Scottish Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently unveiled epic plans to place the information of every child's health, education and social/economic status on one database for the UK to access, to much protest. The Prime Minister believes that placing all this information on one central database will eliminate confusion, streamline necessary medical care, and have all sorts of other benefits. The Prime Minister also feels that if all the information is in one central location, it will be a lot more secure, and a lot harder to lose. Most UK citizens feel that this is really not the way to be doing things, claiming that his central database would be the target of hackers, pedophiles, terrorists, and other baddies as long as the database remained operational. McAfee subsidiary SafeBoot feels otherwise. The only easy way for the previously mentioned baddies to get such touchy information is to snatch it while it's unencrypted and in transport. By eliminating several instances of unencrypted transport, and by solidifying security, things suddenly get much safer.

"Pirate chasing" lawyer Espen Tøndel works for the MPAA, and would love to see everyone who's ever used a file sharing network/client to download or upload copyrighted content either make reparations or go to jail. Tøndel was most recently seen in Norway, chasing a bunch of IP addresses. When Tøndel took this list of IP addresses to the police, they flat out told him that they will not chase petty criminals when murderers, rapists and other baddies roam Norwegian streets. Tøndel, infuriated, decided to take his case to higher court. He requested a meeting with the Norwegian department of justice. He instead got a flat "no" answer, and was effectively told that he might as well file suits against the pile of IP addresses, because no Norwegian police agency was going to bother itself with solving the petty piracy cases. It is unclear whether or not Tøndel has actually tried to sue the IP addresses, or if the suits utterly failed because he never could tie the IP addresses to a name.

In a desperate bid to get children off their rear ends and out into the real world, New Mexico is currently trying to get a bill passed which will effectively tax video games and televisions. At this point, the tax would be almost negligible (1% extra on all appropriate paraphernalia). Dubbed the "Television Tax", the funds gathered from it would actually be put towards noble causes. Funds will be used to...

• Develop curriculum-based programs for teachers to use on public lands and at other outdoor learning sites for outdoor education initiatives.
• Develop hands-on teaching materials for children for use in outdoor education programs.
• Provide transportation for children to experience outdoor education programs.
• Provide substantial and frequent outdoor experiences for children.
• Increase outdoor nature-oriented physical activity programs for school-age children.

So, apparently the United Kingdom is considering compiling a database. Logged in this database will be the academic records of every UK citizen aged 14 or older. This isn't going over very well with anyone. To start things off, the government's track record with data isn't the cleanest (anyone remember the little incident with lost health records?). The main beef that most people have with this plan is that it gives possible employers access to the academic records of people. What's wrong with this is put into words quite elegantly, as stated by a professor from the University of London:

This disregards how people change throughout their lives. Academic records are no indication of future success. There are many reasons for the grades we get: they might reflect the teaching or a personal crisis. People who do badly at school often do well later in life. There's a danger that these records prevent change and progress for the better.

Whether the UK plans to continue compiling this database after such criticism is unclear at this point.

While most people inside and outside America feel that the right of free speech has succumbed to weaker minds and a move towards political correctness, a recent court decision would prove otherwise. DailyTech summed up what happened pretty nicely:

A California judge in the Sixth Appellate District in Santa Clara County last week ruled that anonymous trolls on the Internet are allowed to stay anonymous. Along with remaining anonymous, Internet trolls are able to say what they like, by exercising their First Amendment rights, no matter how belittling is it.

This decision reversed a prior ruling made just two years ago, in which ten subpoenas were issued to people that would fit into the definition of "internet trolls" who took things to new extremes.

At this point, it seems as though Intel has just about everything in the world going right for them. They're getting a lot of money, their CPUs are in just about every computer, and they have had the best products on the market for the past several months. However, AMD and the European Union don't feel like Intel got this success in a legitimate manner. And so, the European Union sent law enforcement agents to do surprise raids. The raids being sent out are searching for one thing in particular: hard evidence that Intel pressured retail stores to avoid AMD-based products. These charges are added on to similar monopoly charges already put upon Intel by the European Union.

