The pirates of the world have fired another salvo in their ongoing war with copy protection schemes with the first release of the first full-resolution rip of an HD DVD movie on BitTorrent. The movie, Serenity, was made available as a .EVO file and is playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD.

This release follows the announcement, less than a month ago, that the copy protection on HD DVD had been bypassed by an anonymous programmer known only as Muslix64. The open-source program to implement this was called BackupHDDVD and was released in a manner designed to put the onus of cracking on the user, not the software.

Muslix64 and others involved in BackupHDDVD are deliberately not exposing the actual method by which the keys have been obtained. This is partly to protect themselves from legal repercussions, but also to ensure that whatever "hole" that is being exploited remains unpatched.

Satellite and Internet radio services would be required to restrict listeners' ability to record and play back individual songs, under new legislation introduced this week in the U.S. Senate.

The rules are embedded in a copyright bill called the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act, or Perform Act, which was reintroduced Thursday by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

But the measure goes further, taking aim at portable satellite radio devices, such as XM Satellite Radio's Inno player, that allow consumers to store copies of songs originally played on-air. The proposal says that all audio services--Webcasters included--would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft" and restricting automatic recording.

The Recording Industry Association of America applauded the effort and urged Congress to make passing the legislation a top priority this year.

"We love satellite radio," RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol said in a statement. "But this is simply no way to do business. It's in everyone's best interest to ensure a marketplace where fair competition can thrive."

Ever recorded a television show or a movie so you can watch it later? Or ripped a CD so you can listen to it on your MP3 player?

With changes to Canada's copyright laws expected as early as next month, these mundane 21st century activities could theoretically be open to prosecution — unless the Conservative government steps in with expanded "fair use" or "fair dealing" protections for consumers.

Exacerbating the situation is intense pressure from the United States, where Canada is considered a rogue when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. It still hasn't ratified a 1997 World Intellectual Property Organization copyright treaty.

As well, a group of Canadian musicians, including the Barenaked Ladies and Broken Social Scene, have come out against the technological protection measures, arguing they actually stifle creativity and their relationship with consumers.

Aa most of you interweb-savvy thieving pirates will be well aware, mighty industry bullies such as the MPAA are well suspected for sticking up fake torrents onto torrent indexers to catch out would-be downloaders.

Torrentfreak reports that almost all of these legally dodgy servers are located in Southern California and Las Vegas. The tricksy servers are easy to track for those in the know thanks to certain patterns, says torrentfreak, such as the content of the trackers and the amount of torrent seeds on the files.

A btjunkie admin says that the industry bigwigs alter the trackers to make sure that the downloaded content either stalls at near-completion, for example at 90 per cent, or the file will just be a big old blank mess. It's certainly professional work, says the anonymous btjunkie admin: "That's a lot of servers to set up and it takes some expertise to set up in the manner that they did it." The admin goes on to say, suspiciously, that "I don't think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this."

Some servers to be on the look out for, should you be one of those downloading sorts, are hostnames such as 101tracker.dhcp.biz, aplustorrents.qhigh.com, bitnova.squirly.info, bittorment.ocry.com and pirate-trakkrz.leet.la, warns torrentfreak. These hostnames can all be traced back to the very same IP ranges, says the site.

It's reckoned by one torrentfreak reader that the IP ranges belong to Media Defender which is a company hired by copyright owners to keep track of piratey IP addresses.

Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy the 550 square metre principality of Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation'.

The group has set up a campaign to raise money to buy the self-declared sovereign nation. Outside the jurisdiction of the UK or any other country, The Pirate Bays believes it could safely run the world's largest 'bit torrent tracker'.

Last year the Pirate Bay was closed down after raids by the Swedish police, and although it returned to a new Swedish server after a short stay in the Netherlands, the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and the US government have all lobbied for The Pirate Bay's closure.

Sealand's royal family, Prince Roy and Princess Joan Bates and their son Prince Michael, Prince Regent, who set up the principality 40 years ago, are willing to sell the platform for £65m.

