Pirate Bay awaits court verdict

The Pirate Bay organisers could wait weeks to hear a verdict.

The trial of the creators of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has ended.

Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence have delivered their closing arguments in the high-profile copyright trial in Sweden.

The four men - Frederik Neij, Carl Lundstom, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Warg - are accused of promoting copyright infringement via the hugely popular Pirate Bay website.

The judge in the case is not expected to deliver a verdict for several weeks.

In their final statement prosecutors called for a one-year prison sentence to be imposed on the four administrators of the site.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

No copyright material is stored directly on The Pirate Bay servers.

"I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case," prosecutor Haakan Roswall told the court.

Lawyers acting to defend the four men spent their last day in court showing how BitTorrent works and calling for their clients to be acquitted.

They also challenged prosecution estimates of how much the administrators of the site have made from the site.

The four men have been charged with earning at least 1.2m kroner (

Child abuse image trade targeted

The coalition aims to stop those profiting from selling images of abuse

Profits made by peddlers of child sex abuse images are being targeted by a pan-European alliance.

The European Financial Coalition brings together payment firms, law enforcement agencies and child protection groups to disrupt commerce in the images.

By tracking cash made by sites selling abuse images, investigators hope to stop the trade and find abusers.

Backers include Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Funded by the European Commission, the coalition is intended to serve as a "stark warning" to those involved in the sale and distribution of child sex images.

"It is a reality that the rapid growth of the internet has opened up a market for images of child abuse," said EC vice president Jacques Barrot in a statement.

"The European Financial Coalition (EFC) will help identify and protect victims of this horrific crime by following the money trail that takes the police to the offender," he said.

By bringing together technology firms, payment providers and law enforcement agencies the EFC hopes to do a better job of finding out how money paid for images flows across electronic payment systems.

Advisory members to the EFC include the NGO Missing Children Europe, Allen and Overy, and ICMEC - the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

Jim Gamble, head of the UK's CEOP, said hard work by police and anti-child sex abuse groups was slowly pushing organised crime out of the trade in images.

The EFC, he said, would help tackle those who persist in profiting from images of child abuse by running subscription services and newsgroups.

"These are organised by networked paedophiles and driven by a deviant sexual interest in children, rather than by organised crime enterprises for profit," he said.

The cloud aids solo rowing bid

By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The Flying Carrot is said to be the most advanced rowing boat ever made

A Briton aiming to be the first person to row solo around the world is making full use of technology in what has been described as one of the final frontiers of adventure.

The 18,000 mile journey, which set off from Tasmania in January, will take between 18-22 months to complete.

Thanks to the cloud, a whole host of web-based services means the world is able to keep up with Oliver Hicks.

"E-mail is my daily lifeline," Mr Hicks told BBC News.

"It is the highlight of my day where I really look forward to hearing from friends and family and from people following me. It helps break the grinding monotony of the day.

"It's a great source of comfort and support, especially in bad weather when I am making no headway," said Mr Hick from one of his three satellite phones in the middle of a stormy Tasmanian Sea where he said he had been going backwards for several days.

"I made absolutely no progress for three days so getting e-mail is just a huge boost. I got one from a friend in Colombia and for 10 minutes while I read her e-mail, I was transported there," he said.

"Slow and frustrating"

Since Mr Hicks set out on his lonesome adventure last month, he has been using a whole suite of Google Applications to map his journey aboard the affectionately named Flying Carrot, which bears the logo of his main sponsor Virgin.

As well as e-mail, he is also uploading pictures and video to the photo sharing site Picasa and YouTube though not without some challenges.

Mr Hicks says he hopes to row an average of 35 miles a day

"I spent a lot of time making a video update recently only to find it was going to take six hours to send a one minute video via the satellite phone," Mr Hicks revealed.

"Even surfing on the internet is slow and frustrating using the satellite link."

With a GPS tracker on the boat, people can follow Mr Hicks' progress via Google Earth. Friend Connect is being used to make communicating more social and Blogger for regular updates on his journey.

"I enjoy writing the blog, but some days its a chore and sometimes all I want to do is go to sleep," Mr Hicks admitted.

"It's fine when you have something interesting to say like the other day when I saw some killer whales."

Mr Hicks and his team are also using Google Analytics to measure online traffic and Google Moderator to field questions from the many hundreds of people following his adventure on the open seas.

"It seems we have taken on the role of connectivity between him and the rest of the world," said Google product manager Jonathan Rochelle.

