Washington objects to the draft's targets to keep the global temperature rise below 2C this century and halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The draft, prepared by the German G8 Presidency, says action is imperative.

Japanese news organisations recently reported that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government was also planning to push fellow G8 members for tough targets.

As well as objecting to mention of targets for global temperature rise and greenhouse gas emissions, Washington is also seeking to remove a section acknowledging that the UN is the "appropriate forum" for agreeing further action.

"It lies in the hands of Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Merkel, whether it's all sweetness and light or whether they are prepared to stand up and say 'I'm sorry, but the rest of the world is moving in a different direction from you'," he said.

Sometimes you see a story and think, nah, I'm dreaming this, hope I wake up soon. Then you nip yourself, it hurts, and you say to yourself my God, it's true, MC Hammer really is a Web 2.0 expert.

According to TechCrunch, Hammer is, "advisor to stealth internet startup Dance Jam". Doesn't sound that stealthy, if it’s on his biog.

Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc could face a possible lawsuit for failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material in products such as Vista OS, iTunes and the iPod, two companies have warned.

Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to both companies and to Adobe Systems Inc and Real Networks -- which produce the Adobe Flash Player and Real Player respectively -- for actively avoiding their X1 SeCure Recording Control, which they said is an effective copyright protection system.

Warner Bros. astonishingly now claims that 70 percent of camcorded movies have been traced to Canada over the last 18 months. Given the claims of 20 percent, 23 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, and 50 percent did not make the requisite impact (in fact, the USTR even rejected the movie industry's request to escalate Canada on the Special 301 Watch list), we now get a blockbuster number of 70 percent.

Moreover, with New York City taking 40 percent of the camcording claims and with Spiderman 3 apparently appearing on China streets weeks before the previews in Canada, the numbers just don't add up.

Last week I pointed to a U.S. GAO study that found that counterfeiting claims are massively overblown with less than one percent of randomly inspected shipments into the U.S. containing counterfeit products, a far cry from the 5 - 7 percent that is often claimed. Today, the Financial Times reports that a forthcoming OECD study concludes that losses of global counterfeiting amount to no more than $200 billion, far less than the $1 trillion claimed by the International Chamber of Commerce.

There are a few things lawmakers have decided really ought to be handled with the "care and oversight" that only the government can provide: e.g., tax collection, radioactive materials, biohazards, guns, and CDs. CDs? No, I'm not talking about financial Certificates of Deposit, though that might make more sense. I'm talking about Compact Discs.

New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints.

The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general.

Computer security is a complex issue, and there is no simple cure-all. But one thing that continues to baffle me is the way we bank online. Think about the Web address of your bank. It probably ends in one of the common top-level domains: ".com" if you're in the United States, or, depending on your home country, in something like ".uk," ".de," ".jp," or ".ru."

Why do banks and other financial institutions operate under the public top-level domains, like .com? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that creates new top-level domains, should create a new, secure domain just for this reason—something like ".bank," for example.

Registering new domains under such a top-level domain could then be restricted to bona fide financial organizations. And the price for the domain wouldn’t be just a few dollars: It could be something like $50,000—making it prohibitively expensive to most copycats. Banks would love this. They would move their existing online banks under a more secure domain in no time.

The creation of a new domain for a specific industry is not unprecedented: We’ve already done it for museums, with their restricted ".museum" top-level domain.

The Premier League and a US company have sued You Tube for breaching its copyright, Associated Press reported.

The Premier League and publisher Bourne want damages and any profits there might be from whatever was shown online.

Football is a popular sport and involves 20 grown men running up and down what's called a "pitch" chasing something called a ball. AP said the case was filed in a New York city district court on Friday.

Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management. That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet. FLEEN interviewed Matt about the incident.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday authorized Brazil to break the patent on an AIDS drug made by Merck & Co. Inc. and import a generic version from India instead.

It was the first time Brazil bypassed a patent to acquire cheaper drugs for its AIDS prevention program, a step recently taken by Thailand. Other countries, including Canada and Italy, have also used a clause in World Trade Organization rules to flout drug patents in the name of public health.

Brazil's government provides free universal access to AIDS drugs and distributes condoms and syringes free as part of a prevention program the United Nations has lauded.

The program helped Brazil slow infection rates and avoid what experts predicted would become an AIDS epidemic. Infection rates among adults have stabilized at about 0.6 percent -- similar to the United States.

Drug makers often reduce prices to keep countries as clients and avoid compulsory licensing. Merck said most middle-income countries like Brazil paid $1.80 per pill for Efavirenz.

Lula's decree could also strain relations with the U.S. government, which has threatened to revoke Brazil's trading partner status unless it does more to protect patents.

The body which is responsible for the encryption of the HD-DVD is incandescent with rage that millions of bloggers have published the software key that can break the technology's codes.

Speaking to the BBC, Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group said that bloggers had crossed the line by publishing the code number.

He said that that the outfit was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key.

Ironically, the publication of the key would have disappeared into the great hole that is the Interweb if the AACS had not used its considerable legal and technical tools to lean on Google and Digg.

But it does not seem that the AACS had learnt its lesson about taking on the combined might of the net. Ayers still seems to think that the best way was to shove the toothpaste back in the tube by using some "legal and technical" steps to prevent the circumvention of copy protection.