The Smashing Pumpkins have released their final album in MP3 format, mainly because Virgin has “denied it the support it deserves.” ZDNet has more.

The RIAA confiscated a student’s PC and peripherals and intends to proscute for the spreading of MP3s. “He was advocating other people to download the music and upload music he didn’t have,” said James Alexander, an OSU assistant director. “He’d been advertising in chat rooms and we decided to notify the police.” Discussion and link courtesy of Slashdot.

CNet’s customary week in review is posted. “Both Apple Computer and Microsoft this week released the latest versions of their separate computer operating systems, yet critics were pointing out problems and challenges even before consumers got a chance to tear open the shrink-wrapped boxes.“

C|Net reports on the changes around the office, as well as NASDAQ, caused by the shift from pen and paper.

More USB drivers, as well as ARM updates in Linux 2.2.18pre9 (from LWN).

One reason for many European ebusiness failures, says ZDNet.uk, is that only about half the companies trying to move their businesses online have any kind of business plan at all, and the rest often have shaky ones.

Despite (or perhaps because of) MPAA efforts, the infamous DeCSS code continues to be posted all over the Net, often in places where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to pop up. The latest “unlikely” sighting is this page on the legoland.co.uk Web site. Update: Sad to say, the Legoland DeCSS page disappeared Sunday evening. But copies are to sure to pop up on other corporate servers. We’ll keep and eye out for them — and if you see one, please let us know.

A new technology uses users’ computers to retransmit streaming audio and video, which may make live streaming less of a bandwidth hog. But, Wired wonders, why would anyone sign up to let their computer do retransmissions?

Wired looks into reasons some of the biggest magazines haven’t started putting anything online besides subscription blurbs. Yet.

The Register’s take on various hackers’ responses to the SDMI $10,000 prize offered to the first person to crack the music industry’s latest proposed encryption scheme.