"But Olly isn't doing anything that unusual. He is using tools anyone can use. "

"Explore"

The Flying Carrot has been described as the most technologically advanced rowing boat ever built. The structure is made out of Kevlar which is normally used in bullet proof jackets.

The on board equipment is state-of-the-art. Electrical power is stored in marine batteries which are charged from three sources, a wind generator, solar panels and a fuel cell.

Mr Hicks's journey will include some of the most dangerous seas on earth

On board, to help pass the time Mr Hicks has a laptop, a year's worth of music, three iPods, two PDA's, three satellite phones and some good old fashioned books.

Analysts say Mr Hicks' use of the cloud shows the different way it is sold to people.

"The concept of the cloud is being marketed much more aggressively in the enterprise space but to real people it's sold as a way to reach friends or others with similar interests," said Rebecca Wetterman, vice president of research at Nucleus Research.

And while expeditions like that of Mr Hicks puts the spotlight on cloud services and how ordinary people use them, Ms Wetterman said she believes that we will soon see this space shrink back.

"What we found in 2008 was an explosion of quantity not necessarily a lot of quality. Everyone was Facebooking and Twittering and blogging. It all added up to a lot of noise but in the future will see a focus on quality.

"At the moment there are too many touch points for people. There isn't a centralised way for me to touch my cloud and we can see that by the way I am updated on Facebook or on another application.

"Moving forward there will be one social application, not a bunch, and it will have more relevance providing me with content or information I truly want," she said.

"Inspire"

As well as putting technology through its paces, Mr Hicks is also hopes to raise awareness for a charity called Hope & Homes for Children which works in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.

"What is fantastic is to see through all the e-mails and comments are the number of children from schools around the world watching what I am doing and following me," said Mr Hicks.

"I hope I will inspire young children to get out there and explore the world around them rather than sit inside and play computer games."

Mr Hicks is already the youngest person to row the Atlantic Ocean on his own, a feat he performed in 2005.

Green light for faster broadband

BT plans to plug some homes straight into the fibre-optic network

Regulator Ofcom ruled on Tuesday that it will present "no regulatory barriers" to the development of super-fast broadband infrastructure.

The ruling will allow BT to proceed with an investment of

UK video game firms call for help

Tax schemes that helped Slumdog Millionaire could aid game makers

The success of the UK's game developers is under threat, warns a report.

Without urgent help the UK risks slipping from being the third-biggest game making nation in the world to the fifth, it said.

Written by industry body Tiga, the report said UK market conditions put the sector at a "severe competitive disadvantage" to foreign rivals.

To prosper game makers need access to finance, well-trained staff and government-backed tax breaks, it said.

Cutting fees

Compiled by the independent game making body, the research questioned developers about what has held back their success in the past 12 months.

Of those questioned 41% said foreign governments subsidising their native game makers was the biggest brake on growth. 31% said taxes in the UK were the problem.

"The UK games development industry is competing with one hand tied behind its back," said Dr. Richard Wilson, head of Tiga, in a statement.

Canada, the US, France and South Korea were all getting tax breaks from government to help them prosper, he said.

Significantly, said the report, Canada recently overtook the UK in world rankings of top game-making nations and in 2009 South Korea looks poised to knock the UK into fifth place.

In response to a question about what the government could do to help game developers, 85% backed tax breaks, 77% wanted more liberal R&D tax concessions and 51% called for lower tax rates for businesses.

UK made games have proved popular around the world

Dr Wilson said the announcement of a 20% tax break in the 2009 budget for games production would be a "welcome start".

The report called for the creation of a scheme for developers similar to the Film Tax Relief programme that is known to have helped the UK movie industry prosper by making it easier to raise capital to back creative projects.

Without that fund, said the report, movies such as Slumdog Millionaire would not have been made and the UK film industry would be a fraction of the size it is now.

The report estimated that creating a scheme similar to Film Tax Relief programme for the games industry would cost only

YouTube selects online orchestra

Jim Moffat will join more than 90 others in the "YouTube Symphony Orchestra"

Video sharing website YouTube has announced the players in the symphony orchestra it recruited online.

Two UK-based winners will join musicians from 30 countries to participate in a three-day classical music summit in New York City.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra will then perform at Carnegie Hall on 15 April under San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

All of the winners' videos have been posted on YouTube.

The effort began in December 2008, when YouTube solicited entries from musicians to submit their interpretations of a composition by Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun called Internet Symphony No 1, "Eroica".

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel on the site received some 13 million views since then.

A panel of members hailing from a number of world orchestras narrowed down the field of more than 3,000 entries from more than 200 countries.

The shortlist of 200 entrants was published on 14 February, and the YouTube community then voted for its favourites to play in the world's first online orchestra.

Comprising the orchestra are two musicians based in the UK: Owain Williams and Jim Moffat.

"I'm quite chuffed and very excited," said Mr Williams, who is a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music in London.

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Beijing Olympics theme composer Tan Dun hopes revolutionary methods of playing music will emerge when YouTube members perform his work.

Prison threat for Pirate Bay four

The Pirate Bay founders have denied the charges

Prosecutors in the trial against the four men who run the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have called for a one-year prison sentence to be imposed.

Frederik Neij, Carl Lundstom, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Warg are accused of promoting copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

No copyright material is stored directly on The Pirate Bay servers.

"I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case," prosecutor Haakan Roswall told the court.

The four men, who deny the charge, have been charged with earning at least 1.2m kroner (104,000 euros) by facilitating copyright infringement.

The film, music and video games industries are seeking about 117m kronor (10.1m euros) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

Prosecutors will sum up in the case later on Monday, while the defence is scheduled to give its closing arguments on Tuesday. A decision in the case is expected to take a few more weeks.

Putting movies on mobiles

Kevin Spacey feels that mobile films are the future

Mainstream movies get their recognition at awards ceremonies such as the Baftas and Oscars and movies for phones are getting their turn at MoFilm - the first mobile film festival.

The awards highlight the increasing impact that mobile phones are making in the entertainment industry.

The first ever mobile film awards got a touch of Hollywood glamour as it was hosted by multiple Oscar winner Kevin Spacey.

Describing his involvement, he said: "When I started to hear about MoFilm, I started to hear about what they were trying to do with respect to short films and content being able to go on to people's phones.

"And in some cases realising that, in some countries, this might be the first time they ever see a movie," he said. "They won't see it on that big screen, they'll see it on a small one."

New platforms

Many aspiring filmmakers are frustrated by the lack of opportunities to screen their work but mobile phones are increasingly being seen as a new platform for these short works.

"Just the notion that yet there is another place - a further journey for artists, film-makers, documentarians - anyone who wants to express themselves and find a way to have that expression be seen by a wide audience," said Mr Spacey.

"When you think about how many people have mobile phones in the world, it's pretty ridiculous," he added.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More Digital Planet Download the Digital Planet Podcast

The MoFilm competition received 250 entries from more than 100 countries. Entries were restricted to films that were five minutes or less in length - ideal for viewing and sharing on mobile phones.

An independent jury then selected a shortlist of five film-makers from which a winner was chosen by an audience voting using their phones at the Mobile World Congress.

"English as a Second Language" produced by Frank Chnindamo and directed by Jocelyn Stemat, won the MoFilm grand prize.

"This is about giving people in other countries a platform, and an ability to show their work, I'm here to support an idea that's about other people," said Mr Spacey.

"Purists may hate this but guess what guys, this is what our kids are looking at, they are engaged in this, they want this device.

"This is about people who are inspired and kids want this, they are more informed, they get it," he added.

The majority of films made for mobiles are short in length, taking into account the screen size, however this could be overcome as technology advances.

It is an incredible opportunity, particularly for young emerging film makers Kevin Spacey

"I'm not sure that something could be longer than ten minutes and be able to sustain itself on that kind of screen," said Mr Spacey.

"Although, I know that one of the things we are learning here is that there are mobile companies that are creating phones that have the ability to watch stuff at higher quality."

MoFilm is pioneering content for mobile and online services that Mr Spacey feels is a world away from Hollywood.

"I am the only person from the film industry here, I see its potential, I get it," he said.

"It doesn't seem to me that other people are aware of it yet but I can see where it's going to be in five or ten years time.

"It is an incredible opportunity, particularly for young emerging film makers."

Start here

As screen sizes get larger, films for mobiles may get longer

Mr Spacey's involvement with grass roots movie makers does not begin and end with hosting the MoFilm ceremony. Mr Spacey co-founded the Triggerstreet website that allows budding film-makers to showcase their work.

"I started the website about six years ago, and we now have close to 400,000 members around the world," he said.

"We started out with short films and we've done a whole series of short film festivals on the site.

"There are screen plays, plays, there's novels and now comic books which we just started - it's become a platform for independent film makers.

"One of the things we've learned at Triggerstreet, cause when we started, we didn't quite frankly know whether we were going to get wedding videos and porno.

"The quality of work and the simple ability at story telling, the thing that ignites someone and inspires them to tell a story, can really come from anywhere," he added.

Digital Planet is broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday at 1232 GMT and repeated at 1632 GMT, 2032 GMT and on Wednesday at 0032 GMT.

You can listen online or download the podcast.

Net TV plans get Trust scrutiny

Since its launch the BBC iPlayer has proved hugely popular

Plans to take iPlayer-type services to TV sets are being scrutinised by the BBC Trust.

The BBC-backed proposals want to produce set-top boxes that can go online to access on-demand TV services such as the iPlayer and ITVplayer.

The device is aimed at the majority of UK homes that have not signed up for on-demand subscription TV services and do not have a Personal Video Recorder.

Setting up such services rests on getting approval from the BBC Trust.

Public views

In its submission to the Trust laying out its plans for the Project Canvas scheme, the BBC wrote: "the 53% of UK households that do not subscribe to pay television services risk falling behind".

"Freeview is already failing to offer the full range of BBC licence fee funded television and radio services," it added.

This situation would only worsen as the internet became the main way that TV programmes are distributed to viewers.

Project Canvas aims to bring together many broadcasters as well as ISPs and web firms such as YouTube to back a common technology that will make all the content accessible via the TV set-top box.

The initial devices are expected to be set-top boxes, with a net connection, that could cost up to

Making money on a social network

By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Facebook now has more than 175 million registered users

It remains the elephant in the room. Or, more to the point, the "fail whale" in the room.

Just how are social networks, with their millions upon millions of users, going to make money?

The profits should be rolling in: Twitter, which has been catapulted into the public-eye thanks to Stephen Fry and Barack Obama, is currently surviving on multi-million dollar handouts. And Facebook, the global force in social networking, has yet to harness its huge user base to bring in any significant revenue.

Many believe answer may lie in advertising.

Unlike traditional mediums, which were built on the mantra of getting as many eyes on a product as possible, social networking instead allows for targeted ads aimed at ages, interests, hobbies and so on.

Techlightenment, a company specialising in social media advertising, ran the online campaign for the film Tropic Thunder. The firm's head of media, Richard Ireland, says social media allowed them to not only publicise the film, but also advertise directly at certain types of people.

"We could easily display our ad for people who say they are fans of Ben Stiller," he says. "Or Dodgeball, Jack Black etc. It's really about making it relevant."

He says when adverts are targeted to particular people, the number of users that click the advert goes through the roof.

Other industries, says Mr Ireland, can use more subtle approaches to find the right audience.

"Nobody puts on their profile that they love credit cards, but what they do put on their profile is 'I love shopping'. That demonstrates the power of the information networks have at their disposal."

Stephen Fry on the joys - and dangers - of Twitter

He says advertising agencies, and perhaps even the social networks themselves, have yet to adapt to this new form of reaching a specific audience.

But where do you draw the line on what personal information advertisers have access to? The safety and privacy of user data is a controversial issue. Just ask Facebook: Last week it tweaked its terms of service, causing a huge backlash from members. Days later, it bowed to pressure and changed them back again and have now handed over the way it handles personal data over to its users.

It is difficult to imagine how Facebook could implement a change that drives revenues while retaining users. MySpace and Bebo, on the other hand, have adopted a much more aggressive advertising strategy.

Alex Burmaster, communications director at Nielsen Online, says MySpace resembles a more traditional form of advertising, with the homepage often transformed for various promotions much like a classic billboard ad. He also argues that MySpace users are more accustomed, and more accepting, of adverts.

"Their site is a lot about music and entertainment. So if they see music and entertainment advertised on there it's part of the experience. For Facebook, it's a Catch 22: The more targeted the ad technology, the more attractive it is to advertisers, but it's more freaky for the users.

"When Facebook get the technology right, it will make a massive difference. The potential is absolutely enormous."

Relative newcomer Twitter potentially faces a trickier battle. Like Facebook, it attracts an older user base, but it doesn't have as much personal and, crucially, sellable data.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook to help students connect

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone recently blogged that it is looking into building "revenue-generating products". Whether that is ad-funded or subscription based - like the very successful photo-sharing site Flickr - remains to be seen.

