The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) is leaning on the US Senate to take tough action against Russia over music and software piracy in that country.

The RIAA wants Russia to know that unless it submits to its demands to stop acting as a safe haven for pirates then there is no chance of it getting decent trading conditions with the US.

RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol said that the U.S.-Russia relationship must be built upon a mutual understanding of shared obligations and the application of the rule of law.

"The effective protection of American intellectual property has been sorely lacking in Russia. We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets," Bainwol said.

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.

"This development forms the basis of a 24/7 vehicle movement database that will revolutionise arrest, intelligence and crime investigation opportunities on a national basis," it says.

Mr Whiteley said MI5 will also use the database. "Clearly there are values for this in counter-terrorism," he said.

Long before the Sony rootkit DRM there was Starforce copy protection, which installs stealth drivers and is generally despised by most PC gamers because of the headaches it causes. While it doesn't stop piracy, it does slow it down: Starforce protected games frequently show up on Torrent trackers months after publication, or sometimes not at all (at least not as major group releases). Sensing the public backlash against DRM, the makers of Starforce have issued a challenge: if our software breaks your CD/DVD drive, you get $1,000 - maybe.

Reading the contest rules however, you'll note that you have to travel to Moscow on your dime and prove to them their software screwed up your CD drive. If you're able to jump through a long list of hoops, you'll get $1,000 and will be reimbursed for your trip. If not, you get posted to their website as a "loser". Of course all of this completely ignores the multitude of other problems this software has caused on user systems since introduction.

Whenever discussing some new device that incorporates fingerprint scanning, we always make that stupid joke about how "now the crooks just need to cut off your finger to steal your ____." Well it turns out that criminals don't even need to go through the hassle of breaking out that hacksaw as long as they have some dental molding and Play-Doh handy. Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Stephanie Schuckers and her team at Clarkson University found that most scanning systems can be fooled 90% of the time by taking a mold of the mark's finger, filling the mold with Play-Doh, and using the fake digit to gain access. Don't go running out to Toys 'R Us just yet, though, as the Clarkson team also designed an algorithm that detects the spread of perspiration from the pores out to the ridges of a live person's finger, and is only foiled by the Play-Doh method 10% of the time. Still, until this new tech becomes more widespread, along with iris scans, facial and voice recognition, and implanted RFID verification, we're gonna continue keeping our cash under the mattress that we fiercely guard as we telecommute from atop it.

At least 40 people have been killed after firecrackers exploded on a bus carrying guests back from a wedding in Lahore, eastern Pakistan.

Police said there were about 50 people on the bus. The other passengers were taken to hospital and eight are in a serious condition.

"It took seconds until the bus was engulfed by flames and people hardly had any chance to rescue anyone," said Senior Superintendent Aamir Zulfikar of Lahore's North Cantonment.

Local residents told AFP news agency the blast occurred after a small boy threw firecrackers from a rear window of the bus.

Many people have died in similar accidents, he says, although this is one of the worst tragedies of its kind in terms of casualties.

Digital rights groups warned the music maker about vulnerabilities its MediaMax copy protection system created on users' PCs.

The same groups have now found that a patch Sony produced to close these holes is itself insecure and leaves users open to a separate attack.

On 6 December Sony BMG and digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a joint statement about the discovery of problems with the MediaMax anti-piracy system made by SunnComm.

The statement also pointed users to a software patch that was supposed to close this loophole.

However, the EFF has now urged users not to apply this patch as separate work by security researchers Ed Felten and Alex Halderman shows it too introduces vulnerabilities.

Sony BMG said the MediaMax copy protection system, which is supposed to stop people making illegal copies of CDs, has been used on 50 titles sold in North America.

It said approximately six million CDs using MediaMax have been shipped to stores. Affected artists include Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Faithless.

The Xbox 360 has virtually sold out in the UK as gamers rushed to snap up Microsoft's next generation games console, say retailers.

In the UK, more than 200 gamers have queued for hours in the rain for the midnight launch of the console at Game's flagship store in London's Oxford Street.

For Asda, non-food director Tony Page said: "As predicted, we counted them in and counted them out quick as a flash. Someone at Microsoft seriously needs their ears Xboxing for failing to give us enough to go round."

A search by the BBC News website on online auction site eBay late on Friday found more than 2,000 consoles, with most going for around £600.

The Xbox 360 is one of the most eagerly-awaited consumer electronics debuts of the year.

Diebold has a long history of resisting sharing the source code for its much-derided electronic voting machines, even if it's with election officials wanting to verify the machines actually work like they're supposed to. North Carolina had passed a law requiring e-voting machine vendors to make their source code available for scrutiny by officials and experts, and Diebold managed to get itself exempted from the law, drawing a suit from the EFF. Last week, a judge ruled against Diebold, saying if they wanted to sell their machines in North Carolina, they'd have to follow the law. Diebold's response is pretty predictable: they'd rather not do business in the state than expose their code. The company just doesn't seem to get it: elections, and the equipment used in them, need to be transparent and open to public scrutiny. Running away rather than opening their code won't engender much trust in their equipment, in North Carolina, or anywhere.

In TV land, prime viewers are fleeing prime time: The networks have seen a 7.4% drop in viewings by 18- to 49-year-olds so far this fall compared with last year. There are plenty of reasons for these declines-fickle tastes, videogames, piracy. But there's also the fact that, frankly, the entertainment industry tends not to show the fans much love. Any business that prices popcorn the way gas stations price gas, encodes software into its CDs that compromises computer security, or persists in building sitcoms around Jim Belushi needs work in staying close to customers.

Yet with anime and its print cousin-the paperback-sized cartoon books called manga-the otaku keep showing up, cash in hand. This tidy little corner of the show-biz universe-a market worth more than $625 million last year at retail in North America, of which AD Vision captured $150 million-makes for a rare example of an entertainment niche that does more than not alienate its customers: It has found ways to keep them buying and buying.

But as the majors take their first tentative steps, Ledford and his peers keep racing along. The most dramatic example of this attitude is their tolerance for folks who have the potential to put them out of business: pirates trading anime online. And not just trading, but competing to see who can create the best subtitled version of a particular show.

This is open-source TV programming. "Fansubbers," as they're called, can spend more than a dozen hours collectively just to get a half-hour show ready for English speakers. The process is as orderly as an ant farm, with each fansubber having a specialized task.

If this were being done in any other industry-imagine Chinese Pontiac fans getting together to strip and build their own versions of General Motors cars-the lawsuits would be piling up. Not here. Part of the reason is that the fansubbers police themselves with a zero-tolerance policy that would impress Eliot Spitzer.

"It's backwards thinking. It's protectionism," said Terri McBride, president of Vancouver-based Nettwerk, whose roster includes the Be Good Tanyas. "The average consumer who's not tech-savvy is going to buy the CD, thinking that they can load it onto their iPod ... They're going to be royally pissed off."

It's becoming a regular occurrence in CD shops across the country: an irate customer comes in complaining the CD they bought won't play on their computer, and worse yet, they can't transfer the tunes to their iPod.

"Consumers are not liking it," says Leslie Purchase, assistant manager at CD Plus in the Halifax Shopping Center. "People are getting very frustrated by (copy-protected CDs)."

She's noticed an increase in customers who put CDs down after noticing the "copy-controlled" or "copy-protected" label.

More controversial is the ability to control which programs consumers can use to playback their music. With EMI and Sony BMG discs, for instance, the music is compatible only with Windows Media Player but not with iTunes (for PC users).