A Russian website is selling a DIY spyware kit, called WebAttacker, for around $15 a throw. The site, which proudly boasts of its creator's credentials in the scumware industry, also offer technical supporter to potential buyers.

Infomedia, a second-tier maker of blank optical discs has announced it has obtained certification from Philips for the 8x DVD+RW format, the fifth maker globally and the third in Taiwan following Ritek and CMC Magnetics.

Toshiba's U.S. unit may delay the launch of its next-generation DVD player for several weeks to coincide with the April debut of movies that play in the new HD DVD format.

Due to DVD disc makers including Italy-based Computer Support Italcard (CSI), France-based Manufacturing Advanced Media (Mam-E) and Japan-based TDK exiting the market, the European Union (EU) is expected to drop its anti-dumping investigation against optical discs coming from China and Taiwan, according to market sources.

InPhase Technologies have announced that it has demonstrated the highest data density of any commercial technology by recording 515 gigabits of data per square inch.

An employee of Cognitive Technologies computer company has beaten a man who was selling the company's software illegally.

Apple's iTunes software will overtake Real Player later this year to become the second most widely used media software after Windows Media Player (WMP).

So, the BBC's first venture into the brave new world of HD TV will be balls. Football and tennis fans are to be the inaugural beneficiaries of high-definition pictures from the Beeb, with the World Cup and Wimbledon to be screened in HD.

Up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Microsoft new Vista operating system is set to be rewritten as the Company "scrambles" to fix internal problems a Microsoft insider has confirmed.

Universal Pictures has launched a new service in Britain that will sell digital downloads of movies such as "King Kong" along with a DVD copy, tapping into the online video market now dominated by Apple's iTunes.

In the first 11 weeks of the year 13.8% fewer DVD titles have been released than for the comparable period last year, and if the trend holds up, this could be the first year with a decline in total DVD output since the format was launched in 1997.

Worldwide subscribers to Digital Video Recording (DVR) services will rise by a factor of nearly seven between 2005 and 2010, spurring major changes in video-service and content-provider businesses, as well as in the consumer-electronics industry, iSuppli predicts.

UK electronics retail giant Maplin has announced that it will now be sourcing blank media from the market leading brands of Titanium, Datawrite, Datasafe and RiDisc. We'll bring you more details as we get them.

A US judge has told lawyers working for the Recording Industry Ass. of America that the outfit does not have the supreme legal powers that it thinks it has.

Samsung has launched what it reckons its the world's first 32GB NAND Flash-based hard disk drive replacement unit. The company claimed the so-called "solid state disk" can access data three times faster than an HDD can and write files one-and-a-half times more quickly - though we don't know what HDD spec it was comparing its product to.

Copyright holders have collectively objected to proposed exemptions to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in cases where copyright software causes security and privacy harm. According to the group, exceptions that would allow DRM software to be circumvented in hypothetical cases where it "threatens critical infrastructure and potentially endangers lives" might create "uncertainty" in the minds of software developers.

The availability of the Windows Vista OS has been pushed back to next year, according to Microsoft Co-President of Platform and Services Division Jim Allchin.

Anyone wanting to enjoy any of the cool, futuristic copying and sharing features that the next-generation formats are expected to support is going to have to wait.

The European Information and Communications Technology Association (EICTA) today announced yet another logo that it hopes will help clear confusion from the minds of consumers as they migrate from traditional television into the HDTV era. However, the move may well have the opposite effect.

In a sign of the times, the personal CD player has been ejected from the "shopping basket" of goods and services used by Government statisticians to measure the rate of inflation.