Popularity is no guarantee of success, of course. Friends Reunited, pioneers of social networking in the UK, is rumoured to be going up for sale for

A false sense of security

Few members of Facebook have read its terms of service, says Bill

The real danger of social networks is complacency, not cancer, says Bill Thompson

The fuss over Facebook's attempt to modify the contract with its millions of users has died down for the moment, and I haven't noticed any of my friends closing their account or even significantly changing their behaviour in protest despite the widespread coverage.

The problem started in early February when Facebook updated the section on its site which establishes the legal agreement with its users. Like most people who use it I didn't notice the change, and even though Facebook clearly knows who I am and how to contact me I didn't get a message or see a notification in my news feed about it.

This is pretty common practice on the web, where long legal contracts are agreed with a click of a mouse and sites update them at will because they contain a clause saying that you accept the changes if you carry on using the site.

Term paper

Unlike laws passed by Parliament, which have to be properly promulgated to those affected, contracts can evidently be changed without any proper notice.

We are storing up trouble as we surf the web, signing up for services, offering our personal details, clicking through on contracts without reading them and generally acting as if nothing can go wrong Bill Thompson Social sites: Bad for young brains?

The changes clarified what happens to things you upload to the site, such as photographs, videos, messages to other people, shared links, comments and so on, and what made people angry was a paragraph of dense legalese that ended up by noting that "The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service" and went in to list things like "prohibited conduct", "gift credits" and "user disputes".

This made little sense, but could be read as saying that Facebook would keep all your material even after you'd deleted your account, and that it could do whatever it liked with it, and this interpretation rapidly spread across the web.

However, it seems more like an attempt by Facebook's legal team to ensure that the sort of things they need to do with material that belongs to other people is fully clear, completely legal and safe from being challenged in court. It certainly does not claim ownership of any of the material, even if it remains on Facebook's servers.

Facebook seems to have been caught out by the complexities of copyright law rather than to have had any malicious intent, and I'm tempted to believe founder Mark Zuckerberg's plaintive expression of innocence in the blog post where it announced that its new ToS were being withdrawn so that it could be reframed.

He pointed out that "when a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created-one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message", and then claimed "we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place

to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work".

He has a point. It's true that the damage to Facebook if it violated user expectations would be great, but any argument that privately owned services will be careful because of market pressures has been severely undermined by the current financial crisis, much of which was brought about precisely because banks completely disregarded these constraints.

Research suggests few links between net use, loneliness and health

History lesson

Facebook also has form in this area, so people are willing to judge it more harshly than other social network sites. Many of us still remember its attempt to introduce an element of viral marketing to the site by letting collaborating online retailers post details of what people were buying from them in users' news feeds.

Called Beacon, the system was comprehensively criticised as an ill-considered and privacy-breaching attempt to exploit the user base, and quickly withdrawn.

But there is still residual suspicion of Facebook's motives, and like many others I think that Mark Zuckerberg is more interested in the latest cool technology and ways to enhance Facebook's value than assumptions about privacy made by its users.

We don't yet know what alternative terms Facebook will come up with, although it is likely that they will be carefully written to appear reasonable while still protecting the company's interests, because that is what they are there for.

We should never forget that Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all of the other social tools and platforms are commercial ventures, developed and run by businesses that want to make money, even if they currently have no viable commercial model.

They are not public services, they are not provided by the state for all to use on equal terms, and they are under no obligation to work in any particular way.

Facebook still needs to publish its revised terms of service, and they will be carefully scrutinised by some of us. However, it's clear that relatively few users will know or care what is in the contract, and they will probably happily continue using the site whatever was written because it has become so useful for them.

Last week the Daily Mail published a report about the potential negative impact of social network sites with the unforgettable headline "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer".

The story was clearly ridiculous, an exaggerated claim based on unfounded speculation in an article that science writer Ben Goldacre comprehensively demolished on his Bad Science blog, but it was a useful demonstration of how social sites have entered the mainstream consciousness. Even people who don't use Facebook or Twitter know what they are.

But the lack of any real concern over whether or not Facebook owns user content, or what happens when you try to delete an account, shows that the real danger of social network sites is not cancer, whatever the Daily Mail may say, but complacency.

We are storing up trouble as we surf the web, signing up for services, offering our personal details, clicking through on contracts without reading them and generally acting as if nothing can go wrong, and we may find that the long term impact is far more significant than social isolation.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Texting 'improves language skill'

Text messaging may help language development

Text speak, rather than harming literacy, could have a positive effect on the way children interact with language, says a study.

