Following an FCC investigation into the overall industry, Google has slashed the fee for Nexus One owners who decide to drop their contract early.

The early termination fee, or as Google calls it, the "equipment recovery fee," is now dropped from $350 USD to $150 USD for T-Mobile users who purchased the phone but no longer want their T-Mobile contract. The $150 is on top of the $200 that T-Mobile charges for breaking the contract early.

Says Google: "Google's overall financial philosophy with regard to operator service plans remains unchanged: We make no profit from commissions from operators or from equipment recovery fees, and our recovery fees are based on operator charges to Google for early termination of service."

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Christopher Poole, founder of the infamous meme site 4chan came out this week claiming that Verizon was "explicitly blocking" access to the site, and it appears Poole may have been right.

Jeff Nelson, a public relations employee for the ISP said via Twitter this morning: "2 of 4Chan affiliates were staging for attacks." However, "They're green-lighted for tonight's network update."

Poole's full post earlier had read: "Over the past 72 hours, we've been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards," Poole wrote. "After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic... only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. After an hour and a half on the phone, we've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are "explicitly blocked."

Verizon had refused comment until today except to say that they were being bombarded with calls about the issue, adds PCWorld.

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Sharp and Samsung have decided to end all ongoing patent infringement disputes over LCD displays this week, although it is unclear what the financial details are of the agreement.

"We have a confidentiality agreement but we can say these conditions will be in favor of Sharp," added Sharp spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama.

Sharp filed the first suit in 2007, in the U.S., claiming that Samsung infringed on five of its patents relating to LCD modules. The suit then expanded to South Korea, wherein Samsung countersued for patent infringement, as well. The suits expanded to Europe in 2008, before finally being taken in front of the International Trade Commission.

The new settlement includes patent cross-licensing agreements.

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The Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, which sold out within hours when it launched over the holiday season, is finally available for sale again, says the company, with the company ramping up supply and making the device available in-store and online.

If you are looking to buy it in-store, B&N has created an online locator to see if the store near you has any in stock. Check that here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/instore/.

Online, the device is available for $259 USD with free shipping.

Additionally, current owners can now download Nook firmware version 1.2, which adds the ability to browse "books, magazines, and newspapers via Wi-Fi inside Barnes & Noble stores," says CNet.

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Chinese officials have announced this week the bust of a large hacking ring that was allegedly the nation's largest distributor of hacking tools.

The Black Hawk Safety Net, which used the site 3800cc.com as a front, allegedly made $1 million in income in 2009 from 12,000 subscribers.

Three admins were arrested as part of the raid. Strangely, the arrests are said to have taken place three months ago, but only reported this week.

Black Hawk was known more as a hacking "training" group, mainly through the sale of malicious software and instructions on how to use them. In 2007, the group made the news for helping create a virus that took down corporate and government systems in Hubei.

Along with the arrest of 29-year-old Li Qiang and 28-year-old Zhang Lei (the third man was not identified), 1.7 million yuan ($250,000 USD) in assets were seized, mainly in cash and computer equipment.

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Hannover House, the video and film distributor has announced today a new deal with Google that will launch a video rental and VOD channel for Hannover on YouTube.

Starting this week, the channel will have 100 films from Hannover House, Elite Entertainment, FOCUSFilms, and Plaza Entertainment.

"YouTube and Google are uniquely positioned to reinvent the entire video-on-demand consumer model," says Eric Parkinson, C.E.O. "Their reach is unsurpassed, and their consumer pricing model is extremely competitive, in many cases beating traditional video rental costs. With more and more consumers moving toward video-on-demand as a convenient way to view movies, the Hannover House movie channel venture with YouTube will prove invaluable to our company."

"We believe that video-on-demand will continue to grow over the next few years into a major revenue source for the company. The technology has reached the point where films can be quickly and safely streamed directly to consumers, and this creates an immediacy not previously available. Additionally, video-on-demand eliminates the inventory, freight and storage costs associated with hard goods items such as DVDs and Blu-ray units."

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BenQ has introduced the world's thinnest 21.5" W LED monitor, which promises "top of the line" performance as well.

Dubbed the BenQ V2220/V2220H, the 15mm-thick monitor has a 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and offers Full HD 1080p playback.

DeviceMag adds that "the LED monitor has been designed in such a way that it possesses the ability to reveal detail in darkly lit areas of the screen rendered as undifferentiated blocks on less capable displays."

The monitor is also considered "green," given that it cuts down power consumption by 28.6 percent compared to CCFL models.

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After first being blocked in 2008, an Italian court has once again ruled that ISPs in the nation must block access to the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, leaving millions of users without access to one of the most popular sites on the planet.

In the original case, after an appeal by the Pirate Bay, the Court of Bergamo ruled that foreign websites cannot be blocked over alleged copyright infringement. Fast forward until today and the Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can indeed be forced to block torrent sites, even if they are foreign-based.

The ruling says any site that offers torrent links to connect to copyrighted material is "engaging in criminal activity," says TF.

Of course there are proxies, and thousands of other smaller sites that are not yet blocked, so it is not as if Italian torrent fans are in complete trouble.

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After one week of suspended sales, physical books published by Macmillan have now returned to Amazon, ending the dispute that begun last week over the price of digital books (e-books).

Macmillan wanted the end of the set-price $9.99 e-book rate that Amazon has had for best-sellers, claiming it is too low and under-values books in general.

As a result, Amazon stopped offering both the e-book and physical copies of Macmillan titles but as of this past weekend Amazon responded by saying: We have to "accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books."

For now on, e-books from Macmillan will be priced from $12.99 to $14.99 at launch, with prices changing over time.

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