Kazaa the biggest piracy system, courts told

Five major record companies have told courts that developers of the file-swapping technology Kazaa have produced the biggest music piracy system ever seen, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The companies are suing Sharman Networks for alleged copyright infringements, while Sharman claims it has actively encouraged Kazaa users not to infringe copyright, adding that it cannot control what users do with the software.

At the start of a trial over the legality of Kazaa software, council for the record companies Tony Bannon stated that Kazaa had 100 million users worldwide, sharing three billion music files a month.

"They are trading off the copyright-infringing activities of its users. Far from inhibiting infringements, they are actually encouraging them."

Veritas Software has announced the availability of its Veritas i3 version 7.0 application management software.

According to the company, the software enables IT administrators to simultaneously compare performance and availability characteristics of complex applications over clusters and multiple-instances to achieve service level agreement compliance.

Version 7.0 also provides the tools to simplify the management of complex applications, as well as resolve availability and performance issues before they affect users. The company has included a "SmartLink correlation engine" in the latest version, which uses physical tags to automate the tracing of real transactions across application tiers and tracking of service levels, real users and locations for each transaction.

SanDisk has announced the local availability of a durable chip designed to function in extreme environments.

According to the company, the Exreme III flash memory cards can provide the necessary speed to handle high pixel cameras, and are targeted at professional digital photographers.

The products are built with Enhanced Super-Parallel Processing technology, which removes bottlenecks in data transfer, offering a data transfer rate of 20Mbps in CF/SD format, and 18Mbps in Memory Stick Pro format.

The company has also launched its Photo Album solution, which allows users to store, organise and view digital photos on a television set. Both offerings are available through local distributor Tudor.

The massive array of ringtone options available to phone owners is set to increase yet again, AP reports.

Verizon Wireless subscribers can now choose to play back music to the person calling them. The ringback service will cost $1 (R6) a month, with an additional annual fee of $2 (R12) for each tone selected.

Subscribers can assign specific tunes for different callers to hear, choosing among 2 200 songs from 13 music genres provided by Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

While it may seem like a strange service to pay for, it could yet prove to be a lucrative market, with a similar service in Korea generating monthly revenue of R47 million.