Researchers from Coventry University studied 88 children aged between 10 and 12 to understand the impact of text messaging on their language skills.

They found that the use of so-called "textisms" could be having a positive impact on reading development.

The study is published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

"Children's use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but it may be contributing to reading development ," the authors wrote in the report.

The children involved in the study were given 10 different scenarios and asked to write about them using text messages.

The textisms were split into categories, including shortenings, contractions, acronyms, symbols and non-conventional spellings, and analysed for their use of language alongside more traditional schoolwork.

Misspellings

"The alarm in the media is based on selected anecdotes but actually when we look for examples of text speak in essays we don't seem to find very many," said Dr Beverley Plester, the lead author of the report and senior lecturer at Coventry University.

Texting is likely to be an important part of a child's learning development, she thinks.

"The more exposure you have to the written word the more literate you become and we tend to get better at things that we do for fun," she said.

The study found no evidence of a detrimental effect of text speak on conventional spelling.

"What we think of as misspellings, don't really break the rules of language and children have a sophisticated understanding of the appropriate use of words," she said.

Other reports have produced similar results. Research from the University of Toronto into how teenagers use instant messaging found that instant messaging had a positive effect on their command of language.

'All clear' for web auction tool

Auctiva has more than 500,000 users

A third-party add-on for eBay has been given the all clear after being flagged by Google as potentially malicious.

Servers powering Auctiva's website, which provides tools for sellers on the popular auction service, had become infected with a trojan virus.

"Google has rescanned our site and given it a clean bill of health," said the firm's Robert Green.

Google warns users about websites which may pose a security risk.

The trojan that had infected some of Auctiva's servers, called Adclicker, is classed by security specialist Symantec as a "very low risk".

It is designed to "artificially generate traffic to certain web sites" and is used by malicious hackers to boost clicks to online banner adverts or to inflate web statistics.

Google works in partnership with the StopBadware.org organisation to warn users about potentially malicious websites that are infected with viruses and trojans.

First flagged

More than 186,265 websites have been reported to StopBadware for hosting malicious programs or web scripts, which can damage a computer or, in extreme cases, hijack a machine.

Users first flagged the problem with the Auctiva site last week after anti-virus software began to warn there could be a problem with the service.

Hundreds of thousands of people use Auctiva's tools in their virtual shop windows on eBay.

Some users reported they were also receiving warnings on auction listings inside eBay.

The firm said it had removed servers in China that had become infected with the trojan and that it was "currently safe to navigate the Auctiva website".

Earlier this week Auctiva was taken offline completely in order to fix the problem.

Mr Green, product manager at Auctiva, added: "Ebay Security Teams are helping Auctiva to ensure the strictest level of safety and security on Auctiva.com.

"Ebay is currently conducting a site scan of Auctiva.com to ensure security vulnerabilities have been eliminated."

SNP accuse PM of airbrushing site

The site is designed to reflect initiatives across the UK

Gordon Brown has been branded "petty" by the SNP after policies by the Scottish government to combat recession were removed from a website.

The "real help now" website was launched by the prime minister to list action being taken around Britain.

It initially included Scottish measures such as a council tax freeze and flexible business support but the SNP claim these have been "airbrushed" out.

The Cabinet Office, which runs the site, said it was updated all the time.

A spokesman said: "The real help now website brings together the help available to families and businesses affected by the current economic climate.

"It is constantly being updated with news from across the UK."

'Whitewash'

But the SNP has accused the government of removing help being offered by the Scottish government and replacing it with a link to "an out-of-date Scotland Office statement" less than 24 hours after the site was launched.

SNP Scotland Office spokesperson, Angus MacNeil said the move made Gordon Brown "look more like Winston Smith than Winston Churchill" - a reference to a character from George Orwell's 1984 who rewrote newspaper articles to make them reflect the party line.

Mr MacNeil said: "Apart from making Gordon Brown look incredibly petty, he has replaced the real economic action taken by the Scottish Government with a link to a department which is all but irrelevant in tackling the financial crisis.

"Instead of website whitewashes, if Gordon Brown is serious about tackling the economic crisis, he should rule out Labour's planned cuts to public spending in Scotland which would be so damaging in the teeth of recession."

The "real help now site" is modelled on US President Barack Obama's "recovery" website as part of his economic plan, which he says aims to show the American people where their money is going.

No 10 says it wants to enable people to find details of the support it was giving workers, employers and homeowners "in one place".

