Big brother may or may not be watching, but a new form of interactive entertainment will allow participants to leverage Britain’s 4.0 million plus closed circuit cameras in a bid to catch criminals and win money.

According to the Daily Mail, Internet Eyes is scheduled to launch next month and has already drawn the ire of civil rights groups, who worry the activity could lead to civil rights abuses.  One member of the opposition, Charles Farrior, labeled it “an appalling idea,” and worried it would create a “snooper’s paradise.”

Those watching cameras—in real-time—will be able to click a button every time they witness something they deem suspicious. Then, a message will be relayed to a camera operator, along with a still image from the camera. The operator will decide whether or not to take action and will notify the “player” if a crime has taken place or not.

Those participating will be blocked out after three incorrect alerts in a month, though additional alert opportunities can be purchased. As a further safeguard, actual locations of the cameras will not be known to those watching at home.

The article notes that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras—one for every 14 inhabitants.

If you want to trade in your used games in Broward County, Florida, prepare to give up your thumbprint.

The Broward-Palm Beach New Times reports that the local sheriff's office began requiring game traders to submit to thumbprinting in October, 2008:

Broward County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Kayla Concepcion said the new requirement comes straight from the Florida Legislature, which enacted a law... that treated video games like second-hand goods sold at pawn shops. Now any store buying used video games has to collect the thumb prints, along with a bunch of other personal info about the seller.

The Labour Goverment of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with plans to monitor all Internet usage in the U.K.

Britain's Conservative Party is against to the plan and that opposition is the basis for t-enterprise's latest online political parody, Hands Off Our Data!

In the game players assume the role of Conservative leader David Cameron. Wielding an old school raygun, players must blast data mining spiders bearing the likenesses of Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith while allowing e-mail packets and search engine traffic to pass by.

Last year's angry consumer backlash over Spore's intrusive DRM apparently convinced the suits at Electronic Arts that they had made a mess of things.

Edge Online reports that the publisher is now offering a software tool which can be used by PC gamers to remove authorization limits. This will allow computer games to be re-installed or moved to other PCs without limitation.

In addition to the bad press, the Spore DRM situation spawned at least one class action lawsuit against EA.

Download EA's De-authorization Management Tool (DMT) here.

Irreverent video game site Destructoid is cleaning up a bit of a mess this morning.

According to an e-mail we received from Destructoid editor Niero, a hacker cracked the site's user database over the weekend:

This is the letter every web site operator hopes he never has to write: it seems a glitch in our web site allowed someone to exploit the database this weekend. We have confirmed that the intruder succesfully obtained everyone's username and password.

As soon as we were alerted we shut down all servers, changed all passwords, took our forums offline, and notified everyone via email... We're doing everything we can do prevent this from ever happening again and deeply apologize for this incovenience.

On the bright side, we intentionally store very little personally identifiable information. However, you may still be at risk: If you frequently use the same password for other web services... we strongly urge you to update your password ASAP...

Destructoid has reported the incident to IC3 (FBI's internet crime complaint
arm)... We are also offering a $1,000 award to anyone with information that leads us to prosecuting the intruder...

There will be no hiding behind a screen name for Chinese gamers, apparently.

According to brief report in People's Daily Online, China's notoriously Internet-repressive government will begin requiring online gamers to register using their real names.

A government official, Zhang Yijun, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication's Technology and Digital Publication Department, is cited as PDO's source.

Zhang also indicated that the operations of four online game companies have been suspended after Chinese government inspectors discovered that their software did not contain the required anti-addiction system.

UPDATE: IncGamers has more info:

...the real name registration system does not mean that gamers cannot use screen-names, but rather that their online gaming accounts must be linked to their real world identification number, which is issued by the government.

[A Chinese gamer] went on to explain that linking a gamer's online account to their ID number means the government can keep track of how long underage gamers are playing. Minors are limited to playing for three hours per day...

Following years of suing individuals for sharing music on peer-to-peer networks, the music industry has decided to try a new tactic.

They'll try to have your Internet service cut off, instead.

The Wall Street Journal reports that music biz trade group the RIAA will shift its anti-piracy strategy from individuals to ISPs:

The [RIAA] said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.

Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

According to the WSJ, the RIAA has filed some 35,000 lawsuits against private citizens since 2002. Despite the shift in strategy, the organization says it plans to continue with those suits already in progess.

CNet's Declan McCullough reports that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has an anti-consumer track record when it comes to technology.

In the past the Democratic VP nominee-apparent has stood with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on copyright issues.

From the Cnet report:

[Biden] has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders... ranks toward the bottom of CNET's Technology Voters' Guide, [his] anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP [encryption]...

 

Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs...

 

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits...

 

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)

McCullough reports that Biden has "steadfastly refused" to answer Cnet's questions on his tech voting record.

GP: It's ironic that Biden has chosen to portray himself as an intellectual property rights champion. He has twice been outed for plagiarizing.

In 2005 the ESA announced that each of the three next-gen consoles would include ESRB rating-based parental controls. Nintendo, however, seems keen on taking the monitoring concept further.

According to the latest in a series of interviews with the Wii development team, the new system will have a "Play History" feature which tracks how long gamers play as well as what they are playing.

"Rather than the console turning itself off automatically to ensure it is not played for more than an hour a day, it seemed much better to allow parents to use the Play History to discuss with their children how much they are using the console," explained Tomoaki Kuroume, who oversees software user interfaces. "The decision to make it impossible to delete this data was a separate subject for debate."

"Even if a kid wakes up in the middle of the night and sneaks down to play games, that will show up on the Play History!" added Takashi Aoyama, manager of the development group behind Wii’s operating system.