Toshiba to abandon HD-DVD?

Japan's Toshiba is considering abandoning its HD-DVD format for high-definition DVDs as it is losing the battle for market dominance to rival Sony's Blu-ray format, an industry source said today, reports CNN Money.

But analysts viewed the news positively and Toshiba shares rose.

The withdrawal would mark the end of a long battle over next-generation DVD formats between Toshiba and the Blu-ray camp led by Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Company. Toshiba is reviewing its HD-DVD business and "a complete withdrawal is one of the options it is considering", the source said.

In Shanghai, factories churn out iPhones that are exported to the US and Europe. Then thousands are smuggled right back into China, says New York Times.

The strange journey of Apple's popular iPhone, to nearly every corner of the world, shows what happens when the world's hottest consumer product defies a company's attempt to slowly introduce it in new markets.

The iPhone has been swept up in a frenzy of global smuggling and word-of-mouth marketing that leads friends to ask friends, "While you're in the US, would you mind picking up an iPhone for me?"

In a new effort to stop movie piracy, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a lawsuit against Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technology, a popular Chinese P2P file sharing network operator, says eFluxMedia.

According to the civil complaint filed in the Shanghai Pudong District Court, MPAA is requesting total damages and legal costs in excess of $975 000. In addition, the MPAA seeks a public acknowledgement of the infringements and Xunlei's pledge to refrain from future infringements.

The association decided to start the legal battle after sending Xunlei 78 separate notices of infringement over a five-week period.

Cyber-criminals may have weighed risk and reward and figured the first isn't worth the second if they try to exploit the 2008 US presidential campaign, a security researcher at Symantec said today, reports ComputerWorld.

"We've now seen just two instances of spam using political candidates to spread malicious code," said Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response team and a writer on electoral cyber-crime. "I think hackers are still a little skittish. The high visibility of the federal elections makes them cautious about stepping into it."

Last week, researchers at both Symantec and McAfee reported a spam run that tried to trick users into downloading a Trojan horse posing as a video of senator Hillary Rodham Clinton supposedly shot before the Virginia primary.