It has been confirmed the Optus, Vodafone and Telstra will sell the Blackberry Bold, but only Optus and Telstra have confirmed plans.

The Optus plans will have the phone at the earliest on August 20 for $10 a month over a 24 month contract under its Blackberry $79 cap plan.

The Blackberry features a half-VGA display, Wi-Fi, MicroSD card slot and a two-megapixel camera with a flash. It also features the signature QWERTY keyboard, known to give the "Blackberry Thumb", and GPS.

Telstra has previously announced its plans, offering the smartphone for no cost upfront for Business users.

Picture from Blackberry.

Music lovers might have their laptops and MP3 players searched by Customs officers at airports and may face a jail sentence if there is a large amount of pirated music is present.

This was revealed after a discussion paper were leaked to the public relating to a treaty that is being negotiated by the Federal Government, and even suggests criminal sanctions for copyright infringements on a commercial scale - meaning that a lot of fans may be hit with jail just for downloading songs of their favourite artists.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith’s office has confirmed that the Government was part of negotiations for an international agreement, but it had not signed nor agreed to it.

Blackberry fans can now rejoice after Telstra has lifted the curtain over its pricing and availability for the new, long-awaited Blackberry Bold smartphone.

It will offer it from late September, and will offer it for $0 upfront. It has not, however, revealed any specific plans or how much will it cost and the total data usage included.

Following on what Optus did with the iPhone, you will need to register your interest via Telstra Business site or calling 1800 BUSINESS.

Like the iPhone, Optus and Vodafone are slated to carry the phone; with 3 also rumoured to get the smartphone - but all have remained tight lipped.

Picture from Blackberry.

A brand new report released by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has showed that its chosen filters could filter illegal content or block peer-to-peer networks, but it failed to identify content shared on the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

While it showed that ISP filtering technology were improving, the report detailed and highlighted several holes to automatically filter content that is shared over P2P.

The test tested out six products, none are not named, and all were able to block non-web protocol traffic (like instant messaging), all could not filter newsgroups - but only three could block them. The tests were conducted at Telstra’s Broadband eLab by Enex Testlabs.

The table is below (Source: ACMA).

A spokesperson for Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy has said that the department was expected to begin a live test before the end of the year, and will release an expression of interest to ISPs to conduct the test.

You can view the report here.

Australia is most likely going to see another carrier coming on board the iPhone bandwagon, joining Optus, Telstra and Vodafone - and it is not 3.

Virgin Mobile is said to pick up the phone, and rumour has it it will be selling it in the next two weeks. While a spokesperson for the company has denied the rumours (saying that they had "nothing to announce at this time"). It is also more likely to happen since Virgin Mobile is actually owned by Optus.

While it is owned by one of the carriers that carry the iPhone, it really does not mean that it could bring the iPhone to Virgin. But it looks like Virgin is getting ahead of themselves, already having a promotion up and ready for the iPhone - its just that it is not on the site just yet.

You need to scavenge through the source code. Just in case they delete it, we will post it below (click on it to make it bigger!).

Only days after the city of San Francisco regained control of its computer network after administrators were locked out of the network, a new vulnerability has come to light - only this time, it was caused by the city itself.

The district attorney’s office has apparently made public nearly 150 usernames and passwords used by officials to gain access to the network, after it submitted to the court as Exhibit A in a case against Terry Childs, the network admin who was arrested on July 13 on four felony charges of tampering with the network.

Exhibit A was submitted as evidence after the defendant was asking a reduction of $5 million bail that was previously set for Childs. Despite calling the passwords pose an "imminent threat" to the network, they are now on public records.

However, a source has told InfoWorld that a second password is needed to gain access to the network; but giving the so-called ‘phase one’ passwords was not recommended.

The ABC has claimed that its iView product has now been visited by 58,000 people since its first 24 hours in operation. The new service allows users to watch and catch up programming on the ABC’s two channels - ABC1 and ABC2.

The new service also contains four additional channels - including one for news and one for its children’s programming - with even more channels being available in the future.

However, it does suck up your internet really fast - so the ABC is negotiating with ISPs to make the service unmetered, meaning that it will allow you to watch an unlimited amount of content without affecting your current usage. This is a similar problem with the BBC’s iPlayer; however, no ISPs in the UK have offered it to be unmetered.

Only iiNet will exclude iView downloads from its customers’ monthly download quota, similar to what it does with iTunes.

The US regulators have agreed to conditionally approve the merger between the only two satellite radio providers in the US, Sirius and XM - and they will pay millions of dollars to settle allegations of past violations on their part.

They will pay $19 million to the FCC to settle compliance issues involving certain radios that include FM transmitters and repeater stations. The new agreement will allow the two companies clear a regulatory marathon after the merger was announced over a year ago, in February 2007.

It will also see the unification of big names like Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern under both providers, which has been criticized for being anti-competitive by the radio industry.

NEWS IN BRIEF: AOL is making big budget cuts in its blogging properties, according to TechCrunch. The cuts range up, according to their sources, to 25% of each blog’s total budget - and the main cuts are from personnel costs.

The bloggers are now told that they should take a couple of weeks off, and there may or may not have a job in AOL in August.

However, the AOL Tech Network, which includes Engadget and TUAW, is reported to be immune from the cuts, since it continues to grow and gives some substantial revenue to the company.

Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin and the city of Memphis have filed a lawsuit to find out who operates a blog that is harshly critical of Godwin and the police department.

However, they have not sued the bloggers, but they have sued AOL for the names and all information related to an email address that is linked to the blog.

The blog, MPD Enforcer 2.0, is operated under an alias of Dirk Diggler - a porn star in “Boogie Nights” - say that their site provides important information to the officers and to the citizens of Memphis. However, it is unknown if the city wants to shut down the site or just want it to stop leaks that might affect investigations.

Meanwhile, the site has spoken to their attorneys and has posted the subpoena that it has been given to AOL.

“In what could be a landmark case of privacy and the 1st Amendment, GODwin has illegally used his position and the City of Memphis as a ram to ruin the Constitution of the United States!” the bloger wrote on the site.

“Some members of the Enforcer 2.0 have contacted their attorneys and we are in the process of filing a lawsuit against Larry and the City of Memphis. What’s wrong Larry? The truth hurt?”