A bill introduced by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) that aims to restrict social networking Web sites in schools and libraries passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 410-15. The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) would require organizations that receive funds under the federal E-Rate program to install Internet filters that would block […]

The French Constitutional Council has rejected parts of a law recently passed that would have required Apple Computer to open access to its iTunes music and to its iPod portable music players. Under the legislation, companies would be forced to allow their music formats to be played on other companies’ devices, as well as to […]

A group of leading high-tech companies have proposed a new standard that will allow disparate computing applications to communicate with one another. BEA Systems, BMC Software, Cisco Systems, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems announced the Service Modeling Language (SML) and said they would support the standard going forward. Based on an […]

An open letter signed by the provosts of 25 universities supports passage of the Federal Public Research Access Act, which would require federal agencies to publish their research findings online and free within six months of publication elsewhere. Publishers, including scholarly associations, oppose the bill, claiming that it could endanger research and threaten many journals. […]

Kazaa, the file-sharing service now owned by Sharman Networks Ltd., agreed to pay more than $115 million to settle lawsuits brought against it by the entertainment industry. Kazaa also agreed to use filtering systems to prevent users from exchanging copyrighted music and movie files and plans to work with entertainment companies to sell licensed content. […]

In a strategy shift, Microsoft announced plans to sell software targeting the health care industry. The company is buying clinical health care software developed by doctors and researchers at the nonprofit Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. At the same time, Microsoft is hiring two of the three doctors who created the software and 40 […]

Two California State University at Northridge students have been charged with hacking into a professor’s campus network account to change their grades and those of nearly 300 of their classmates. They are also accused of using the professor’s credit card to send pizza and magazine subscriptions to the professor’s home. Lena Chen and Jennifer Ngan, […]

The government of India announced that it would not buy laptops from the One Laptop per Child program, the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte’s idea is that furnishing every schoolchild in developing nations with inexpensive laptops–$100 each–will be a boon to education and will help those countries close the technology gap with the developed nations […]

Responding to ongoing concerns about copyright violations taking place on campus networks, a House subcommittee requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conduct a survey to determine what steps are being taken to address the issue. Unlike other GAO surveys, however, this one does not guarantee confidentiality of respondents, and this has many observers concerned […]

British legislators are considering amending the Data Protection Act to allow for prison terms for identity thieves in addition to the fines currently allowed by the law. The proposal followed a report from Richard Thomas, data protection watchdog information commissioner, which argued that the existing penalties are insufficient to deter potential identity criminals. The amendment […]