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LulzSec's targets included companies such as Nintendo, Sony, Bethesda and 20th Century Fox, as well as government-run organisations such as the CIA and SOCA, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Ryan "Kayla" Cleary, Jake "Topiary" Davis, Mustafa "Tflow" al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd had all previously pleaded guilty to a number of hacking-related charges.

Cleary admitted additional charges of hacking the US Air Force and possessing indecent images of babies and children, BBC News reported. He was jailed for 32 months.

Ackroyd was sentenced for 30 months and Davis for two years. Al Bassam was given a 20-month suspended sentence.

"It's clear from the evidence that they intended to achieve extensive national and international notoriety and publicity," prosecutor Sandip Patel claimed.

"This is not about young immature men messing about. They are at the cutting edge of a contemporary and emerging species of criminal offender known as a cybercriminal."

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For all the talk of digital piracy these days, a team of European researchers wondered if the battle lines are so clearly drawn, or whether the situation is more nuanced than some may believe. They began a large-scale analysis of the sharing of computer games on BitTorrent and uncovered some hard data that had been previously absent from the conversation.

This research will be published in the International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication.

Anders Drachen of the Department of Communication and Psychology, at Aalborg University and Robert Veitch of the Department of IT Management at Copenhagen Business School in Frederiksberg, Denmark decided to focus their study on video game piracy, exclusively. Using transparent practices, the two launched a large-scale investigation into the BitTorrent sharing of these games during a three-month period between 2010 and 2011, and included information on 173 video games.

"First and foremost, P2P (peer to peer) game piracy is extraordinarily prevalent and geographically distributed [at least it was during the period analyzed]," said Drachen in a press statement.

"However, the numbers in our investigation suggest that previously reported magnitudes in game piracy are too high."

Straight away, Drachen and Veitch began to notice a few discrepancies in the reports issued by industry trade organizations. For instance, it wasn't only the first person shooter games that were being pirated, which is a general misconception by the anti-piracy side.

According to their data, all kinds of games were pirated, including games for children, family games and large commercial titles. What's more, Drachen and Veitch found fewer games being passed around on BitTorrent than industry officials have previously estimated.

Games such as TRON Evolution, The Sims 3: Late Night, Call of Duty Black Ops, NBA 2k11 and many others were all accessed and shared by a pool of 12.6 million unique visitors in the three month window. These "pirates" were located in more than 250 countries around the world. Of the 173 total games the pair researched, the ten most popular titles were responsible for nearly four percent of all traffic. The researchers also found that only 20 countries of the 250 they observed on the service were responsible for delivering content to the file-sharing site. This suggests the piracy issue may be more focused than some have previously thought.

Those countries responsible for driving a large portion of the piracy include Croatia, Greece, Romania and Ukraine. The most popular video games being traded during the researcher's three-month period saw an average of 536,727 unique peers.

Drachen and Veitch note that though it's much easier to pirate PC video games, the recent shift by some game distributors to cloud-based systems could help reduce some of these piracy issues in the future. It's a bit of a Catch 22 for these distributors, of course. Only those gamers with high-speed broadband connections can play these cloud-based games. It's this same high-topped connection that could allow the same gamer to share illegal copies of games.

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Funds amassed from the Kickstarter campaign will be used for editing, a musical score, voice-over narration, the acquisition of licensed archival clips, motion graphics, and to secure interviews related to the next generation of consoles.

"I hope that once we're done, Video Games: The Movie will stand as a benchmark for all other movies about the games industry; and that it will help dispel some of the nagging falsehoods that ignorantly plague game makers and players, and keep them from receiving mainstream acceptance like other art forms such as films, music and books," director Jeremy Snead said in a statement.

"In the end, our hope is that this film will help further legitimize the industry and the culture to those who continue to disregard it without really spending time to learn about it," Snead added.

The film features interviews with some of the industry's most experienced and influential designers, celebrities, and executives, including Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau, Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton, and a long list of others.

