Tech giants attack Digital Economy Bill

A number of influential technology industry players have signed an open letter to the Financial Times, opposing government plans to tighten Internet regulation, particularly the moves to cut off illegal file sharers without a fair trial, reports Computing.co.uk.

The signatories warn that the proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill could limit the right to free speech, and harm the UK's reputation as a place to do business.

The letter has been signed by BT chief executive Ian Livingstone, TalkTalk chairman Charles Dunstone and Google UK MD Matt Brittin, among others.

At least a quarter of the command and control servers linked to Zeus-related botnets have suddenly gone quiet, continuing a recent trend of takedowns hitting some of the world's most nefarious cyber operations, says The Register.

The drop is the result of actions taken by two Eastern European network providers. On Tuesday, they pulled the plug on their downstream customers, including an ISP known a Troyak, according to Mary Landesman, a senior researcher with ScanSafe, a Web security firm recently acquired by Cisco Systems.

This in turn severed the connections of servers used to control large numbers of computers infected by a do-it-yourself crime kit known as Zeus.

Sony has unveiled its contender to the market leading Nintendo Wii with its new motion-control video system called PlayStation Move, writes the BBC.

The wand-like device uses motion controllers and the PlayStation eye camera to track body movements.

“We'd like to think of this as the next generation of motion gaming,” said Sony's marketing boss Peter Dille. “We are confident that when we look back in five years' time, this will be seen as a seminal moment for PlayStation.”

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board will this week consider a proposal from ICM Registry for adult sites to use the .xxx top-level domain instead of or in addition to .com, says CNet.

This is not the first time ICANN has dealt with this issue. It rejected similar proposals in 2000, again in 2006 and most recently in 2007.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday night from Nairobi, ICM president Stuart Lawley said he successfully appealed the 2007 decision, paving the way for ICANN to reconsider the proposal on its merits.