It’s oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

In a statement Microsoft said: its “commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken.”

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player’s being banned.

“Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use,” Major Nelson wrote.

“The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

“When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye.”

Unified Communications holds enormous promise as a coherent, integrated approach to incorporating the full spectrum of business communications modalities, and as direct path to cut through “communications clutter” resulting in accelerated time-to-action. It also offers a cost-effective way to more directly connect the company to its customers, employees to employees, and more tightly bind business partners and suppliers. Reducing human latency is a key benefit of UC, resulting in measurably increased efficiency and improved customer intimacy.

White space replaces the sky-blue color scheme in MSN.com’s new redesign, which Microsoft began previewing Wednesday before it becomes an official re-launch sometime in early 2010. Content sections are streamlined down to five top-of-page links: news, entertainment, sports, money, lifestyle and “more.” Gone is the lengthy, more specific section director. The company’s well-reviewed Bing search engine — which has helped Microsoft gain some market share traction — is more prominently integrated.

Free marketeers’ primary argument against Net neutrality is that a government watchdog role in protecting neutrality is bound to be “political” — and that any government agency will ultimately start a slippery slide to full-bore regulation of the Internet. This all-or-nothing approach is a false choice that ignores significant factors arguing for a sensible, soft-touch rule to prohibit discrimination against content and applications on the edge of the Net.

Handset maker Sony Ericsson on Tuesday announced the new Xperia X10 smartphone. It will run on the Android 1.6 mobile operating system, also known as “Donut.” The Xperia X10 will begin shipping to select markets next year. In announcing the Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson named the handset as the flagship device of a family of phones coming to market during the first half of 2010. The device will have a new UX platform that will let users organize everything on the smartphone with what the company calls the “most open, human and intuitive user experience yet.”

Can the Web’s big-time masters of malware really be tracked down? How risky is cloud computing to network security? And what challenges await the Obama administration’s plans to lock down the nation’s electronic infrastructure — while at the same time creating a “smart grid?” An experienced panel of computer security experts representing industry, governments and law enforcement batted around possible answers to those questions Monday during a “guru fireside” session that was a highlight of the Information Security Forum’s 20th World Congress.

In the field of computer technology, some topics are so frequently and fiercely disputed that they almost resemble religious feuds — Mac vs. PC, for instance, or open source vs. proprietary software. Other topics, though, don’t see nearly the same level of high-profile debate. Take the invulnerability of AES encryption, for example. Governments and businesses place a great deal of faith in the belief that AES is so secure that its security key can never be broken.

Boutique gaming PC maker MainGear on Monday announced a new line of what it describes as “personal supercomputers.” The Shift, a large desktop built to user specifications, runs at up to 4 GHz and features its a liquid cooling system. Prices begin at $2,199. MainGear has designed the Shift line to exploit the natural behavior of heat, according to the company. The internal components have been rotated so that all heat is radiated through the top vents and cool air is drawn in from the bottom. The case has large ventilation grates and inlets for increased air flow.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed technology that could help fight blindness. It’s aimed at the millions of people impacted by two of the major causes of blindness: age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. The MIT project is one of several that use a physical prosthesis — a chip implanted directly into or onto the eyeball, coupled with a pair of electronic glasses that provide assistance. Here’s a rough description of how our eyes normally work: Light enters the eyeball and stimulates an array of microscopic rod and cone formations.

We all contribute to the news cycle when we post timely content online, even if it’s 140 characters or fewer, and recently we learned that our little bits of information have substantive value when search giants Google and Microsoft announced that they will index our tweets and status updates. But the sheer volume of content that we produce could be a problem, and Twitter users who find day-to-day value in the service may scoff at the idea that the “information firehose” of live content can be tapped and made searchable.