Video Games: The Movie also shot a number of scenes on-location at industry events like Comic-Con, Pax, and E3 and studio shoots at places like Gearbox Software, 343 Industries, and Epic Games, among others.

Video Games: The Movie is expected to premiere this summer in Los Angeles, before being released theatrically and on home video and video-on-demand through a distributor yet to be announced.

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In the list of unlikely video game controllers, a cello is up there, probably next to celery stalks and maracas.

Yet Joost van Dongen's Cello Fortress takes up that challenge, blending the lines between game performance art, classical music and video games. The game challenges the cello player to attack four other controller-welding players using only musical notes.

The below video explains the Cello Fortress control scheme: each type of note produces a different kind of attack. A sequence of fast high notes fires machine guns at your enemies, while playing slow chords brings the heat of homing missiles. Since something like "slow chords" can cover a wide variety of notes, the cellist can be creative with his or her music selection while still playing along.

There are also more complicated strings of notes that bring out the heavier weapons, but since they are preprogrammed, the other team can hear them before they've ended and dodge an attack. This adds a deeper level of strategy to the gameplay, both for the cellist and the other players.

"I can play the melody faster or slower to make the attack happen earlier or later. From a gameplay perspective, one would assume I always attack as quickly as possible, but my goal is actually not purely to win: I want to entertain the players and the audience. So I sometimes deliberately let them live to give them a more fun experience," van Dongen said in his blog. Just like in a film, the best moments are not when the hero dies, but when he narrowly escapes.

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If you regularly play both console games and PC games, you'll likely be fully aware that one platform is much, much more suited to games that require you to precisely aim at things. Unfortunately, most console games do not support a full keyboard-and-mouse setup, so often times you're left wishing the right analog stick would stop being so floaty. However, for certain console games, a light gun ends up being the true savior of aiming, but here in 2013, most games don't utilize any sort of peripheral. If you long for the day when you could aim as well on a console as you do on a PC, a new Kickstarter project might be the answer.

The Delta Six controller isn't just a light gun, but an extremely detailed, open-source, Arduino-based gun controller. Not only does the Delta Six ably perform the point-and-shoot duties of a light gun, but adds motion control and regular button-based movement into the mix so you can travel around a map.

The controller also incorporates some sensors and intelligently placed buttons to make you feel like you're operating a real gun. To reload, you tap the gun's clip, rather than press a standard controller's face button. If you want to zoom in, you look down the Delta Six's scope, and an IR sensor detects your presence and will cause the game to zoom. If you want to steady your shot while aiming, you can press a button on the butt of the gun into your shoulder, which will activate a breath-hold feature. In order to swing the camera around, you simply need to twist the gun left or right. Aiming is quite close to a 1:1 ratio.

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When we released our very first game, Game Dev Tycoon (for Mac, Windows and Linux) yesterday, we did something unusual and as far as I know unique. We released a cracked version of the game ourselves, minutes after opening our Store.

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail…



Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high change to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.

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Some of the responses I found online (identities obscured to protect the guilty):



And another user:

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Over several hours, House opinion on the bill boiled down to whether the redesigned CISPA successfully addressed criticism from civil libertarians, and whether the threat of cyberattacks was grave enough to justify overriding lingering concerns.

Representative Candice Miller (R-MI), a CISPA supporter, painted a dire picture of North Korean hackers taking down the US power grid, and Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) warned that "our nation is under attack." Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) went so far as to urge passage with a comparison to the Boston Marathon bombings: "In the case of Boston they were real bombs, in this case they're digital bombs. And these digital bombs are on their way."

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The bill still has a long road before becoming law. CISPA initially passed in the House last year, but it wasn't taken up by the Senate. Now, it will once again be up to the Senate to craft and pass a companion bill. Whether Obama will support the bill is another matter. While the White House has said repeatedly that it will work with legislators, a statement released yesterday said the Obama Administration would veto CISPA if changes weren't made. Now, it's up to the Senate to determine what its version of the proposed law will look like — and whether it will actually make it through this time.

