The French high authority HADOPI, which was put in place to oversee the country's recently passed "three strikes" anti-piracy laws has a new problem on its hands; phishers and scammers using the authority's name to trick people into giving up personal information.

The group is allowed to issue sanctions and fines to Internet users accused of piracy, with a "third strike" meaning disconnection from the Web, and a blacklisting.

E-mails, purportedly being sent from HADOPI, have been hitting thousands of inboxes this week, all claiming that the recipient has been accused of copyright violations.

The accused are then pushed to a website to pay off their fine, which leads to phishers stealing their personal info along with the money.

"As expected, this is classic Internet," says HADOPI's Secretary General Éric Walter (via Ars).

HADOPI says it will begin sending out the first real violation letters in the coming months.

(Article pic found here)

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Last May, network administrator Oliver Beel was fired from his job after he charged his Segway vehicle using the firm's power source for 90 minutes.

It was revealed that Beel had used 1.8 euro cents worth of electricity and he was fired two days later.

This week, a court has ruled that the firm had no grounds to fire Beel, dismissing the firm's appeal against his reinstatement, says Reuters.

The court says the firing was not appropriate given Beel's offense.

"Minimal electricity cost involved, the plaintiff's 19-year employment by the company and the fact other employees charged mobile phones and digital photo frames at the firm's expense without punishment," were all cited as reasons for the dismissal.

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Buffalo Japan has announced this week the launch of the BG3D-PI6U2-BK, a portable 3D Blu-ray drive.

Owners can plug the device into their Windows PC via the USB port and view 3D Blu-ray movies. Of course, you will need a 3D-enabled display.

The drive is very thin at 5.39 x 5.78 x 0.78-inches and weighs 340g.

Buffalo's BG3D-PI6U2-BK writes data to BD-R/RDL6 discs at 6x and BD-RE/RE DL discs at 2x.

The drive will sell for 30,000 yen (a bit over $350 USD). It will hit Japan next month, with an expected North American launch later in the year.

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a recall for 41,000 Toshiba notebooks this week, following reports that some are overheating or even melting.

Before the official mandate, Toshiba posted its own recall of the Satellite T130 notebook.

The CPSC said they had 129 reported instances of "overheating and deforming the plastic casing area around the AC adapter plug."

Four of the reports lead to minor injuries or minor property damage, says the CPSC.

Toshiba explained that the problem came from a "faulty DC-In harness," which could lead to melting.

A BIOS update will fix the problem, says Toshiba. The affected models are: Satellite T135D-S1326, T135D-SP2012L, T135-SP2909R, T135D-SP2012M, T135-SP2013L, T135-SP2013M, T135D-S1322, T135-S1330, T135D-S1328WH, T135D-S1328RD, T135D-S1328, T135D-S1327, T135D-S1325WH, T135D-S1325RD, T135D-S1325, T135D-S1324, T135D-S1320, T135-SP2911R, T135-S1312, T135-S1310WH, T135-S1310RD, T135-S1310, T135-S1309, T135-S1307, T135-S1305WH, T135-S1305RD, T135-S1305, T135-S1300WH, T135-S1300RD, T135-S1300, T135-SP2911C, T135-SP2911A, T135-SP2910R, T135-SP2910C, T135-SP2910A, T135-SP2909C, T135-SP2909A and the Satellite Pro T130-W1302, T130-EZ1301.

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LG showed off the 31-inch 3D OLED HDTV, as promised last week today during the IFA 2010 event, pricing the model as well.

The 1080p screen is detachable from its stand, and the TV can be rotated in place. The stand is bulky as it contains all the ports standard on an HDTV.

Coming in at 2.9mm thick, the OLED display is the thinnest TV yet.

LG says the TV has an "infinite" contrast ratio and has 3D-support if you have special glasses.

The OLED set will begin shipping in March with a handsome price of £6,000.

Pics via Pocket-Lint:

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Google has celebrated Chrome's second birthday this week by launching Chrome 6 for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

The search giant introduced the browser on September 2nd, 2008.

Chrome 6 has been placed in Google's "stable" channel.

"The last couple of years we've been focused on speed," added Brian Rakowski (via CW), Chrome's director of product management. "A lot of things have changed in the last two years [in browsers], but the one thing we've learned is that speed matters. It's something Google's always believed in and it resonates with people."

Chrome 6, very importantly, is three times faster at parsing JavaScript than Chrome 1. "That's a pretty big deal," says Rakowski, of the achievement, "but we have a lot more speed improvements to come."

Being tested for the latest versions of Chrome is hardware acceleration, which will move some tasks from the CPU to the GPU in an effort to boost performance.

Furthermore, Chrome 6 will have some minor cosmetic changes, like the bookmark icon being moved to the right side of the URL bar.

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