Samsung Electronics is facing legal action from the big five US movie studios which claims one of its DVD players can be used to avoid encryption technology.

According to reports, Samsung is being sued by 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Time Warner, Walt Disney, and Universal.

The Korean Times said Samsung had not yet received the complaint. But the spokesman, "guessed that the film makers take issue with DVD-HD841, which Samsung sold in the United States between June and October 2004."

"If so, I do not know why the movie studios are complaining about the products, of which production was brought to an end more than 15 months ago. We stopped manufacturing the model after concerns erupted that its copy-protection features can be circumvented by sophisticated users."

The Big Four record labels are escalating their attack on Patti Santangelo, the New York mother who's so far the only person to stand up to them.

And they'll be using her children as weapons against her.

"They've started to push back aggressively. They're going after her children - and this time not directly so they can get around certain protections the children have. They had information about the children that wasn't public, or wasn't supposed to be public, and it's of great concern not only that that they were able to obtain it, but also that they wanted it."

The RIAA has spent enough to feed a small country on trying to make the world believe it's owners, the multi-billion-dollar Big Four labels, are being "devastated" (their word) by people who share music online, that contracted artists are suffering and that support workers are being driven into extreme financial hardship.

They make the completely unsupportable assertion that people using the p2p networks to share files would otherwise have paid $1 or more to buy the song from an online corporate music site or an offline music store.

And they claim file sharers are criminals and thieves, although nothing has been stolen and at worst, file sharing, a purely civil, not criminal, matter, involves copyright infringement.

Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life, but was nevertheless sued by the RIAA in Brooklyn federal court for using an "online distribution system" to "download, distribute, and/or make available for distribution" plaintiff's music files, has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act.

A 53-year-old woman was so depressed and desperate to end her life that she agreed to pay a friend to arrange for a hitman to kill her, a court heard.

Christine Ryder ended up handing over a total of £20,000 to Kevin Reeves after he agreed to murder her himself.

But Reeves, 40, of Saltings Road, Snodland, near Rochester, failed to keep his side of the bargain and she shopped him to the police.

Now he has been jailed for 15 months after being convicted of deception.

"He simply had the money for his own purposes and had no intention of using it for the purpose she directed – to have her killed or kill her himself," said Miss Moore-Graham.

If you're into reading legal proceedings verbatim, here's a doozy for you. It gets even better if you like to see RIAA lawyers dragging themselves, rather than their chosen targets, through the dirt.

The RIAA sued the Nelsons, who in turn are basically asking for the case to be dismissed and their legal fees reimbursed, because the RIAA lawyers got the testimonies they wanted from some witnesses through coercion and/or extortion.

The transcript of the deposition that followed this motion gives us a glimpse into exactly how far the recording industry is willing to go to justify their crusade against file sharing.

The deposition strongly suggests that the RIAA knew they didn't have a leg to stand on, and that they were perfectly happy to do anything in their power to win anyway. Funny how rather than open their own wallets to settle, they prefer breaking the law themselves.

A businessman has won what is believed to be the first victory of its kind by claiming damages from a company which sent him e-mail spam.

Nigel Roberts, who lives in Alderney in the Channel Islands, took action against Media Logistics UK over junk e-mails in his personal account.

The Stirlingshire-based firm has agreed to pay £270 compensation to Mr Roberts, who runs an internet business.

Mr Roberts received unwanted e-mail adverts for a contract car firm and a fax broadcasting business and decided to take action against the company.

The company filed an acknowledgement of the claim at Colchester County Court but did not defend it and a judge ruled in favour of Mr Roberts.

Mr Roberts said he had limited his claim to a maximum of £300 in order to qualify to file it as a small claim.

A Californian law that made it illegal to sell or rent violent or sexually explicit games to children has been blocked by a US federal judge.

The ruling comes as US politicians draft national laws to stop the sale of adult-themed games to children.

The Californian law was drafted in October and aimed to make it a crime for games that "depict serious injury to human beings in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" to be sold or rented to those under 18.

Signed into law by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the measure imposed $1,000 (£575) fines every time it was broken.

Allegations that the CIA abducted and illegally transported terror suspects across European borders are credible, an investigator has said.

Swiss senator Dick Marty has submitted a report on the claims, made in the media, to a meeting of the human rights committee of the Council of Europe.

Mr Marty criticised the US for refusing to confirm or deny the allegations.

"The elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees - outside all judicial procedure - in European countries," he said.

Tony Lloyd, a member of the Council's parliamentary assembly, told the BBC the charges that people may have been effectively kidnapped and taken to other countries for possible torture "were of such magnitude that they have to have proper answers".

At the time, Ms Rice refused to address claims the CIA operated secret prisons abroad, where suspects could be interrogated without reference to international law.

The National Law Journal reports that the RIAA has launched 14,800 lawsuits in the last two years in an attempt to clamp down on file swapping. But what's striking about the RIAA's tactics is that out of all 14,800 lawsuits, not a single one has gone to trial. That's about to change.

Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five living in Wappingers Falls, New York, is taking her case to trial. She recently found herself the target of an RIAA lawsuit and vowed to contest it, claiming that she knows nothing about downloading music online. The RIAA, however, is quite sure that she does.

Santangelo and her lawyers moved to dismiss the case but the judge has rejected their efforts, meaning that discovery will soon begin and a full trial appears likely. We haven't seen a trial on this issue yet because the RIAA has generously offered to settle the suits for amounts in the US$3000-4000 range, rather than the tens of thousands they would demand if they prevailed in court. To date, more than three thousand people have coughed up.

But the RIAA has been wrong before, as it was in its 2003 suit against Sarah Seabury Ward, a sixty-something sculptor who was accused of downloading gangsta rap. The suit was eventually withdrawn, but the case (and others like it, including one against a dead grandmother) does shed some doubt on the RIAA's ability to correctly identify the infringing party. With Santangelo's case now headed for trial, a judge's ruling may provide more clarity about what the RIAA can and cannot do in its war on musical piracy.

In December, the EU parliament is expected to vote to extend data retention requirements in the EU from 3 months to a maximum of one year in an effort to combat terrorism. Currently companies in the telecommunication and internet access industries are required to keep detailed data on communications for at least three months so that law enforcement can examine these records if they're needed. Call data must include the names, numbers, and address of the callers, start and end time of the call, and SIM card information in the case of mobile usage. ISPs must keep log-on and log-off times, IP addresses, email headers, sites visited, and billing information. Member states such as Britain would like to see this period extended to an entire year, and it looks as though passage of the directive is likely (curiously, the law has little support in the UK itself, but politicians hope to get it through the back door by making it EU law).

However, in a move that is becoming increasingly common, an industry group representing content giants such as Sony BMG, Disney, Time Warner, and EMI, would like to see this data opened up for use in less serious situations, such as, oh, say, copyright infringement? The Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA) believes that it is fundamentally wrong to limit these tools to fighting terrorism.

"The data retention directive was proposed to fight terrorism. As ill-conceived as the original legislation was, this should never be used to fight the music and film industries' battles at the expense of the taxpayer," said Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group. "The music industry's attempt to hijack this legislation is a travesty and a gross affront to civil liberties and human rights."

he Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive 2 (IPRED2) contains language that would criminalize all copyright infringement done for commercial gain, or even "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such infringement."

Privacy advocates also say that giving this kind of access to commercial concerns as opposed to legitimate government security concerns is like asking for abuse. Armed with this kind of data, it would be very easy for companies to profile individuals, including the sites they visit, who they e-mail, and how much time they spend online.