The Register has posted a story stating that a German court has hit Rapidshare with a 24M Euro fine. They stated that Rapidshare should have checked what music files were being shared on its service more closely. This ruling effectively places the copyright policing function on the service and not on the copyright holder. The RIAA I'm sure will enjoy this ruling.

The original article can be found here:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/24/rapidshare_gema/

Researchers have uncovered a fully-functional marketplace for the building and selling of botnets.

Security firm Finjan said that the site allows criminals to obtain everything from malware and data, to networks of infected PCs.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at Finjan, described the new site an "eBay for stolen data".

"It is basically a hacker-to-hacker platform to provide everything you want, " he said. "You do not need to go elsewhere. You get everything you need to do the business."

The sale of malware and botnets is hardly new, but the new site shows the growing sophistication of such markets, and the ease with which cyber criminals can enter the botnet field.

The complete article can be found here :  http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2244247/botnet-market-uncovered