computing.co.uk.

Following a raft of complaints to European Consumer Centres, the EU requested that national authorities in 26 member states investigate a total of 369 Web sites in May this year.

The sites all sold the six most popular electronic devices available in the region: digital cameras, mobile phones, personal music and DVD players, computer equipment and games consoles.

Six men have been accused of running the world's most prolific music piracy ring, an online crew federal prosecutors allege delivered more than 25 000 copyrighted albums, often before they were officially released, says The Register.

As members of Rabid Neurosis, or RNS as the group was called, they tapped insiders at music retailers, radio stations and CD manufacturing plants, who were able to get their hands on music titles before their commercial release in the US. In other cases, they turned to affiliates elsewhere in the world, who were able to supply music that was not yet available in America.

"These reproductions were done for the benefit of the members of RNS and other affiliated piracy groups, in that, by getting a reputation for providing pirated materials that were previously unavailable on the piracy scene, RNS members were granted access to massive libraries of pirated music, video games, software and movies," prosecutors alleged in court documents filed on Wednesday.

Xhead = MOD withdraws £114m comms system

A £114 million communications system has been withdrawn by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) from front-line service after failings, reports the BBC.

Cormorant provides a digital communications backbone, but only parts were deployed to Afghanistan and they have now been superseded.

Replacing it is Radwin, a £300 000 system from Israel designed to work in "severe conditions".

In the ongoing battle to capture mobile service customers, Sprint has thrown down the gauntlet with a potentially game-changing feature: unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling, regardless of mobile carrier, says PC World.

The concept of unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling is not new. There is unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling, and unlimited night and weekend calling in addition to the minutes in an AT&T Family Talk plan.

However, mobile-to-mobile only includes calling other AT&T mobile numbers. Sprint is opening the floodgate and allowing customers to make unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls domestically even if the recipient is using AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile, or any other domestic carrier.