Nike, once the brand that championed all who challenged authority, seems to have suddenly taken on the mantle, as well as the athletic supporter, of a regime not known for its fondness for allowing people to just do it.

Someone who claimed to be a member of Nike's inside lane, wrote a post on a Yahoo message board that accused the company of being complicit in Liu Xiang's sudden exit.

The suggestion was that Nike knew Liu Xiang couldn't win, so they told him not to run, as a disappointing performance would harm their investment in him far more than a heart-tugging withdrawal.

Comcast reportedly plans to reduce Internet service to customers it deems to be using too much bandwidth, a move that comes on the heels of federal regulators ruling that the Internet service provider violated the law by throttling BitTorrent transfers.

Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.

"Online records listing Chinese gymnasts and their ages that were posted on official Web sites in China, along with ages given in the official Chinese news media, however, seem to contradict the passport information, indicating that He (Kexin) and Jiang (Yuyuan) may be as young as 14--two years below the Olympic limit," stated the Times article.

This week security researcher "Stryde Hax" detailed his findings about discrepancies in the gymnasts' ages that he found via his own Internet searches.

Last year, we noted that the new webcasting royalty rates pushed through by the RIAA appeared designed specifically to kill internet radio. These royalties are different and much higher than things like traditional and satellite radio.

The RIAA knew exactly what it was doing in pushing these higher rates: it was killing off alternative routes to promoting non-RIAA music. The RIAA labels have always thrived off a very limited distribution and promotion channel.

The RIAA's spinoff, SoundExchange, gets to collect money on non-RIAA music as well. Oh yeah, it gets better too: if SoundExchange can't find the musicians to pay, it gets to keep the money. That's why it has a history of not looking very hard for musicians in order to pay them.

SoundExchange claims higher royalties for Internet radio because it says musicians deserve a bigger cut of Internet radio profits. But it strangely ignores the fact that if an Internet radio shuts then musicians will not get anything.

SoundExchange claims that it the Internet Radio stations fault that they have not tried to work out ways to make money out of playing the songs.

Now the radio station will have to pay royalties to SoundExchange even though the artist has not signed a contract with the organisation. Any cash SoundExchange collects will not go to the artist but will be saved up to give an RIAA executive a holiday somewhere hot with their secretary.

How is this feat of engineering and environmental marvel achieved, we hear you cry? Easy, the power supply just turns itself off in power-save mode - it's as simple as that.

There's a switching element within the power supply to the monitor, that's controlled by the PC. When the screen's powered down, it also triggers the PSU to completely disconnect from the mains. The next time the PC sends an output to the monitor, a wee electrical signal restores the display's power to full glory.

Traffic from Italy to the 'bay has actually increased this week and the site has jumped 10 places on Alexa in Italy.

Unfortunately for the people at the IFPI - the driving force behind the block - the results so far aren't what they'd hoped for. Rather like the increases in traffic experienced at HTTPShare when they tried to block that, this week has seen traffic from Italy to The Pirate Bay increase too.

The music and movies industries might hate The Pirate Bay with a passion but millions upon millions of regular people love them.

Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest.

And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution.

The International Olympic Committee is no stranger to overzealous protection of what they perceive to be their intellectual property. We've covered their ridiculous attempts to change British law to "protect" the terms "Olympics" and "2012".

It was hardly surprising when the IOC sent a take-down notice to YouTube for a video posted by Students for a Free Tibet.

Luckily after a number of sites questioned the action, the IOC withdrew their complaint. This remains troubling, though. The DMCA was not meant to silence legitimate speech, but the number of times litigants have suppressed content they don't like is staggering.

The state of Massachusetts is showing no signs of abandoning its fight to keep a restraining order in place against three MIT students who discovered subway card vulnerabilities. In fact, the state transit agency is escalating its rhetoric.

MBTA has demanded copies of documents including correspondence with the Defcon conference, a paper prepared for an MIT class, software, physical equipment, modified MBTA farecards, notes from meetings, and so on.

MBTA has asked O'Toole to convert the temporary restraining order, which automatically expires on Tuesday, to a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.