Microsoft's MSN Soapbox has been in an invite only state for a few months now, but today video-upload enters its public beta phase.

More than half of the young people in the UK pay to download music, according to a new survey.

Virgin Media and Disney's Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) have announced a deal, that will provide content for Virgin's TV-on-demand service in the UK. The deal includes hit U.S. shows including Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds and Alias. The deal also includes high definition versions of all the shows except Extreme Makeover UK.

Slysoft officially releases AnyDVD HDSlysoft has announced the first official release of AnyDVD HD, with support for AACS and HD DVD. In a press release, the company takes pride in offering a product that enables average computer users to take advantage of their "fair use rights" easily.

Relentless attempts by those determined to undermine the copy-protection technology used on HD DVD movies continue to yield successes.

Eight months after the move to "educate children" on copyright law was started, the cartoon capers of Captain Copyright has been dumped by the group that started it.

Workplace smoking bans may be good for workers' health, but could open the back door to sneaky hackers.

Sharp has developed a Blu-ray Disc recorder that cuts costs by doing away with the tuner. Instead, the BD-HP1 will use the tuner present in a television set to record TV programs, the company said on Wednesday.

MySpace will use software to monitor videos posted to the site in a bid to block unauthorised use of copyrighted content. The social networking giant will use technology to analyse videos' audio tracks to identify infringing posts.

The well-known BBC consumer affairs show Watchdog has recently looked into a number of complaints about hardware faults on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, particularly complaints that it often packs up shortly after the warrantee runs out.

Pioneer today officially announced the availability of two new internal 18x DVD writers. The DVR-112 multi-format drive and, the DVR-112D dual-format drive, integrate a wide range of technologies to optimise DVD writing.

New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) on February 5 issued a final ruling in favor of Royal Philips Electronics in the company's patent infringement case against Taiwan-based optical disc makers Gigastorage and Princo.

Microsoft has upgraded new Xbox 360 consoles with a quieter DVD drive. Apparently the new BenQ drives - the BenQ VAD6038 - is not only quieter but also subtly improves load times and streaming.

The spiritual leader of the Apple cult, Steve Jobs, has called on the four major record companies to dump DRM and start selling music without copy protection.

Experts are predicting a siugnificant price cut for PlayStation 3 after new figures revealed that the console is being heavily outsold 4-to-1 by Nintendo Wii.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has urged Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to intercede in a computer piracy case against a Russian headteacher.

Windows-using iPod owners have been advised to wait for the next release of iTunes jukebox software before upgrading to Windows Vista if they want to avoid "compatibility issues" between their favoured player and the new operating system.

Alex Ionescu, co-developer of the Windows API clone ReactOS, says he has found a way to crack digital rights management (DRM) in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. If so, it would be possible to read the high-resolution content of media protected by DRM without encryption.

Defending the high price for Sony's latest games console UK Sony boss Ray Maguire has said that the UK will be getting just 220,000 60GB consoles for launch on 23 March out of a possible 1 million shipping to Europe.