Mario pirate to pay $1.3m

James Burt has agreed to pay Nintendo $1.3 million for loss of sales revenue after he allegedly illegally copied and uploaded to the Web the New Super Mario Bros for the Wii prior to the game's Australian release last year, reports CNET News.

Australia's Copyright Act outlaws copying and distributing video games without prior approval. Nintendo cited the Copyright Act when it took James Burt to court over the alleged incident. After being granted a search order by Australia's Federal Court, Nintendo was able to access Burt's hard drives, e-mail, and any sites for which he had password.

As part of an out-of-court settlement, 24-year-old Burt agreed to pay the $1.3 million. He will also reimburse the video game company $87 000 for legal costs.

The Audiovisual Antipiracy Federation (Fapav), backed by the Italian Authors and Publishers' Society, is suing Telecom Italia for damages for failing to prevent its customers from illegally downloading copyright material from peer-to-peer Web sites, states SFGate.

Telecom Italia denies responsibility for the online activities of its customers, is being supported in the case by the telecom operators' association Asstel, by the Italian Association of Internet Providers, and by the Privacy Authority.

Telecom Italia argues that acceding to the demands would constitute a breach of Italy's 2003 telecommunications law and violate the neutrality and independence required of telecom carriers.

A federal judge dismissed a three-year-old lawsuit that accused Microsoft of duping customers when it fed them company anti-piracy software as a critical security update, says Computerworld.

US District Court Judge Richard Jones dismissed the case, a day after the plaintiffs and Microsoft agreed to drop the lawsuit. "We are pleased this resolved successfully," says Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs for Microsoft.

Multiple lawsuits filed in July 2006 claims that Microsoft mislead users by labelling the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software as a security update, and failed to tell customers that WGA collected information from their PCs, then frequently phoned home the data to Microsoft's servers. The plaintiffs later combined their cases and asked the court to grant the joint lawsuit as a class-action.