Zhu Zhiqiang has filed a lawsuit asking for 2 million yuan ($240,000) in compensation from Nike as well as a public apology for allegedly copying his "Little Match Man" illustration in one of its worldwide ad campaigns, the China Daily said.

"The small man figure created by the plaintiff and his gestures are absolutely different from Nike's Stickman," the China Daily quoted Nike's lawyer in China, Zhang Zaiping, as saying. He added that the U.S. company was "devoted" to the protection of intellectual property rights.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Nike argued that the image is a common symbol not entitled to protection under copyright law.

It seems logical that the headquarters of a file-sharing network would be located offshore, far from the reach of the long legal arm of the Recording Industry Association of America or Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

But Jed McCaleb, founder and CTO of file-sharing network eDonkey, and Sam Yagan, president of the company, don't have to wonder whether the Hatch bill will affect their business.

Still, they plan to continue to be very public about the location of their New York City office -- on 14th Street between Fifth and Sixth, just west of the famed Union Square Greenmarket, in a brightly painted room that looks a whole lot like the nursery of a particularly geeky toddler.

"Then what will happen is networks will spring up in jurisdictions that don't recognize U.S. laws or judgments. My favorite example is Earthstation 5. Here's an excerpt from its website:

"'Please take notice: EarthstationV Ltd., a Palestinian corporation, does not accept any legal process via e-mail, nor will we accept any attachments via e-mail. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine.'

Patrick Foster, from Ilkley, and Roger Waite, wrote an article for The Oxford Student newspaper about how easy it was to gain electronic access to personal details of staff and students.

The pair, both first-year students aged 20, claim they were carrying out an investigation and told the university about their findings.

They were immediately referred to the university's internal "police" – the proctors – last month, and Thames Valley Police were called in under the Computer Misuse Act. The pair are now facing suspension and a hefty fine.

Mr Foster, who is reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics said: "It's a sorry state of affairs when they fail to recognise we were doing them a favour, and instead try to kick us out. So much for a free Press and academic freedom. I am very disappointed in how the university has handled the situation."

Movie studios, computer chipmakers and consumer electronics companies said Wednesday they are working together to build a new copy-protection standard that would allow home viewers to watch and share high-definition video among various entertainment and portable devices, but prevent pirates from making perfect copies.

The companies haven't yet developed the technology. But it would work with any future format -- including HD-DVD, Blu-ray and other formats in the works, said Steve Ballogh, business development manager with Intel's corporate technology group.

"There are some key decisions coming up in making HD-DVD and Blu-ray," said Richard Doherty, analyst at the Envisioneering Group. "And those decisions on how they protect content (and) make content more convenient were starting to make some people sweat."

Basically, Audible Magic filters content based on an audio fingerprinting service that checks against a database of copyrighted works. Installed in a piece of P2P software, it prevents copyrighted works from being transmitted in the first place, which is what the article above discussed. However, Audible Magic is now attempting to sell its technology to schools and universities. In such cases, Audible Magic's technology will listen in to the data transfers (aka sniff packets) in the network and attempt to terminate those virtual circuits it believes are violating copyright.

Session encryption for file transfers based on ephemeral keys represents a cheap, easily implemented countermeasure that would effectively frustrate Audible Magic's filtering technology. Based on publicly available information, it does not appear that this vulnerability can be easily remedied. Should Audible Magic's technology be widely adopted, it is likely that P2P file-sharing applications would be revised to implement encryption. Accordingly, network administrators will want to ask Audible Magic tough questions before investing in the company's technology, lest the investment be rendered worthless by the next P2P "upgrade."

A vaccine for AIDS is still years away, warns a new report, with progress being hampered by a lack of scientific, political and economic interest.

"The world is inching toward a vaccine, when we should be making strides," Berkley said during the launch of the report at the XV International AIDS conference in Bangkok, Thailand. "The single biggest obstacle is that vaccine development is that it is not a top scientific, political and economic priority."

He adds that less than one per cent of global spending on health product research and less than three per cent of all money devoted to AIDS goes towards developing a vaccine for the disease.

This certainly isn't a new or unique story, but Broadband Reports has yet another story about ridiculous and pointless copy protection. The copy protection scheme, called Starforce, appears to be mainly used for protecting certain PC games from being copied. Of course, like so many copy protection schemes it does this by assuming all legitimate customers are criminals. Not only that, but it installs itself without letting you know (not even in the EULA), hides itself on your PC, slows down the PC, causes all sorts of other problems and errors, and is nearly impossible to remove -- even after the protected application has been removed. In other words, it's just as bad as some adware/spyware out there -- except that it's screwing things up for legitimate customers who actually went out and bought the games in question. As the article points out, every one of those games is available in a cracked version online, so this "copy protection" scheme doesn't actually prevent copies. It only serves to anger legitimate customers. Why is anyone using this product on their software?

A district court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant a preliminary injunction against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems for legitimate purchasers of the system.

The court found that third party service techs who used the key without StorageTek's permission "circumvented" to gain access to the copyrighted code in violation of the DMCA, even though they had the explicit permission of the purchasers to fix their machines.

If it stands up on appeal, it means StorageTek has a monopoly on service for all of its machines. No independent vendor will be able to compete with them for service contracts because no independent vendor will be authorized to "access" the maintenance code necessary to debug the machine.

The Court also found, in a bizarre twist of logic, that while it is legal to load a program into RAM for repairs, it's illegal to allow it to persist in RAM while you fix it.

Blaming the media and the end of all that is good, George Michael decided this week to shut down the chat section of his web site. Nasty comments about Michael looking tubby, old and tired also played a role in the decision, but Michael stressed that it was the media and the end of all that is good that were mostly to blame for the decision.

"I'm afraid that, having visited the forums on a regular basis over the past few months, simply to see how you guys thought the album/ interviews/promotion were going, I have decided to close them down," Michael or a bot purporting to be he of Wham! fame writes. "As many of you will know, much of my reasoning for the future is to stay away from the negativity of the media."

So while Michael is called "fat, tired and old" in some places, there is not a lot of negativity. Sadly, we checked. There really isn't much negativity at all. The chat forums are mostly loaded with poems and sex proposals for Michael.

After being berated by Microsoft for attempting to sell Linux on some of the company's desktop systems, Dell has decided to stop selling Windows altogether. CEO Michael Dell said, in a fictional conference call with reporters, "Microsoft is in no position to push us around. By selling Linux, we will save each customer nearly $200 per computer. If Microsoft would like to continue selling Windows through Dell, it will need to ask very nicely and accept that we have the right to sell other operating systems."

Microsoft has reacted angrily to the news. Steve Ballmer is in the hospital recovering from choking on his breakfast after receiving the news, but a spokesperson says that "Microsoft is not impressed with Dell's actions and will be taking anti-competitive action to ensure that the hardware company changes its mind."