The whole "Vista Capable" sticker scandal was a mess, pure and simple. However, new evidence has prompted a new anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. It would seem as though it's entirely plausible that Microsoft was indeed trying to pull a fast one past Vista customers. Everyone who was shopping for a PC, or used a relatively-new PC a couple months before the Vista release probably saw that it came with a "Vista Capable" sticker. The new evidence shows that Microsoft may have planted Vista Capable stickers on computers not ready to run Vista at all, be it the premium version or the normal version. Men from inside Microsoft did everything from reprimand members of marketing to scoff at retailers who sent letters of concern to Microsoft. We'll keep you posted on what exactly comes out of this lawsuit. If you bought a "Vista Capable" computer with a "Vista Capable" sticker on it, you may just qualify for a settlement if this case comes through for the prosecution.

In short, it has been a very bad week for Microsoft.

Piracy really needs no introduction. The RIAA is on it like a fat kid to cake, and a sizable chunk of internet users do it. Artists and record labels are caught in the middle of things, the victim in both cases. If pirates win, they make no money. If the RIAA wins, nobody will pay for their music. And so, in what is likely to be the only time this happens, an independent record label is hoisting a white flag. All music that German record label Dependent Records owns will be uploaded directly to The Pirate Bay. Dependent Records attracted mainly aggrotech, electro-industrial and futurepop artists. Dependent Records is doing this because they had to close shop recently, but still want the artists to see some exposure.

Update: The record label Dependent has informed us that this news posting is not true and that the owner Mr. Herwig has been an opponent of file sharing for a long time. Apparently the original news source Torrentfreak did not do their research properly.

With violent video games such as Manhunt 2 causing controversy, the British government is reconsidering the exact rating system. At this point, games are given to the British Board of Film Classification, who slaps an appropriate rating on the game. Selling games to children under the rating's age class is grounds for arrest. However, up to 90% of games needing a high-class rating bypass this system by getting their games rated by the much more relaxed PEGI system. And so, the British government decided that it was high time to change things around. No matter how things turn out, the British government wants their citizens to know that this is being done to "protect children from damaging games". They also want you to know that their definition of a damaging game involves "gross violence towards humans or animals, human sexual or excretory activity, or scenes that would show people how to commit a crime".

MySpace has gotten quite a bad reputation. It was put off as a "dates-r-us" for pedophiles at one point, at another it was seen as a distraction to minors, but now it seems like MySpace got a crown for the pile of dirt on their doorstep. Police departments all around America are confirming that criminal gangs (mostly local) are recruiting on social networking sites, especially MySpace. What's worse still is that gang fights will start on the internet, and then people will take them to the street. Some gangs will even post a form of propaganda, just for the purpose of getting children to join their gangs. In response to this story, some social networking sites have already declared that anything illegal or gang-related is immediately deleted and cause for an on-the-spot ban.

Apparently, the RIAA doesn't feel like ISPs blocking piracy server-side is quite enough. The RIAA wants ISPS to begin implementing client-side filtering. This would work by forcing the end-user to install a program that monitors their every move, to ensure that nothing is illegal. It is very unlikely that such a move will actually come into play, because it is a massive violation of privacy and a huge breach of user rights. The RIAA feels that it would all be worth it, because it would let users that wouldn't otherwise know they're getting in a lot of trouble pirating stuff that they are, indeed, pirating.

Just because children in Sweden under the age of 15 cannot be charged for a crime of digital origin doesn't mean that said child should pirate. And so, to help promote a lack of piracy, Sweden filmed a nifty little spot that will hopefully make children feel like piracy is wrong. Basically, the story starts out with a classroom full of students admitting that they pirate media. Then, a couple girls try to laugh it off, saying things like "everybody does it, it's no big deal" and "people are just putting it on their iPods". Afterwards, a man informs the classroom of the proper laws, and the children all appear apologetic, and seem like they will never pirate again. Whether or not this will have any effect on piracy in Sweden will depend massively on how this clip is accepted in Swedish society, and how many people see it.

