Nintendo bolsters anti-piracy drive

Nintendo has tightened the bolts on its anti-piracy measures by unveiling the 3DS handheld to ensure that gamers only play legal games, reports Techtree.

The new platform is reportedly very difficult to crack when compared to the previous versions, as it is reportedly impervious to cracks from illegal downloaders.

Ian Curran, executive vice-president of THQ, says: “The problem with the DS market in the last few years, particularly with DS Lite, is that it's just been attacked by piracy. It's made it almost impossible to shift any significant volume. The DSi combated it a little bit, but the 3DS has taken a step further.”

In a sharp rebuke of the Bush-era crackdown on foul language on broadcast television and radio, a federal appeals court has struck down the government's near-zero-tolerance indecency policy as a violation of the 1st Amendment protection of free speech, writes the Los Angeles Times.

The ruling is a major victory for the broadcast TV networks, which jointly sued the Federal Communications Commission in 2006.

The case was triggered by unscripted expletives uttered by Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie on awards shows earlier in the decade, and the court's decision calls into question the FCC's regulation of foul language and other indecent content on the public airwaves.

Legal experts sympathetic to copyright owners as well as those known for supporting technology companies are criticising a federal judge's decision to lower a jury award in a high-profile lawsuit about file sharing, states CNET News.

A year ago, a jury found college student Joel Tenenbaum liable for wilful copyright infringement for sharing 30 songs, and later set a damages award of $675 000. US District Judge Nancy Gertner dramatically reduced the award to $67 500.

Gertner wrote in her decision that the original amount was too high and "unconstitutional". With regard to statutory damages in a copyright case, her decision is believed by some legal experts to be unprecedented.