Australian who boasted of hacking to plead not guilty to charges stemming from raid

A 17-year-old Australian who in February claimed to have breached networks at Microsoft and Sony will plead not guilty to charges stemming from a police raid on his home.

Interestingly, none of the charges lodged against Dylan Wheeler relate to his claims to have breached the networks and extracted software tools used to develop games for the XBox One and PlayStation systems.

According to documents shared by Wheeler, he is charged with possession of child exploitation material, dishonestly obtaining credit card information, possession of identification information with the intent of committing an offense, and disobeying a data access order to reveal his passwords.

Wheeler said Friday he also faces a weapons charge related to a stun gun that police seized from his family's home, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

He told Perth Children's Court on Friday how he intends to plead, and said he will formally plead not guilty in a hearing scheduled for Nov. 11.

Wheeler maintains he is innocent, and believes the charges are in part retribution.

The police "were pissed off at the fact that I went to the media," Wheeler said.

Western Australian Police in Perth declined to comment on the case.

Eventually, Wheeler said, he expects hacking charges to be filed against him. He has been open about his probes into Microsoft's and Sony's networks, and said he told Microsoft about weaknesses in its network.

"To my knowledge they [Microsoft] fixed up a lot of the problems they had," he said, while Sony "did try and fix the issues."

But Wheeler did provoke Microsoft. In August 2012, he posted an eBay listing for a "Microsoft Xbox Durango Development Kit." That same month he was visited by an investigator with Microsoft's IP Crimes Team.

In February, he placed another eBay auction listing for a "Durango" PC. The listing expired on Feb. 19, the same day police raided his family's home, seizing three Apple computers, a 1TB hard drive, credit cards, his mobile phone and a stun gun, among other items.

Wheeler's lawyer, Marc Saupin, said Friday that Australian legal rules prevent counsel from commenting about an ongoing case.

Panasonic pleads guilty to laptop battery pack price fixing

Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have agreed to plead guilty to price fixing conspiracies involving laptop battery cells and automotive parts. They will pay a total of $56.5 million in criminal fines, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

Sanyo agreed to pay $10.7 million for the battery cells conspiracy and Panasonic will pay $45.8 million for its role in the automotive parts conspiracy, the DoJ said in a news release on Thursday.
LG Chem, a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries, has also agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $1.056 million criminal fine for price fixing involving battery cells, the DoJ said. Sanyo and LG Chem were involved in a battery cell conspiracy from about April 2007 until about September 2008, it said.

"The guilty pleas against Sanyo and LG Chem are the first in the department's ongoing investigation into anticompetitive conduct in the cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell industry," it said. Both companies conspired to fix the prices of battery cells sold worldwide for use in notebook computer battery packs, it added.
Lithium ion batteries are rechargeable and are often used in groups in more powerful battery packs for electronic devices. While flat, or prismatic, cells are more common in cellphones or thin-and-light laptops, cylindrical cells are used to make up most removable laptop battery packs.

Sanyo, LG Chem and their co-conspirators agreed during meetings and conversations to price the battery packs to customers at predetermined levels and to issue price quotations to customers in accordance with those agreements, according to the charges. "Sanyo, LG Chem and their co-conspirators collected and exchanged information for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices and took steps to conceal the conspiracy," the DoJ said.

"Pleading guilty and cooperating with the division's ongoing investigations is a necessary step in changing a corporate culture that turned customers into price-fixing victims," the DoJ added.

Apple guilty of e-book price fixing

Apple has been found guilty of conspiring with five publishers to raise the prices of e-books to compete against Amazon and challenge its dominance of the market.

The three-week non-jury trial began in New York in June in which the US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Apple with conspiring with publishers to adopt the so-called agency model.

Switching to the model meant that publishers set the price of e-books directly, effectively ending Amazon’s ability to set its own prices.

The five publishers were originally named as defendants alongside Apple, but have already reached settlements.

Penguin settled its case for $75m and Macmillan settled for $26m, while Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster created a $69m fund for refunds to consumers.

New York judge Denise Cote found that Apple had played a central role in facilitating and executing the conspiracy and ordered a new hearing to set damages to be imposed on Apple, according to the BBC.

US Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer called the ruling "a victory for millions of consumers who choose to read books electronically".

But Apple maintains that it brought innovation and competition to the market without restricting it and said it plans to appeal against the rule and continue its fight against “false allegations”.

If Apple fails to get the ruling overturned, the company could face a separate trial by state attorney generals and consumers pursuing class actions and seeking monetary damages.

Apple last year settled an e-book price-fixing antitrust case with the European Commission.