Lovefilm has just inked a multi-year deal streaming deal with Universal that will see its films come to Amazon's streaming service ahead of rivals like Netflix.

The Universal Pictures, er, pictures will be coming to Lovefilm's site in what's known as the second pay window; that's after a premium broadcaster like Sky gets its mitts on the movies but ahead of terrestrial TV and other services.

The deal means that Lovefilm will now be streaming the likes of Kick Ass, Despicable Me, American Reunion and Senna - valuable additions to a growing catalogue.

Subscribers can stream films on Lovefilm Instant via the web as well as apps on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iPad, smart TVs and some Blu-ray players.

Curse you, tiny toilet

Over in the US, Lovefilm-owner Amazon is now streaming films through Xbox Live.

The app, called Amazon Instant Video, also ties in to Kinect by allowing people to browse and control playback using gestures instead of the tedious old remote.

Tim Cook has said on stage that TV is an "area of intense interest" for Apple, hinting that it could well be developing the standalone TV set Steve Jobs hinted at in his biography.

Speaking at the All Things Digital Conference in California last night, Cook said of the company's TV plans: "We are going to keep pulling the string and see where this takes us."

In a nod to the current Apple TV set-top box - which he referred to as 'a hobby' previously - he said: "We're not a hobby kind of company, as you know. We've stuck in this."

But pressed on whether Apple would make the iTV, he said: "You were right. I'm not going to tell you."

Disgruntled telly addicts

He did say that TV is something "many people would say that this is an area of their life that they aren't pleased with," just as Steve Jobs did before him.

He also reiterated Apple's key questions before entering a product category: Can we control the key technology? Can we make a significant contribution beyond what others have done in this area? Will this product be one that we want?

He added he doesn't think Apple "has to own a content business", concerning rumours it's had trouble getting studios on board.

Apple sold 2.8 million Apple TV set-top boxes last year, and 2.7 million already this year. He also added the company will be 'doubling down' on Siri (hinting new features and enhancements are coming soon), and said to "stay tuned" when asked about Facebook integration, saying he has "great respect for them".

Freedom of the internet is under constant assault from "entrenched institutions and monopolies" and "confused or corrupted" politicians, said the Internet Defense League (IDL).

The new organization has a plan to help prevent controversial legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) from gaining traction, and it involves an internet "bat signal" that will easily enable mass protests.

The IDL is led by Tiffiniy Cheng of Fight for the Future, "a nonprofit working to expand the internet's power for good," and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit, which touts itself as "the front page of the internet."

By registering with the IDL, anyone with a website can sign up to receive a notification when any internet-threatening legislation rears its ugly head.

Along with the note will come the code to embed a warning banner on members' sites that will alert visitors about the harmful legislation, and presumably allow them to easily sign a petition and take other actions.

It began with SOPA

The idea for the registry, which the iDL itself likens to the "bat signal" used to alert Batman when his attention is required, evolved from the mass internet protests and website black-outs that caused Congress to dismiss the overzealous SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) earlier this year.

WordPress, reddit, and the Cheezburger network (FAILBlog, Know Your Meme, etc.) have signed up with the IDL, and Wikipedia is reportedly considering membership as well.

Ultimately the list's effectiveness will depend on how many - and which - sites decide to take part.

The Internet Defense League's mission statement

"Internet freedom and individual power are changing the course of history," reads a message on the IDL's website.

"But entrenched institutions and monopolies want this to stop. Elected leaders often don't understand the internet, so they're easily confused or corrupted."

The site continues, "The Internet Blackout was just the beginning. Together, our websites and personal networks can mobilize the planet to defend the internet from bad laws & monopolies."

The Internet Defense League's current targets are Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and CISPA, two very real threats that have yet to be squashed.

IDL representatives did not immediately respond to TechRadar's requests for comment.

Thanks to BT Infinity for business you can now experience the new benchmark in business broadband so you can get in the internet fast lane.

BT Infinity for business means you'll be able to upload and download information at speeds more than eight times faster than the average UK broadband.

Get more done

Faster broadband can boost your productivity – everyone in your organisation will be able to work faster and more efficiently with BT Infinity for business, whether you email large documents, need to upload large images or use multiple web applications simultaneously.