"If we do not get enough money required to buy the micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somwhere and claim it as our own country (prices start from $50,000)," the Swedish organisation says.

Controversial proposals to make embryos by merging human and animal material remain on hold following a decision on Thursday by the UK regulator of embryo research.

Under intense pressure from scientists to allow three UK teams to make the embryos, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority decided instead to hold a public consultation on the issue.

The researchers want to use cow or rabbit eggs as a short cut to making cloned embryos which could yield human embryonic stem cells. These are vital for research into major illnesses such as Parkinson's disease and motor neurone disease.

Because views on the proposals are so polarised, and because so little is known about whether the technique would work, the HFEA wants all the pros and cons aired in public before deciding whether to allow the work to go ahead.

A cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects has been developed by US researchers. They hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication - or "rapid prototyping" - just as early computer kits sparked an explosion in home computing.

The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.

The machine connects to a desktop computer running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled syringe. A video shows a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb.

Malone and Lipson hope Fab@Home will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves. This will prompt the emergence of widespread personal fabrication, Lipson hopes.

The US governments's cryptologic organisation, the National Security Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes to Microsoft's operating system Vista.

According to the Washington Post, the agency which was once so secret that it was jokingly referred to as 'No such Agency' has admitted making 'unspecified contributions' to Vista.

The NSA used a red and a blue team to pull apart the software. The red team posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. The Blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.

Vole said that it has sought help from the NSA over the last four years. Apparently its skills can be seen in the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.

The assistance is at the US taxpayers' expense, although the NSA says it all makes perfect sense. Not only is the NSA protecting United States business, its own Defense Department uses VoleWare so it is in the government's interest to make sure it is as secure as possible.

The theory around BitTorrent is that all peers upload as well as download, in roughly equal amounts. The more upload capacity you contribute, the more download capacity you enjoy, in effect leveling the playing field for folks on high-speed and slow-speed connections.

The UW researchers studied real-world BitTorrent swarms, and found the field anything but level. Peers on high-speed connections contribute considerably more than they receive. And we are not talking about generosity of spirit or continuing to seed a torrent after the download has completed; the study shows that -- using typical client settings -- faster peers do not download data as fast as they upload it.

By modifying the popular GPLed client Azureus, the authors of the study created a BitTorrent client named BitTyrant. BitTyrant tries to choose peers intelligently instead of randomly, favoring those that are already operating at an upload/download equilibrium and attempting to maintain connections with active peers.

Nevertheless, it has been described as a "selfish" client, leading some bloggers to denounce it in terms usually reserved for malicious hacks and hostile attacks. By not treating all members of the swarm equally, BitTyrant does offer personal gain at the expense of others.

But wait, says the UW team, the study data shows that without BitTyrant, high-speed users are the ones getting the unfair treatment. So you can't just say "we should ban BitTyrant because it behaves unfairly."

Microsoft's MSN Messenger service doesn't want you talking dirty - and its definition of dirty talk is quite peculiar.

If you send an instant message containing the word "scroogle.org" via the Microsoft service, the message never arrives. The sender doesn't know it was discarded, and the recipient has no indication that it was ever sent, as the original message remains in the chat window and history.

Scroogle.org is Daniel Brandt's Google scraping proxy. Scroogle scrapes Google's website to return its search results without ads - bypassing the Google cookie, and protecting the user's privacy. Google is unable to match the searches to any other information. Scroogle makes around 50,000 scrapes per day. As Google has failed to challenge the legality of the service, it's an odd choice of domain for Microsoft to ban.

Or perhaps Microsoft thinks its protecting us from filth - the company has made strange and arbitrary decisions before.

So perhaps "scroogle" refers to some bizarre sexual practice, or, in some arcane vernacular, is a term for the genitalia. If that's true, it's not in Roger's Profanisaurus [probably NSFW], which we regard as the definitive resource in these matters.