Game consoles 'cause skin sores'

Excessive use of consules may cause physical problems

A new skin disorder caused by use of games consoles has been identified by skin specialists.

The condition, dubbed PlayStation palmar hidradenitis, is described in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Researchers outline the case of a 12-year-old girl who attend a Swiss hospital with intensely painful sores on the palms of her hands.

The girl, who had been using a games console regularly, recovered fully after 10 days of abstinence.

If you're worried about soreness on your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time Nina GoadBritish Association of Dermatologists

Doctors who examined her at the Geneva University Hospital concluded she had a condition known as 'idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis', a skin disorder that generally causes red, sore lumps on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.

The condition has been previously found on the soles of the feet in children taking part in heavy physical activity, such as jogging.

It it is thought to be linked to intense sweating.

Unusual symptoms

For the disorder to only affect the hands is very unusual.

The patient had not participated in any sport or physical exercise recently, and could not recall any recent trauma involving her hands.

However, her parents did say that she had recently started to play a video game on a PlayStation console for several hours a day, and had continued to play even after developing the sores.

The doctors suspect that the problem was caused by tight and continuous grasping of the console's hand-grips, and repeated pushing of the buttons, alongside sweating caused by the tension of the game.

The researchers said cases of addiction to using games consoles had been recorded, but the symptoms had initially been thought to be psychological.

However, some physical symptoms, such as acute tendonitis, dubbed Wiitis, had begun to emerge.

They said 'PlayStation palmar hidradenitis' could now be added to the list.

Nina Goad, of the British Association of Dermatologists said: "This is an interesting discovery and one that the researchers are keen to share with other dermatologists, should they be confronted with similar, unexplained symptoms in a patient.

"If you're worried about soreness on your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time, and don't play excessively if your hands are prone to sweating."

MPs 'talking, not hearing online'

MPs should use the internet to converse not to inform, the report says

MPs are getting more adept at using the internet - but they tend to see it as way of talking to rather than hearing from voters, new research suggests.

Attitudes among MPs to new media as a communications tool are too "passive", the Hansard Society has concluded.

Its research found that although 83% of MPs have a personal website, only 11% of them blog while less than one in four use social networking sites.

New media remained an "untapped area" for political engagement, it said.

US example

All British parties have been studying Barack Obama's use of the internet during his successful election campaign to attract supporters, focus policy debates and drive voter registration.

It is thought the Obama campaign employed as many as 95 permanent web staff and spent heavily on online operations.

MPs are transmitting and not receiving Andy Williamson, Hansard Society

A survey of 168 MPs by the Hansard Society - the independent political research organisation - found members of Parliament were not fully exploiting the internet's interactive potential.

Its findings suggested MPs see electronic media primarily as a way of informing the public about their activities and views rather than engaging with people about them.

It found that younger MPs and those elected more recently were more likely to use social networking tools.

As for blogs, many MPs believed they did not have the time or resources to manage one although the reputation of some blogs of being a forum for abuse was cited as putting some off.

Cabinet minister Hazel Blears attacked political bloggers earlier this year for fuelling a culture of cynicism about public life.

But former deputy PM John Prescott is a recent convert to blogging, launching a site to support a fourth Labour term.

Although the potential of the internet is generally not well understood by MPs, Hansard said the growth in the number of MPs using social networking sites showed a willingness to learn.

"MPs are transmitting and not receiving," said Andy Williamson, director of the Society's eDemocracy programme.

"They use the internet as a tool for campaigning and for organising their supporters, rather than opening up two-way communications with constituents."

Workers 'stealing company data'

By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The study said companies fail to take proper steps to stop data theft

Six out of every 10 employees stole company data when they left their job last year, said a study of US workers.

The survey, conducted by the Ponemon institute, said that so-called malicious insiders use the information to get a new job, start their own business or for revenge.

"They are making these judgements based out of fear and anxiety," the Institute's Mike Spinney told BBC News.

"People are worried about their jobs and want to hedge their bets," he said.

"Our study showed that 59% of people will say 'I'm going to take something of value with me when I go'."

The Ponemon Institute, a privacy and management research firm, surveyed 945 adults in the United States who were laid-off, fired or changed jobs in the last 12 months.

Everyone that took part had access to proprietary information such as customer data, contact lists, employee records, financial reports, confidential business documents, software tools or other intellectual property.

"Surging wave"

In the report, entitled Jobs at Risk = Data at Risk, the Institute showed that such data breaches put a company's financial health in jeopardy.