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Turning up the pressure, BREIN has now seized the bank account of the proxy site operator, which he discovered yesterday when checking his balance. Because Tristan wasn’t informed about the seizure he decided to contact his bank, who replied with the following message:

“A bailiff has seized your bank account. As a result the funds in your bank account are currently unavailable, until we receive instructions from the bailiff on how to proceed.”

After requesting more information the bank informed Tristan that his funds had been seized on behalf of BREIN.

The anti-piracy group confirmed the seizure today and told Tweakers that it relates to penalties connected to the preliminary injunctions handed down earlier. Since Tristan kept the site online and refused to pay the penalties, BREIN has now come to collect.

But that’s not the end of the matter.

Later this month BREIN and Tristan will go to trial. BREIN wants the proxy operator to shut down his site Kuiken.co. In addition, they want the court to prevent him from linking to other proxies or encouraging the public to access The Pirate Bay in any other way.

In February, Tristan started a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his legal costs, and he has since raised more than 7,500 euros. The campaign ends in four days and it’s unsure whether any of the defense fund money has been caught up in the seizure.

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Tristan explains that the Paypal issue means that he doesn’t have acces to his legal funds. He believes BREIN is actively obstructing his legal defense.

“The fact that they want to get their hands on the money for my defense makes clear that they don’t want me to defend myself. For the very same reason they probably didn’t send me the amended complaint about the court case which starts at June 5,” Tristan told TorrentFreak.

“This latest move and the fact that they chose for ex parte procedures in the past makes quite clear they don’t want the judge to hear me. You might call it obstruction,” he adds.

“Unfortunately my Indiegogo campaign doesn’t function at this moment, because of the problems with my PayPal account. People can send donations directly to my lawyer. (Account name: Wisemen B.V. IBAN: NL78 ABNA 0422 3081 53 Subject: Verdediging Tristan Pol.)”

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ReDigi billed itself as the first legal way to resell music bought online - but soon provoked the ire of record labels.

It was sued by Capitol Records in January 2012, and on Monday a New York judge said ReDigi was making unauthorised copies of music.

Unlike physical music CDs, Judge Richard Sullivan ruled that the "first sale doctrine" did not apply.

The doctrine is a long-established rule which allows the reselling of goods to a new owner. In other words, selling a CD once you no longer want it.

But in the digital world, where duplication is much easier, the first sale doctrine was not appropriate, the judge said.

"It is simply impossible that the same 'material object' can be transferred over the internet," he wrote in his ruling.

"ReDigi facilitates and profits from the sale of copyrighted commercial recordings, transferred in their entirety, with a likely detrimental impact on the primary market for these goods."

ReDigi argues that their system means the original download is removed from the seller's computer.

The company asks users to download proprietary software, which verifies if a file was bought legally. If the song checks out, it is then erased from the seller's hard drive and uploaded to ReDigi's computer servers.

ReDigi's software is designed to prevent sellers from reinstalling a sold song to their computer, and offers users the chance to check their libraries for illegal music.

But the judge said: "It is beside the point that the original phonorecord no longer exists. It matters only that a new phonorecord has been created."

[...]

Capitol Records, whose catalogue includes Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me and The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, sought $150,000 (£99,000) for each infringement.

The judge did not set an amount for damages, instead inviting both firms to submit statements regarding the next steps in the case.

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The notion of being able to sell on your unwanted digital goods is a concept that has caught the eyes of, among others, Amazon and Apple.

Both companies have been granted patents relating to the selling or transferring of digital goods - but while both offer cloud storage services for music, neither has yet set up a reselling function.

"Both Amazon and Apple have been working on patents, which are insurance policies for both of them in my view," said Joe Wikert from O'Reilly Media, speaking to Reuters.

"They have been sitting on the sidelines watching the ReDigi case."

Mr Wickert added that the ruling was "not a good first step" for the digital reselling industry.

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