When a new hit technology comes out, a lot of people tend to buy it. When a lot of different people buy the same thing, there's bound to be a few quirks and problems. There are allegations that iPods can interfere with such critical life-support systems as pacemakers. Neither Apple or the Food and Drug Administration of America took this sitting down, and promptly ran independent studies. Using a fancy scientific procedure that can be found in the source link, the FDA determined that iPods really do not have much, if any, effect on pacemaker operation. However, as big as the scientists from the FDA may be, it's awfully hard to refute the evidence against these findings. Cardiologists were listening to an iPod while performing a routine examination, and noticed a definite effect on the pacemaker. A seventeen year old requiring a pacemaker noticed that he could not hold an iPod within two inches of his chest without causing problems. It should be noted that the FDA only studied four types of iPod, and only used one type of Pacemaker.

While some schools do everything they can to facilitate children learning about computers, others draw a fine line between "edutainment" and "security risk". A high school student in Fairfax County, Virginia must visit one of the latter categories. He was pulled out of his Philosophy exam to be told that he may not graduate; he built a proxy server in his (parents') home. Dubbed "Afnani's Moo Proxy", it was used by himself and a couple technologically-adept students to bypass school firewalls. The administrator of the school networks would not have any of it. He tried to declare the server illegal, despite nothing in the usage contract saying using any proxy, let alone your own personal one, was illegal. When the student pointed out the flaw in the contract, the administrator simply changed his accusations to "repeat network abuse", which can keep the boy from walking at graduation.

The high school student has decided to comply, and has shut down all proxy servers he owns. His personal school computer account has been disabled, but he is (at this point) allowed to graduate.

It's not news that Comcast secretly monitors all web traffic for possible illegal activity and shuts down anything that sets off their alarms. However, there has lately been a move to push this ISP filtering one step further, and making it mandatory for all ISPs. Thankfully, the RIAA, known throughout America for taking ridiculous measures to prevent piracy, really does not see the need for the proposed solution. All the RIAA asks instead is that ISPs, instead of monitoring and filtering everything that comes their way, merely respond to the RIAA's demands to shut down certain servers and users, when necessary.

In just a few hours, the administrators of the infamous Pirate Bay could be convicted of several counts of aiding/facilitating copyright infringement. The country of Sweden, after spending over two years collecting evidence, finally made a case against the five Pirate Bay administrators. However, Pirate Bay aficionados will be proud to hear that, even if the administrators go to prison, the site itself is here to stay. "In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We've been here for years and we will be here for many more."

The reason behind this is simple. The Pirate Bay servers are not located in Sweden. In fact, the Pirate Bay administrators themselves do not know where the servers are (and perhaps that's for the better). Wherever they are, you can rest assured that the site is on several servers across several countries, and none of them are going down for a long time.

Just when we thought all the controversy surrounding Manhunt 2 was over, the UK Censoring Board decided to start it right back up. Manhunt 2, the game that almost got banned from several countries and most consoles, was recently cleared for release in the United Kingdom. However, the UK Censoring Board recently brought an appeal of the decision to sell Manhunt 2 in the UK to court. If they succeed, Manhunt 2 will be pulled off of shelves before it is even put on them. The Censoring Board cites "sustained and cumulative casual sadism, unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying, (and) the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer" as reasons that this game should not be viewed by anyone...at all.

More and more often, lately, the phrase "it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt" is holding itself true. When one 10 year old boy suffered a seizure in the middle of a game of Rayman Raving Rabbids, his mother didn't let her child become just another statistic. Instead, she's started a legal campaign to prevent more seizures like this in the future. If she succeeds, no game released in the United Kingdom can be played until the game is screened for scenes that might cause an epileptic seizure. While this screening is already required for movies, it has not happened for video games as of yet. As consolation to the boy and his family, Ubisoft is currently testing Rayman Raving Rabbids for said seizure-causing instances. Game manufacturers may deem these methods unnecessary, considering that most games and consoles come with a seizure warning on the box or in the manual.

The Inquirer cites the MPAA as the "champion of nothing good nor right, on a crusade against it's customers for nearly as long as the RIAA." While the MPAA would ordinarily scoff at such allegations, they seem to be right in the middle of them this time. While they frequently are seen trying to get software pirates and copyright violators off the digital streets, they were recently caught violating copyrights. It all started when the MPAA released a toolkit for universities to use in a quest to find potential software pirates. This toolkit was compiled with a lot of open-source material. However, it would seem as though someone at the MPAA overlooked part of the GPL agreement.

