Whilst one site may have closed its doors thanks to the MPAA, after continuous legal pressure, another has prevailed today in court. Torrent.is has won in court over the Association of film rights-holder in Iceland (SMÁÍS)

torrent icelandThe case is a study in classic big business bullying. Like similar cases in the US, SMÁÍS complained to the court about alleged copyright infringement activities on the BitTorrent site, and got a preliminary injunction, blocking the site.

However, justice works swifter in Iceland than it does in the US, and after only 4 months, the case has been to court.

The decision, however, was as surprising as it was swift. Instead of deciding for or against the defendants, the court simply dismissed the case. It is likely, however, that the plaintiffs will appeal the decision to the Icelandic ‘Supreme Court’ (Hæstiréttur).

The verdict, (available in Icelandic here) seems to hinge on the fact that under Icelandic laws, searching for files, or providing accessibility to them, is legal, as long as the files provided by the service are not themselves copyrighted. Torrent files, are not themselves copyrighted, but are instead metadata – data about data- describing copyrighted material, as indeed are reviews.

Hackers have defaced the Web site of Indonesia’s information ministry in response to a government move to restrict access to pornographic material on the Internet, an official said on Friday.

Indonesia’s parliament on Tuesday passed a new information bill that criminalises the transmission of pornographic material on the Web.

The Southeast Asian country has had a vigorous debate over pornography in recent years, exposing deep divisions in the Muslim-majority nation.

Hackers on Thursday posted a message on the information ministry’s Web site (http://www.depkominfo.go.id) saying: “Prove that the law has not been made to cover government stupidity.”

The message was accompanied by a mocked-up photograph of a local information technology expert, who has been advising the government on the new law, depicted with a bare chest.

Screenshots of the hacked page were posted on the Detik.com news Web site and a cyber chat forum.

The message had been removed and the Web site was now running normally, said Gatot Broto, an official at the ministry.

OpenOffice.org 2.4, the latest version of the free productivity application suite, was released and is now available for download for a number of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

An open source project backed by Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org is widely regarded as the leading competitor to Microsoft Office. It is also the most prominent software to support Open Document Format (ODF), a set of open standards that challenges Microsoft’s proprietary Office file formats.

This release is mostly an incremental upgrade, however, and isn’t likely to do much to heat up the competition in the productivity applications market. It incorporates mostly minor new features and bug fixes for each of the applications in the suite, including Writer, Calc, the Base personal database, and the Impress presentation software.

The real sparks won’t start flying until the next major milestone for OpenOffice.org, version 3.0, scheduled to ship in September. That version is expected to bring long-awaited support for Microsoft’s Office 2007 file formats, which will make it easier for current Office users to migrate to the alternative suite. In addition, it will bring support for ODF 1.2 and user interface improvements, among other features.

Microsoft is cracking down on players on its Xbox Live gaming service who use hacks to artificially inflate their scores.

“Today, we took action,” said Larry Hryb, Microsoft’s Xbox Live programming director, in a blog post Wednesday.

Hryb, who blogs under the pseudonym Major Nelson, said Microsoft would reset cheaters’ “gamerscore” accounts to zero and eliminate all past achievements. Their gamer profiles would also publicly show they’ve been caught cheating, according to Hryb.

Sony on Thursday reported that hackers may have penetrated security on the PlayStation network and gained access to some users’ personal information.

Sony said the security breach occurred at the PlayStation Store, a content download service of the network. “Although unlikely, it is possible that the passwords of a small percentage of PlayStation Network users may have been changed through unauthorized access,” the company said.

Cable operator Comcast Corp promised on Thursday to change how it manages its network in response to accusations it blocks some Internet file-sharing services because they require large amounts of bandwidth.

But Comcast’s move did not go far enough to satisfy the top U.S. communications regulator. Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, vowed to continue investigating the management practices of broadband providers and whether they discriminate against certain applications.

Comcast, which has more than 13 million broadband subscribers, said it would adopt a new technique for managing capacity on its network by the end of 2008. The new practice will not discriminate among different applications.

The cable giant has been accused by consumer groups of blocking some file-sharing services, such as BitTorrent, that distribute TV shows and movies on the Internet.

The Chinese government will clamp down on mapping websites and other online geographical information that it fears might undermine national security, state media reported Thursday.

Eight government agencies, including the foreign ministry, are to tighten supervision of geographical information available online, the official China Daily reported.

There are nearly 10,000 online map websites in China and authorities will close down most of them as they show maps without approval, said Min Yiren, deputy director with the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.

“Some websites publish sensitive or confidential geographical information, which might leak state secrets and threaten security,” Min said.

YouTube has removed several video clips that had prompted Turkish authorities to block access to the video-sharing Web site, a move the company believes will lead to a restoration of access soon.

In a statement in Turkish sent to The Associated Press on Thursday, YouTube said the company “reviewed the videos that led to the most recent ban on access and removed them because of their content, which violate YouTube’s content policy.”

A court in the capital of Ankara imposed a ban on access to the site at the request of a prosecutor who had argued the clips were disrespectful to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a war hero who founded Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

Access to YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., remained blocked in Turkey on Thursday morning, and Turkish authorities could not be reached for comment on when access might resume.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that it had approved the start of development of a next-generation radio system for aircraft, ships and ground stations, paving the way for a huge contract award to either Boeing Co or Lockheed Martin Corp in coming days.

Pentagon acquisition chief John Young signed a document approving the next phase of the Joint Tactical Radio System program late on Monday, a spokesman for him said.

Defense analysts say the contract for system design and development of the Airborne Maritime and Fixed Station (AMF) segment of the program will total $800 million to $1.2 billion. A later production contract could translate into business deals valued at $10 billion or more over the long term, they say.

Vuze Inc., a California-based company that provides a popular file-sharing program, is giving its users a tool to help figure out if their Internet service provider is interfering with their traffic.

The Associated Press last year confirmed user reports that Comcast Corp., the country’s largest cable company, was secretly disrupting some file-sharing by its subscribers. The company has acknowledged to the practice and said it’s necessary to curb traffic that would otherwise slow down Internet speeds for other subscribers.

The “plug-in” Vuze made available as a free download last weekend looks for “reset packets,” the tool Comcast uses to break off some connections with computers trying to download files from Comcast subscribers, Vuze said Wednesday.

The plug-in works with Vuze’s main application, Azureus, which is based on the BitTorrent file-sharing technology. If the user allows it, the plug-in will send data back to Vuze, which will collect information about ISPs that are interfering with their subscribers’ traffic.

Palo Alto-based Vuze said Azureus has been downloaded 20 million times, and an average of 1.3 million users are using at any one time.

The popular video-sharing site YouTube is giving contributors more details about who’s watching their video clips and when, offering advertisers additional insights they can use to target their pitches.

The free program, known as YouTube Insight, also could help bands schedule their concerts and help anyone time the release of a new video.

The launch of Insight on Thursday comes as Google Inc. looks for ways to make money off its $1.76 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006. Despite growing interest in online video ads, many marketers have stayed away from user-generated video like what’s on YouTube.

Marketers who buy ads on YouTube already get a bevy of statistics about the performance of their ads. The new program breaks down viewership by day and shows the states or countries where most viewers are.

A movie studio that uploads a trailer for free on YouTube could use those details to see where the clip is most popular and perhaps buy ads targeted to users in that region - on YouTube and even on television.

The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.

While Photoshop is designed for trained professionals, Adobe says Photoshop Express, which it launched in a “beta” test version, is easier to learn. User comments will be taken into account for future upgrades.

Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers.