People in the UK who go online and illegally download music and films may have their internet access cut under plans the government is considering.

A draft consultation suggests internet service providers would be required to take action over users who access pirated material via their accounts.

The Times suggested that broadband firms which failed to enforce the rules could be prosecuted, and the details of customers suspected of making illegal downloads made available to the courts.

Technology that allows internet providers to monitor what content is being downloaded is becoming more effective, said James Bates, media director at consultants Deloitte.

Chinese authorities are considering dismantling the legendary Great Firewall of China, at least while the Olympics are running.

Wang Hui, head of media relations for the organising committee said that plans to tear down the Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon.

It could be a bit embarrassing for China if BBC hacks cannot access their website to file stories because that news site is banned.

A computer literate high school kid was dragged out of his philosophy exam finals and told he may not graduate because he built a proxy server at home.

The administrator started by telling him that running a proxy server was illegal. After all what would happen if students were using it to secretly learn about making a bomb? Fafnani would go to jail.

Fafnani tried to argue his way out of it and pointed out that under the school Student Network Access Agreement there was no mention of setting up a proxy from home. Anyway it was not illegal to run your own website or a proxy server.

He is now forced to take all his proxies offline, otherwise he will face "repeat network abuse" and will get in a LOT of trouble.

He said he found it unfair that Fairfax County Public Schools felt it could impose "this kind of totalitarianism" on him and claims it has made him a criminal for making proxies.

A backdoor in MySpace's architecture allows anyone who's interested to see the photographs of some users with private profiles -- including those under 16 -- despite assurances from MySpace that those pictures can only be seen by people on a user's friends list. Info about the backdoor has been circulating on message boards for months.

The flaw exposes MySpace users who set their profiles to "private" -- the default setting for users under 16 -- even though MySpace's account settings page tells users, "Only the people you select will be able to view your full profile and photos."

Beginning in October, commercial websites began springing up to perform the MySpace hack automatically, while earning a buck through online advertising. The sites all allow you to retrieve photos from private profiles merely by typing in the Friend ID of a targeted user.

A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don't have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

For the past several months, AT&T executives have said the company is testing technology to filter traffic on its network to look for copyrighted material that is being illegally distributed.

AT&T's plans would turn the nation's largest telephone company into a kind of network cop, a role that some say could turn dangerous for the company. For one, filtering packets to determine whether they contain copyrighted material raises privacy concerns.

AT&T argues that it must get involved in stopping the flow of pirated content because much of this content is shared using peer-to-peer protocols, which eats up valuable network bandwidth, slowing network connections for many of its customers.

Under mounting pressure from law enforcement and parents, MySpace agreed Monday to take steps to protect youngsters from online sexual predators and bullies, including searching for ways to better verify users' ages.

But Monday's announcement was short on specifics about how improvements would be carried out.

"Age verification requires that you have a database of kids and if you do, that database is available to hackers and anyone who can get into it."

MySpace said it was combing through sex offender registries to identify predators, who would then be kicked off the site. But sex offenders are unlikely to open an account under their real names, as are underage children.

"When people go on MySpace they lie about their age. Everyone lies about their age," the sixth-grader said. "You just put an age and a date and you just put it on there."

MySpace said it is in the process of creating a database where parents can submit children's e-mail addresses to prevent their children from setting up profiles.

Sony BMG made history Thursday by becoming the fourth and final major label to allow its music to be sold without digital rights management, issuing a announcement that Amazon.com's MP3 store would start carrying music from the label by the end of this month.

This day has been a long time coming. After consumers are able to buy music that plays on a wide variety of equipment, analysts expect the market for digital music and associated devices to expand.

Representatives for both Sony BMG and Amazon confirmed that the files will in fact contain watermarks. However, privacy advocates needn't be alarmed -- the reps also told me that the only information to be included in the watermarks is where they were purchased. In other words, if you mistakenly share the files over the internet, they will not be traceable to you, only to Amazon.

Numerous reports confirm that Network Solutions, the well-known domain registry company, is automatically registering domain names when individuals search for a potential name using its site's search tools.

In a follow-up story at DomainNameNews, a reporter confirmed that after using the popular whois tool on the Network Solution site to search for a domain name, they then found that the site had been registered to a private registrant, but that the domain name was still available from Network Solutions.

eWEEK was also able to determine that simply searching for a domain name with Network Solutions' Whois utility was sufficient for Network Solutions to automatically register the name.

Other individuals have started automated scripts to flood Network Solutions with bogus domain name searches in an impromptu DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. Others are protesting Network Solutions new policy to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the oversight organization for top-level domain name providers. At this time, ICANN has not replied to requests for its stand on Network Solutions' policies.

Warner Music has bent beneath the force of the anti-DRM winds sweeping the globe. The label will now offer its complete catalog, DRM-free, through Amazon's new MP3 store.

The announcement means that EMI, Universal, and Warner now offer their catalogues in DRM-free digital formats, making Sony BMG (of rootkit fame) the lone holdout among the majors. Amazon now claims to offer for than 2.9 million songs in MP3 format from over 33,000 unique labels.

The entire movement to free music from DRM's shackles has had stunning success in 2007 after years in which such widespead moves to MP3 looked impossible. Could movies be next?

A popular software program called NATS, which powers the backend of about 35% of all adult paysites online today has reportedly been in a compromised status for several months while the company that owned and manages the software did little to nothing to correct the issue, according to information obtained by ICWT.

The number of records potentially compromised is not known, but is believed to be in the tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of accounts. The NATS system is deployed on an estimated 35% to 40% of all adult sites, so if someone purchased a membership to an adult site since October, 2007 - there is a good chance that they are potentially effected.

The information that was compromised appears to possibly include, with regard to those who bought memberships on adult sites appears to include name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, IP address, billing information and possibly other information provided or collected during signup.

TMM's John Albright is busy on GFY implying more legal action against people who speak out against him. This time, it appears he is threatening employees of his competition, MPA3.