When 17-year-old Garyl Tan Jia Luo piggybacked on his neighbour’s unsecured wireless Internet network to chat online, he could not have imagined that in doing so he would make Asian legal history.

Information technology (IT) experts and lawyers say Tan was the first in Singapore, and possibly Asia, to be sentenced in court for “wireless mooching,” or piggybacking on an unsecured wireless network to surf the Internet.

A judge in the city-state’s district court sentenced him to 18 months’ probation in January.

Tech-savvy Singapore, one of Asia’s most wired nations, appears to be the regional pioneer in clamping down on wireless network freeloaders, IT experts and lawyers said.

They said they were not aware of similar prosecutions in the Asia-Pacific region, and that only a handful of cases had emerged over the past three years in North America.

“There is no similar criminal case in Hong Kong. And we believe Singapore is quite a pioneer in this area,” said Howard Lau, president of Hong Kong’s Professional Information Security Association, an industry grouping.

ICANN today issued a formal notice of termination of RegisterFly.com’s Registration Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

ICANN has issued a letter to RegisterFly indicating that it will cease operating as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar on March 31, 2007. Under the terms of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN must provide 15 days written notice to RegisterFly of its intention to terminate.

Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly’s right to use the ICANN Accredited Registrar logo on its website.

Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously.

“Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,” Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today.

“ICANN has been frustrated and distressed by recent management confusion inside RegisterFly,” Dr. Twomey, President said. “I completely understand the greater frustration and enormous difficulty that this has created for registrants.”

When the Agreement is terminated, ICANN can approve a bulk transfer of all current RegisterFly domain names to another ICANN accredited Registrar.

“Of course, RegisterFly does not have to wait till then. They can request ICANN to approve a bulk transfer immediately. I call on RegisterFly to act in the interests of registrants and seek such a transfer from us straight away,” Dr. Twomey said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Movielink, the movie download specialist, is on sale for $50 million USD.

The huge games and movie retailer and rental specialist Blockbuster, is in deep talks to buy the online movie rental and download site.

Movielink, which is jointly owned by MGM Studios, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. will be sold for $50 Million USD (equal to about 38 million Euro) in cash and other stock options.

The move should help Blockbuster to continue fighting in its rivalry with Netflix, the largest online movie rental site.