Work when and how you want to

Does your broadband slow at peak times? It's a thing of the past with BT Infinity for business. There'll be no more afternoon slowdowns with a guaranteed speed of 16Mb for your workplace. And with such great broadband speeds, video conferencing or Voice over IP (VoIP) is a breeze – no more buffering or stuttering.

Download as much as you need

BT Infinity for business comes with a generous 100GB usage allowance, meaning you can download huge amounts of data throughout the day and night. And should you want the peace of mind provided by unlimited bandwidth, that's no problem; it's just £5 extra per month.

Get connected on the move

Signing your workplace up to BT Infinity for business will enable you to get online even when you're outside of the office – you get unlimited Wi-Fi with access to 4 million hotspots around the UK as part of your broadband package.

We'll install it for you

You won't need to wrestle over installing BT Infinity for business yourself – one of our engineers will pop round to install your free new BT business Hub. The new hub uses our best ever wireless signal using 'N' technology - designed to detect and avoid Wi-Fi interference and top security as standard Wi-Fi Protected Setup, making it easy to set up a secure wireless network.

It's energy efficient too –running on half the power of an energy-efficient light bulb and it automatically saves power when you're not using it.

Need more help?

We provide 24 hour, 7 day freephone support for BT Infinity for business and you can rest assured you're able to call our dedicated business team at any time for help. You'll also get preferential fault handling in the unlikely case of any problem.

It's time to see what BT Infinity for business can do in your workplace – click here for more information and to see if you can get it in your area.

Hacking collective Anonymous has threatened to take down websites linked to the upcoming F1 Grand Prix in Canada.

According to Anonymous, the reasoning for the proposed computer hack is because the organisers of the F1 are to go ahead with a Grand Prix in a place that "Amnesty International and other global human rights groups have declared human rights violators".

This is to do with Quebec's use of Special Law 78, which offers up stern regulations over demonstrations in the province – meaning students who are found to be striking or demonstrating can expect heavy fines for having their say.

The Montreal Grand Prix is set for the weekend of June 8 to 10, but Anonymous is warning anyone taking part in the F1 may be subject to a hack – something it did when the F1 took place in Bahrain in April.

Party wreckers

"As we did in Bahrain - Anonymous intends to wreck Mr Eccelstone's little party," explained an Anonymous spokesperson.

"Beginning on June 7 and running through race day on June 10, Anonymous will take down all the F1 websites, dump the servers and databases - and wreck anything else F1 related we can find on the internet.

"We would like to remind anyone considering attending this abominable race, that last time Anonymous found all the spectators personal data, including credit card numbers - un-encrypted on F1 servers."

Anonymous will be among many protesters targetting the Grand Prix. A number of students are also set to protest, something that the F1's orginisers will be wary of, considering the race could bring around $100 million (Canadian dollars) to the area.

The statement continued: "We highly suggest that you join the boycott of the F1 in Montreal and we certainly recommend that you NOT purchase any tickets or F1 merchandise online.

"You have been warned."

The BBC iPlayer has seen a surge in demand from mobile devices, Blu-ray players, Smart TVs and games consoles this year.

New stats from the Beeb show that in the first quarter of 2012 connected and mobile devices were more popular than ever before for the iPlayer.

Demand from smart TVs, games consoles and BD players was up by 11 per cent in April of this year and up a whopping 57 per cent from April 2011.

When it comes to mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – there was a 94 per cent increase from April 2011 and a 15 per cent increase in April 2012.

Couple this with the iPlayer app being the top free iPad app of all time in the UK and the BBC is reaping another year of massive success for its on-demand service.

iPlayer stats

The report excludes Virgin Media data – its results came in too late to be included in the data – but even without this significant portion of hits, the Beeb's online traffic for its TV and radio programming is huge.

Since late 2011 the iPlayer has been delivering over 160 million requests per month, which equates to 120 million TV requests and around 40 million radio requests.

The most popular programme on the iPlayer in January was Sherlock Series 2 Episode 1, in February it was Top Gear, March and April saw The Voice become the most requested show.

On the radio side, the Champions League Final was the most popular programme in April.

The BBC has also crunched the numbers of men and women using the service and found it is the closest it has ever been, with 51 per cent of those watching the iPlayer being male and 49 per cent being female.

