In the past week, Verizon Wireless has been pushing a Bing search engine application onto BlackBerry phones, without the owners consent.

Microsoft and Verizon signed a $500 million USD pact last year, in which the wireless carrier agreed to make Bing the default search engine for the browser in most of its phones. BlackBerry owners had always had the chance to select their own default search engine, however.

Many BlackBerry users now have a Bing icon on their phones, which is a link to install the app, although it cannot be deleted, only hidden. Worst of all, it was added without consent of the user.

Verizon has posted information on how to hide the icon after many complained but added: "We think Verizon Wireless BlackBerry users will love Bing, but we are passionate about customer choice."

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BGR has revealed some new specs for the Android-based Motorola Devour, Verizon's third known device running the Google operating system.

Formerly dubbed "Calgary," the Devour will likely launch in two colorways, black and silver, with the silver casing a new development.

As for the operating system, the new leak seems to confirm that the Devour will run Android 2.1, so far only confirmed for the Nexus One, and will have MOTOBLUR as well, Motorola's Android user interface which connects social networking, emails and RSS feeds.

The phone will only work on Verizon, having support for Verizon's own EV-DO mobile broadband network. Wi-fi and Bluetooth are standard as well. The device will include a slider QWERTY keypad, optical trackpad, a 3.2MP camera, 3.5 mm headset jack, a GPS receiver, and a microSD memory card slot.

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China has arrested over almost 5400 people in 2009 in its latest Internet pornography crackdown, calling the new tougher policy a key piece of China's "state security."

In the last month, the Chinese government began offering up to 10,000 yuan (about $1500 USD) to anyone who reported sites featuring porn, and 9000 sites were taken down alongside the arrest of 5394 citizens.

For 2010, China says it will "strengthen punishment for Internet operators that violate the laws and regulations...severely punish operations that have serious problems with harmful information".

"Purifying the Internet environment and cracking down on Internet crimes is related to long-term state security," added the ministry, via the AFP.

While the number arrested may seem large, it is important to note that China has 338 million Internet users, and thousands of porn sites and operators remain active today.

Porn, certain Google searches, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all blocked in the nation.

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Rock star Bono, of the group U2 made some interesting quotes today, in regards to illegal file sharing and the music and movie industries.

"The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files," says Bono, adding that in just a few years, bandwidth will be so abundant, and connections so fast that entire movies can be downloaded in under a minute, regardless of size.

"A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators -- in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can't live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us," he added.

Bono does believe that Internet content can be tracked, and cited the US' effort to stop child pornography as well as China's to suppress online gaming and pornography.

"Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four percent of gross domestic product," Bono concluded.

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Redbox has announced that they have set a new one-day rental record, seeing 2 million DVDs rented from their kiosks on New Year's Eve.

The previous record was only 170,000 rentals, and the company adds the most popular titles were District 9 and Paranormal Activity.

"With many Americans celebrating New Year's Eve at home and many more resolving to save money in 2010, Redbox proved a great way to do both," added senior VP of marketing and customer experience Gary Cohen, via VB.

Redbox has over 22,000 kiosk nationwide and says that they saw 350 million rentals total in 2009.

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Apple has won their appeal in a class-action lawsuit that was aiming to hold the company responsible for possible hearing loss caused by iPods.

The appeals court said that the plaintiffs failed to show that iPod use posed "unreasonable risk of noise-induced hearing loss."

Apple has sold over 220 million iPods since 2001, and each unit comes with a warning telling users to listen to their music and movies at "safe" volume levels.

"The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use," Senior Judge David Thompson added. "At most, the plaintiffs plead a potential risk of hearing loss not to themselves, but to other unidentified iPod users," he concluded.

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Jack Yates, an employee of an LA DVD duplication company, made a private copy of Paramount's 2008 flop The Love Guru before the movie hit theaters, and decided to distribute it to his family and some friends.

One promotional copy was supposed to be created for the Jay Leno show, but Yates made two copies instead. He was captured on surveillance camera however, and in 2008, Yates pleaded guilty to the theft and was sentenced to six months in prison.

One of the friends he distributed the film to decided to upload it to public torrent tracker Mininova, and this week Mischa Wynhausen has pleaded guilty to uploading the copy and was sentenced to three years probation.

While Wynhausen's was much more severe than that of Yates, Yates initially lied to authorities and denied the crime. They then promptly showed him video of his theft. Wynhausen cooperated from the outset.

Regardless of the pre-release upload, the Love Guru was a complete flop, both critically and at the box office where it only made $40 million worldwide with a production budget over $60 million.

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The latest rumor from the boys over at BoyGeniusReport is that the upcoming Nexus One Android phone will have multiple models, the first of which will be for T-Mobile users (confirmed) and the second will have native AT&T 3G support.

The AT&T model will a "second unlocked" version, says the report, with the first model being locked to T-Mobile.

Confirmation will come on January 5th.

Pic via Engadget:

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The James Cameron epic Avatar has already surpassed the $1 billion milestone globally, making it the fourth-biggest movie of all-time, in just 16 days of release.

According to figures from Fox, the movie has hit $1.02 billion, with about $350 million or so being domestic box office sales. The distributor expects overall domestic sales to surpass $500 million.

The top three movies of all time are Cameron's Titanic at $1.8 billion, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at $1.12 billion, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at $1.07 billion. Avatar is expected to move into 2nd place by the end of the month.

"This is like a freight train out of control," added Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston. "It just keeps on going."

Expected to add to foreign sales is the fact that Avatar has just begun playing in China, and will reach Italy next week.

Avatar had a reported production budget of $230 million with a marketing budget of $130 million.

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