While we all know that the RIAA uses questionable and filthy tactics to attempt to apprehend what they call "pirates", who are usually college students and old people, nobody has dared to interfere with their legal might. Fortunately, someone has taken a stand: Oregon State. When the RIAA sent Oregon State subpoenas to investigate the behavior of a few students, Oregon State sent them right back, went to court to see those subpoenas nullified, and accused the RIAA of spying on their students. The RIAA's legal team was quick to claim that Oregon State was "misguided" in their actions, and is preparing to file their own accusations that Oregon State is obstructing justice. The Oregon Assistant Attorney General responded as follows:

Those accusations are not warranted. The record in this case suggests that the larger issue may not be whether students are sharing copyrighted music, but whether (the industry's) investigative and litigation strategies are appropriate.

While the RIAA and CRIA (the respective American and Canadian anti-piracy firms) work hard to shut down piracy sites and sue every old man and college student with a pirated "all your base are belong to us" clip, France has a slightly different approach to getting pirates off the map. The SNEP (Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique) recently unveiled plans to cut off internet to anyone that ISPs decide are pirating. ISPs will give their customers "three strikes", and then their internet is cut off. The SNEP believes that this is a much easier and fair way to eliminate piracy, as opposed to the RIAA's infamous search-and-sue methods. French president Nicolas Sarkozy claims that this is a "decisive moment for the future of a civilized Internet." While this move received much fanfare from the various artists and media industries, politicians aren't so sure this is a good idea. Some politicians feel that this move is "very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, anti-economic and against digital history." The main incentive behind this maneuver is to counter the 40% drop in music sales noted since 2002.

According to the MPAA, "piracy is the unauthorized taking, copying or use of copyrighted materials without permission. It is no different from stealing another person's shoes or stereo, except sometimes it can be a lot more damaging." And so, when anti-piracy site Brein took information from TorrentFreak and refused to cite their sources, they did something that children have been taught not to do since their first essay requiring cited sources: Plagiarism. The MPAA also decided that what Brein did could also be seen as piracy. And so, one of TorrentFreak's counsels wrote an open letter to Brein, which aims to "educate the public about their lack of respect for the rights of people who don't pay them millions." If you would like to read the full letter, please click "Read full story" below.

It's no secret that to get many famous songs while avoiding ridiculous royalties (and to also avoid the inconvenience that half the artists included are dead anyways), the majority of Guitar Hero songs are "covers", or similar versions of the song performed by a completely different artist. 'The Romantics', a classic band that wrote such hits as "What I Like About You", recently picked up Guitar Hero 3. When they heard the rendition of one of their songs, and how it was "virtually indistinguishable" from the real version, they sued Activision. After all, nobody had asked The Romantics if they wanted their song included in Guitar Hero 3. The Romantics are seeking ridiculous amounts of money in compensation, and for Guitar Hero 3 to be pulled off the shelves.

In what's very likely to be the worst technology blunder of the century, the United Kingdom appears to have misplaced the records of 25 million citizens. It all started when Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) decided to send two disks containing the birth records, bank accounts, insurance numbers, and all manner of other important personal information of 25 million citizens to the National Audit Office (NAO). The majority of the 25 million citizens whose information was on the two disks were recipients of Child Benefits. HMRC shipped the information out via post on October 8th, and on November 8th the NAO discovered that they did not have the two disks. While the British government spends their time pointing fingers at each other to properly determine who is at fault (you can read a more descriptive version of the drama via the source link), an American convict-turned-FBI Fraud Investigator is working hard on the case, and suspects foul play.

If you live in the United Kingdom and feel that you may have been affected by this fraud, the government has set up a hotline for you to call. The number is 0845 302 1444.

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall announced today that he plans on pressing charges against the infamous Pirate Bay, on charges of facilitating copyright infringement. The five Pirate Bay founders scoff at the idea, and do not think that Roswall will get the conviction he strives for. After all, the pirate bay only runs a search engine, and does not store any copyrighted material on their servers. The Swedish police already tried earlier this year to blow The Pirate Bay out of the water, but were unable to find any evidence that was usable in a court of law.

Even if Roswall is somehow able to get a conviction, The Pirate Bay founders are pleased to announce that they will simply pack up and move to another country, without any down-time.