Karim Bawa, BlackBerry maker RIM's chief legal officer, has resigned.

This comes just days before thousands of job cuts are expected at the Canadian company.

Ms Bawa had been at the company 12 years. The company said it has been discussing her retirement for a while, but her departure still comes at a sensitive time for the company. Last week Patrick Spence, head of global sales, also stepped down.

Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail reported over the weekend that the Waterloo-based company would cut at least 2,000 jobs this Friday, June 1. But a source told Reuters the actual figure will be closer to 6,000.

Wide-ranging cuts

The cuts are expected to "sweep across departments, ranging from senior positions in RIM's legal division to human resources, finance, sales, and marketing," according to the paper.

RIM currently employs around 16,500 staff worldwide. Last summer it let go 2,000 staff.

The practice of firing junior members of staff is apparently so regular at RIM that it's become known as 'Goodbye Thursdays'.

Co-chief executives Mike Lazardis and Jim Balsillie resigned in January. Thorsten Heins took over, but things don't seem to be getting much better for the company.

It failed to launch any new handsets at BlackBerry World this month in Florida, instead pinning all its hopes on BlackBerry 10, its forthcoming operating system. It's thought this will usher in a new range of touchscreen BlackBerry handsets, and possibly revive the flagging company, but we'll have to wait and see.

Last year, the BBM outage rendered BlackBerry handsets useless all over the world.

E.T. in HD – In alternate universe somewhere, George Lucas has just announced the HD DVD release of E.T., a movie that's been tinkered with so much all that remains is a fuzzy CGI version of the titular alien trying to phone home by stabbing his glowing finger on to the touchscreen of a Galaxy S3.

Thankfully in our world, it's Spielberg at the helm and he's reinstated all the bits of E.T. that were missing from the DVD version of the movie. This includes the change he made to the police holding guns, which were replaced by walkie talkies a few years back when the stupid PC brigade got involved. Great stuff.

Any old Iron – The man behind the HUD (heads up display) of Iron Man's suit, 3D video effects designer Jayse Hansen, has revealed his thinking behind the display. The result is a barrage of behind-the-scenes images and a glimpse into the mind of one of Hollywood's hottest talents.

Warning: one look and you will be laughing in the face of anyone who ever buys Google Glasses, because they are not a patch on what Iron Man uses. And also because they look really stupid. [CargoCollective and The Verge]

Doing a Runner – Remember those future-focused magazines in the background shots of some scenes in Blade Runner? No, neither do we but someone who has watched the film very closely – and not just the Sean Young scenes – has and has recreated the magazine covers for fans to peruse. Amazing stuff, even if it is so geeky you will feel a little weird clicking on them. [Kotaku]

Google sued for being a verb – Google is being sued by a man who believes that the company's name is so engrained in the public consciousness that it should no longer be a trademark. According to David Elliott, the trademarks surrounding Google should disappear and he has taken Google to court to prove this.

In what should be an interesting case, the reasons for the court order are a little more suspect as Elliot currently holds 750 domain names with the word Google in them. Will Google go the way of Hoover? Probably not but we can't wait to see what the courts make of the matter. [Cnet]

Graphic nature – an archive of computer graphics from the '90s has been set up by, er, computer graphics student Werner Randelshofer, charting what computer effects used to look like on an Amiga, Atari ST and other old-school computers. The 16-bit graphics may look dated by today's standards but it's a great little look at how animation has changed in recent years. [The Verge]

Nuclear family – Robots in Japan are nothing new but one of the latest to be created has possibly the most useful and scariest job ever. The robot, named Rosemary, has been used to check out what is happening in the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima. Using an on-board video, Rosemary can feed back in real time just what is going on with the plant. Sorry Wall-E, but when it comes to saving planets Rosemary may well have pipped you. [SlashGear]

It's the iPhone 5!!!!??!! – It's not the iPhone 5, it's a compact air conditioner that's been mocked up to look like an iPhone but is actually a USB fan thing. We don't think that even a sweaty Jobs would have approved. [Gizmodo]

Face-off – Facebook has decided that it's got far too much cash to throw around and has started to purchase services that include bits of its name in their name. First up may well be Face.com, a facial recognition site that is rumoured to be worth around $100 million.