That view is backed in part by another recent study by security firm McAfee. It estimated total global economic losses due to data theft and security breaches by organised crime, hackers and inside jobs reached $1 trillion last year.

24% of workers could still access data after leaving the company

Kevin Rowney , from the data loss prevention arm of security firm Symantec, the sponsors of the study, told the BBC there would be a "surging wave" of these insider attacks.

"It is conceivable that a company can lose its corporate life through a large scale data breach," warned Mr Rowney.

He added: "The intellectual property of a company can represent the crown jewels and are almost worth more than the building. This is the core asset of a company and any breach or loss can be very expensive."

Relaxed attitude

The Ponemon Institute revealed that part of the problem rests with companies themselves and their relaxed attitude towards security.

It found that only 15% of respondents' companies reviewed or audited the paper documents or electronic files employees were walking out of work with.

Most data breaches are preventable said experts

The report also said that if businesses did conduct a review, it was very poor with 45% not being completed and 29% being fairly superficial.

"Many firms believe insider data breaches are the cost of doing business," said Mr Spinney.

"They believe this is just something they have to live with. Our sense is that a lot of companies have really just given up, but this study shows these are preventable events."

During the economic downturn, security experts have predicted that the number of insider attacks will rise.

Last week, Microsoft told BBC News that "with 1.5 million predicted job losses in the US alone, there's an increased risk and exposure to these attacks".

Mr Rowney said one way to limit such breaches was to boost security but also to change focus.

"The industry has concentrated on the protection of the containers where the data is stored like firewalls, access, controls and end point security systems.

"The end result is that most security teams are protecting the containers not the data itself. And that is a core flaw in the security methodology of many practitioners today," claimed Mr Rowney.

The struggle among the stars

All players of Eve Online share one vast virtual galaxy.

By Flora Graham BBC News

It's a credit crunch nightmare.

The chief executive of the world's biggest corporation gets a phone call in the middle of the night. Thanks to industrial espionage, the company has been bankrupted, assets stripped, bank accounts emptied. When trading starts the next day, even the company name will be gone.

If this were real life, the executive might consider jumping out the window. But in the online game of EVE Online, it's all part of the fun.

"It is another challenge," said Par Molen, the leader of the "corporation" Band of Brothers (BoB), who got the late-night call.

"That's what we live for."

Mr Molen and his online colleagues had spent four years building BoB into the dominant force in a game where 200,000 players battle it out in an online galaxy of spaceships and planets.

Unlike other multiplayer online games like the hugely popular World of Warcraft, which is split into smaller groups, the thousands of EVE players are in it together.

In one virtual galaxy, players build, fight, and trade, joining together to form "corporations" to gain control over sections of the huge starscape.

This creates a complex society where anything can happen, and often does. Rules are few, and all of the lying, cheating and stealing that occurs in real life can also happen in the game.

A player called "The Mittani" is the shadowy spymaster who runs dozens of agents for his corporation - GoonSwarm. He got the call of his career when a disgruntled BoB director contacted him to say that he was thinking of switching sides.

With the director's access to BoB's internal workings, the pair were able to disband the corporation and steal all the assets they could lay their hands on.

To add insult to injury, GoonSwarm then re-registered the Band of Brothers name for itself, leaving the former alliance nameless and broken.

It's a finale that has been compared to "Apple dissolving Microsoft", and led to some players calling for the game's developer, CCP, to "roll-back" the game to the previous day and cancel the change.

Eve Online is about the struggle between giant corporations

"Any one director should not have the power to destroy the work of so many people for so many months and years with two mouse clicks," wrote a player called David on an EVE-related blog.

But CCP is well-known for keeping its hands off action within the game. Since no rules were broken, the changes stood, and thousands of BoB members woke up to a very different world.

Scams in space

This is not the first time that rogue bankers and credit fraud have made EVE Online seem more like the financial pages than a space cowboy video game.

In January, a player absconded with over 80bn ISK, the game's virtual currency, from an in-game bank. Although the 80bn is only worth a few thousand pounds if exchanged for real money, it represents hours of in-game toil.

In an online echo of the real-world banking crisis, the bank's chairman issued a statement to calm a run on deposits, writing: "Dynasty Banking will get over these times and we will continue to strive to earn the public's faith as one of the leading banks of Eve Online".

Another scam on an epic scale beyond the fantasies of real conmen was perpetrated in 2006, when a player ran off with 700bn ISK from another EVE bank.

"Think of me as a space Robin Hood