Hackers are using the newest DRM technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player to install spyware, adware, dialers and computer viruses on unsuspecting PC users.

According to Panda Software, both Trojans take advantage of the new Windows anti-piracy technology to trick users into downloading spyware and adware applications.

Ben Edelman, a Harvard University student who tracks and comments on the spyware scourge, also spotted the spyware-laden media files. In a research note, Edelman posted a demonstration of the exploits and warned that users with older versions of Windows will receive "confusing and misleading messages" regarding the DRM licenses.

"All told, the infection added 58 folders, 786 files and an incredible 11,915 registry entries to my test computer. Not one of these programs had showed me any license agreement, nor had I consented to their installation on my computer," he added.

The District Court of Munich has ordered Fujitsu Siemens Computers (Holding) BV to pay a copyright levy on new PCs.

VG Wort had filed a suit against Germany's largest PC maker, Fujitsu Siemens, seeking €30 (US$41) for each new computer sold in the country. The court agreed to a €12 copyright levy.

Germany is one of several European countries that, for decades, has been collecting special copyright levies on the sale of analog copying devices, such as blank audio and video cassettes. The levies are intended to compensate rights holders for lost royalties from private copying of music, images and moves.

Chief Executive Officer Bernd Bischoff called the copyright levy "a de facto tax on PCs," which has a negative impact on sales to consumers.

The makers of computer programs that secretly spy on what people do with their home PCs could face hefty fines in California.

The state's Consumer Protection Against Spyware Act bans the installation of software that takes control of another computer.

It also requires companies and websites to disclose whether their systems will install spyware.

Consumers are able to seek up to $1,000 in damages if they think they have fallen victim to the intrusive software.

A recent survey by Earthlink and Webroot found that 90% of PCs are infested with the surreptitious software and that, on average, each one is harbouring 28 separate spyware programs.

"Typically the assumption has been that spyware sneaks onto computers, or users are unaware of what they have agreed to install," said Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst at antivirus vendor Sophos. "But some people actually do knowingly install adware because they want to use a particular application that comes bundled with it. Some just aren't particularly concerned by adware's presence on their computers."

IMesh, maker of a popular file-sharing application, recently began bundling an application called Marketscore. Some would view Marketscore as a privacy nightmare: The program routes all of a user's web traffic through Marketscore's own servers, where it is then analyzed to "create research reports on internet trends and e-commerce activities," according to Marketscore.

But some users of iMesh didn't seem to be troubled by the actions of Marketscore. Users at iMesh forums chided those who complained, posting messages stating that "without spyware there's no such thing as free software."

According to its privacy policy, Marketscore also monitors users' online behavior by "routing your internet activities through our service and logging information about the web pages that you visit and the actions that you take, such as the purchases and transactions you make, the pace and style with which you enter information online and request web pages, including whether you click on links, type in web-page names or use shortcut keys."

Peer-to-peer program Kazaa is the No. 1 spyware threat on the Internet, according to Computer Associates International.

Through its PestPatrol research, CA found that Kazaa posed a greater threat than other programs in its top five spyware list because of its widespread popularity. Kazaa claims that its software has been downloaded 214 million times.

CA gave Kazaa a high "clot factor," its measure of how much a program slows a machine by adding unnecessary registry entries and directories. However, classifying a popular application like Kazaa as spyware is a delicate matter, and CA admits this creates difficulties in attaching labels.

Microsoft has started implementing features in upgrades to Windows XP which specifically prevent users of pirated keys from upgrading parts of the operating system.

Owners of pirated keys in Western Europe tell the INQUIRER that scheme has now kicked in. What this means, for example, is that if you upgrade the Media Player to version 10, and you're using a pirated copy of XP, you'll lose functionality on your machine.

Microsoft said in Dublin that it would launch the scheme in China at the end of October, and throughout Europe early next year. But it appears to have implemented it early.

Pirate users are being invited to either validate their copies of the operating system, or to download and pay for a full version of Windows XP.

Transitive Corp. of Los Gatos, California, claims its QuickTransit software allows applications to run "transparently" on multiple hardware platforms, including Macs, PCs, and numerous servers and mainframes.

The company claimed QuickTransit eliminates the need to port software from one platform to another. Software applications written for one platform will run on almost any other, without any modifications to the underlying program.

In demonstrations to press and analysts, the company has shown a graphically demanding game -- a Linux version of Quake III -- running on an Apple PowerBook.

QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor. It requires no user intervention: It kicks in automatically when a non-native application is launched.

Weidel said in most cases, QuickTransit allows translated applications to run faster on new hardware than it did on the original platform, thanks to the speed of today's machines compared with those made a decade ago.

Looks like Microsoft has yet again patented plainly obvious technologies that have existed for years and years. No, I'm not talking about their patent of the sudo command. This time Microsoft has been granted a patent for nothing less than using your keyboard to navigate a web page!

Patent 6,785,865 - "Discoverability and navigation of hyperlinks via tabs." From the abstract, "A user may discover and navigate among hyperlinks through the use of a keyboard. For example, a user may press a tab key to discover and navigate to a first hyperlink that is part of a hypertext document. The first hyperlink is, in response, given focus and a focus shape is drawn around the text or graphics for the hot region of the hyperlink. If the user again presses the tab key, the next hyperlink is given focus and a focus shape..."

Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen has decrypted and published the key that Apple's wireless hi-fi bridge, Airport Express, uses to protect music streams. He's also released the source code to a small Windows command-line tool he calls JustePort. In essence his crack opens the door for other applications to broadcast music to your hi-fi over a home WLAN network using Express, rather than just iTunes 4.6. For users on Linux machines, or with WMA or OGG format files, this could be a boon, as iTunes supports neither format out of the box.

JusteForte is the third in a series of endeavors by the Mac-using Norwegian to enjoy Apple's services. Johansen has stressed that the tools simply restore rights that Apple and the recording industry giants removed when they devised iTunes Music Store. He has consistently warned citizens against accepting DRM music, as it obliges the user to enter into a contract in which the terms may change at any time.

Johansen co-authored the DeCSS program which circumvented the DVD encryption scheme. He was acquitted after two trials in Norway earlier this year.

"Microsoft was granted a patent Tuesday for the Delayed Uploading of User Registration Data, which covers storing information collected from a user locally and transmitting it to a remote system once a connection is established." How is this possibly non-obvious to anyone with at least a tenth of a brain? Looks like more of the same where engineers are being pushed to patent anything, just because that's what companies do these days.