There's no word as to whether Facebook will buy up book.com which seems to be owned by Barnes & Noble. We are hoping it snaps up ace.com, though, as it's an eBay bookmarking site that looks like it was made in 1988. Surely this is the website Zuckerberg has always wanted to own? [Slashgear]

Olympic effort – Not happy with showing all 24 HD streams of Olympic coverage, Sky has also announced that it will be offering up three new Sky channels for the Paralympics. These will showcasing Channel 4's live coverage of the games. [PR]

Another bite of the Apple – Steve Wozniak spoke to BYTE way back in 1977 about the Apple II and the article has been lovignly republished by Information Week. Even 35 years down the line, Woz speaks a lot of sense about what a PC should be – except the line about them being inexpensive may have gotten lost in translation with Apple's newer, much pricier efforts. [Information Week]

A malicious new programme affecting computers in several countries has been detected by Kaspersky Lab, known as Worm.Win32.Flame (Flame, for short).

The malware is, in Kaspersky Labs' words, "designed to carry out cyber espionage" and is capable of accessing and stealing computer display contents, information about systems, stored files, data and audio conversations.

It looks as though Flame has been around "in the wild" since March 2010 but it managed to elude all security programmes due to its complexity.

In fact, Kaspersky Labs describes it thusly: "The complexity and functionality of the newly discovered malicious program exceeds those of all other cyber menaces known to date."

Not much is known about Flame at the moment. Because of its size (about 20 times larger than Stuxnet), Kaspersky needs a large team of experts with specific experience to work on finding out more.

Weasley worm

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) requested Kaspersky's investigation after another worm, Wiper, was detected deleting data on a number of computers in Western Asia.

While investigating this still-mysterious Wiper, Kaspersky came across the equally worrying Flame malware, which Kaspersky Labs co-founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky describes as "another phase" in the war begun by the previous Stuxnet and Duqu viruses.

"It's important to understand that such cyber weapons can easily be used against any country," he added.

"Unlike with conventional warfare, the more developed countries are actually the most vulnerable in this case."

Chief security expert at Kaspesky Lab Alexander Gostev added that, "One of the most alarming facts is that the Flame cyber-attack campaign is currently in its active phase, and its operator is consistently surveying infected systems, collecting information and targeting new systems to accomplish its unknown goals."

So there's a vicious cyber weapon on the loose and someone somewhere is controlling it. So what's the plan? Not much can be done until we know more, so the ITU is activating the ITU-Impact network which sees 142 countries and a number of companies working together to alert governments to the threat and speed up the technical analysis phase.

Kaspersky Labs is going to be keeping a close eye on this process so we should find out more in the coming weeks.

Websites in the UK have to change the way they track users from now on, with sites having to receive 'implied consent' from visitors that they don't mind the site keeping tabs on their online movements.

The law has been mooted for some time and originally required 'explicit consent' from site visitors before certain pop-ups and the like are revealed.

But there was a last minute change to the legislation, which means sites have to obtain just 'implied consent' – this is friendlier for businesses but knocks the UK out of whack from the rest of the EU when it comes to the transparency of cookies.

Although it is thought many UK-based sites will not be ready for the law, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is looking to report back on sites that are not obeying the directive and there's the slight possibility of a £500,000 fine for those who flout the law.

Implications of a click

As with any new law put into place, confusion reigns over proceedings. According to Rob Rachwald, director of security strategy at Imperva, the law is a good way of teaching consumers about how websites track them but is too vague to have much effect.

"Websites and internet technology have become so complex that it is impossible for a typical consumer to understand the implications of a simple click," said Rachwald.

"This law will hopefully help people understand that cookies are the keys to personal information and present a threat if exploited, stolen, altered, harvested or hijacked."

Rachwald continued: "The legislative thinking is that ambiguity forces the private sector to experiment with different approaches until somewhere, somehow someone finds the right way."

Speaking to the BBC about the cookie law, Dave Evans, group manager for the ICO, believed that businesses have had long enough to prepare themselves for the new legislation: "Given that everyone has had a year [to comply], we're going to shift from that kind of approach to one which will be very much more focused on those people who don't appear to have done anything and asking them 'why not?''

So, if you run a site you better swot up on what you need to do before the cookie monster is unleashed.