Sony came under harsh criticism today after it emerged that a couple managed to broadcast a 20-minute live sex session via a ‘chatroom function’ on the new PlayStation 4.

The man and woman, believed to be Russian, were seen having sex on the PS4’s Playroom feature – which allows gamers to use a built-in webcam to communicate with each other.

It is meant to encourage users to share their gaming sessions with people all over the world and the Playroom broadcasts can been seen by people of any age using the console’s service.

This week, Playroom for PS4, which does not have a filter for unsuitable content, was used by one couple to broadcast a seedy 20-minute sex session.

The pair, believed to be somewhere in Russia, performed a multitude of sex acts which were viewed by more than 1,000 people – some of whom commented on the on-going action.

Since its launch last November, more than 4.2 million PlayStation 4 consoles have been sold worldwide.

One of the people who saw the footage was Tristan Holtby-Smith, 34, a Gregg’s manager of Poole, Dorset.

He turned on his PlayStation at about 8am on Monday morning – and the video appeared on the Playroom’s ‘most popular’ section.

Mr Holtby-Smith said:

I often go to the Playroom on my PlayStation when I don’t have much else to do, because you quite often find funny people or gaming sessions there.

But when I turned on the system, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was so shocking. The Playroom is really a children’s game.

Some guy and his girlfriend, I think they were Russian because the zoom button was in Russian, were naked and going at it like rabbits.

There were more than 1,000 people watching them have sex, and I would bet that some of those viewers were under 18.

Once you’ve signed up for Playroom, you don’t need to verify your age, so anybody could have been watching it.

It went on for so long as well, at least 20 minutes. It just goes to show that nobody at Sony is paying attention to what is being broadcast.

The Playroom is a game that comes with every PlayStation 4 console, which allows users to broadcast themselves to other PlayStation users over the internet.

Players can leave comments or send messages to each other, which are shared along with the video stream by a third-party company.

While the service does require a one-off payment, once that has been set up, there is no filter in place to restrict explicit content.

The couple, who went by the online handle g12051992, received more than 150 comments from the thousand people watching their 20-minute lovemaking session.

Tristan said:

There were definitely children watching that. People of all ages play consoles, and since there was no age filter, there was no way that that could be avoided.

It was one of the most watched streams at that time of day. The comments were almost as disgusting as the sex.

The couple were loving it – they kept looking at their TV screen and smiling. At one point she adjusted the camera so people could get a better look.’

Porn causes harm to all of us, including those who have never seen any, on many levels.

Claire Perry, Tory MP for Devizes, who has campaigned for censoring explicit content online, slammed the broadcast.

She said:

Dear God, this is terrible – and yet another example of why we can’t be too vigilant.

Heike Diaferia, Executive Director of Stop Porn Culture, agreed, criticizing Sony for making such explicit content available, even if the broadcast is moderated by a third party.

She said:

Since the beginning of the internet, severely damaging hardcore pornography has always been accessible to children of all ages.

Certainly, the disturbing live streaming in The Playroom, which is supposed to be a safe game for kids, adds a new layer to what’s already available.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe spokesperson David Wilson said: ‘The PlayStation4 system is designed to help gamers share their game play through popular social channels. It is unfortunate that some individuals may abuse this feature and share inappropriate content.

He added that within the PlayStation 4 system is a way of setting up parental controls that bans certain people using the console from accessing any user-generated content, such as online messages or video streams.

He explained that the content being shared by users of the Playroom is moderated by Californian-based company uStream.

Just days after the PlayStation 4 was launched last year, one gamer hit the headlines when he stripped his drunk wife during a live-streaming event.

The man was banned after exposing his wife’s breast before taking off all her clothes in front of thousands of watching gamers.

Nintendo has re-released The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition on the eShop today.

The DSiWare game is available for download on 3DS and DSi for free until February 2, 2014.

Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition was originally announced as part of Nintendo’s 25th anniversary celebration for the series at E3 2011. The remake, developed by Grezzo, is an update to a multiplayer mode from the Game Boy Advance port of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

In 2010, South Korea’s communications regulator became another on a list of worldwide regulators to fine Google for sucking up personal data during a Street View mapping project, which also recorded data about unprotected WiFi networks – the same stuff the company has received fines for from Germany and France. Four years later, South Korea has finally started to join in with holding Google to account. The regulator has ordered Google to delete all collected private data and to keep the public updated as this deletion progresses; as well as pay a fine worth the equivalent of US$196,000 to South Korea. Given the lateness and small size of the fine, forgive me if I don’t see Google getting out of bed over this, either.

Japanese technology firm Fujitsu has amazingly managed a profit in the last quarter of 2013 according to its recent fiscal report, helped along by the weaker yen and strong sales in the enterprise sector. The latter point, driven by the company’s decision to increase PC sales primarily to businesses, even saw it defy trends and sell more PCs than ever in a weakening market for traditional computer models.

Company president Masami Yamamoto talked of solid performance in system integration services and in enterprise PCs in their third quarter, as the company claimed a net profit for the three months to December of ¥12bn ($114m), a happy improvement on the previous quarter’s net loss of $786m. Revenue rose 14.5 per cent for the firm to $11.4bn from the same quarter of the previous year.

The Yen becoming weaker against the dollar was not a small factor either. Fujitsu claimed foreign sales earned 25% more revenue for the company this quarter, but if changing foreign exchange rates between currencies were to be ignored, the real rise would have been just 2%.

The firm said it was still hoping to hit its targets this year, when it expects a net income of ¥45bn ($438m) on sales of ¥4.7tn.

“We expect to maintain this momentum for the rest of the fiscal year, and will continue to pursue ongoing structural reforms in the LSI device business and businesses outside Japan, as well as workforce-related measures,” Yamamoto said.

It’s a well-known fact that before Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s self-developed browser had quite an established reputation for being both insecure, with many bugs and vulnerabilities; and for being very flippant on HTML standards and breaking websites that, under official HTML guidelines, should work perfectly on all browsers (and usually did, on everything EXCEPT IE). However, since IE8 Microsoft has upped its game; and every Internet Explorer version since has been improving both in terms of standards-compliance and security.

Unfortunately, in the attempt to secure the browser, one of the fixes in recent Windows Internet Explorer versions removed the ability to use ActiveX tools within Internet Explorer. For some businesses, this is unacceptable, because developers in the last decade often developed web-based tools such as account management and business productivity tools that these businesses make strong use of, that took advantage of ActiveX – so these tools not only don’t work in other browsers, but now won’t work with modern IE systems either. With many of these businesses having strong reliance on these tools and unable to replace them with a modern version that doesn’t need the legacy baggage, many businesses are forced to stick with old Internet Explorer versions – and usually, the highest they can go is Internet Explorer 7. This means despite all the recent work by Microsoft to improve Internet Explorer, some businesses are still using a version that’s insecure and doesn’t respect internet standards; and web developers still have to adapt their websites accordingly if they plan to let these businesses see their work.

Many of those web developers state that in some cases, just giving those businesses whole new computers would be cheaper than supporting IE7 – software now five releases out of date. Now one business is putting their money on the table to test the theory. NursingJobs.us has determined it is cheaper to buy each customer using IE7 a brand new computer running a “modern” browser rather than making its slick new site IE7 compatible. The company is a recruitment site for nurses and medical employers, based in Microsoft’s home state of Washington; and following a new website launch, the company has told it users they’ll get a better experience using their new site, which has been revamped for mobile and tablets, on modern computers, devices and browsers.

“Some of our clients are still stuck with IE7 so we decided to make a bold offer, one that initially seemed crazy to us but now makes a lot of sense,” says a blog post the site.

“We are offering to buy a new computer with a modern browser for any of our customers who are stuck with IE7. We determined that it would cost us more to support a browser from 2006 in 2014 and beyond than it would to help our clients upgrade their legacy hardware.”

NursingJobs.us reckons IE7 makes up 1.22 per cent of its traffic.