Mandrakesoft would like to alert all users and the software community at large about a recent clandestine attack by proprietary interests through covert adoption of EU Software Patent Legislation.

The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of software, including computer programs, data structures, and process descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the threat of litigation to extort payments. Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft, currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux and other Open Source projects.

Mandrakesoft would like to forewarn and mobilize its users and the software community about the very real threat of such a law. Please contact the media, your political representatives, and your government, and urge them to vote against unlimited Software Patents and to revert to the previous European Parliament position.

Napster moved into damage control mode today after a university gave some idea as to how much a RIAA music tax will add to student costs.

Ohio University believes it will need 5,000 students to pay the $3 fee to make Napster a break-even proposition for the school. Napster has demanded that Ohio University stay silent about the price before anyone catches wind of the cost.

"Napster called us today and said we should not publicize the details or discuss our contract," said Sean O'Malley, spokesman Communication Network Services at OU. "The price was an idea they had suggested early on."

On the plus side, Napster users at the school would be able to download as much music as they like for $3 per month - Windows users only, of course. Sadly, the DRM restrictions with Napster run high. Users can only make 3 copies of a song before the files become unplayable. In addition, students must pay 99 cents per song to move the file from their computer onto a CD or music playing device.

Students would also only be able to download songs while they are on the school network. Once they leave school their music disappears. Has renting culture ever been more fun?

While the entertainment industry continues to stick by its hardline stance that any kind of copying or file sharing is bad and harms sales, they can't be thrilled that Quentin Tarantino stood up at an "anti-piracy conference" and told everyone that copying movies isn't all bad. In fact, he admits that he bought a bunch of bootleg movies that were hard to find in order to recreate certain scenes for his latest movie, Kill Bill. On top of that, he says he's happy that Kill Bill is being pirated in China since there's no other way for people to see it there. Just like in the music industry, it appears that those people who the RIAA and MPAA claim they're trying to "protect" realize the issue is a bit more complicated than the world is being told.

A US general who reported on abuse by US forces against detained Iraqis is being questioned by a committee of Congress investigating the scandal.

Maj Gen Antonio Taguba found "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" in his report.

Correspondents say it has grown ever more embarrassing for George W Bush ahead of the US presidential election later this year and appears to be having a severe effect on the American public's view of the entire Iraq war.

Gen Taguba's report says detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison were forced to commit sexual acts, were threatened with torture, rape or attack by dogs, and were hidden from Red Cross visits, "in violation of international law".

The investigation was completed on 3 March, the Pentagon said, but by 4 May the defence secretary had still not read it fully.

The report was originally kept secret but later leaked to the media.

Microsoft's increasing concern over information security has translated into its decision to bite the bullet and make its upcoming SP2 (Service Pack 2) security patch available to all users - including those using pirated copies of its Windows XP software.

"It was a tough choice, but we finally decided that even if someone has pirated copy of Windows, it is more important to keep him safe than it is to be concerned about the revenue issue," he added.

The most visible changes SP2 will introduce to XP is the new Windows Firewall, a renamed, upgraded version of the ICF (Internet Connection Firewall) firewall system that shipped with the original Windows XP, and the new aggressive attitude towards security updates and controls.

Besides these two changes, there are many other under-the-hood security features aimed at "stopping malicious code like worms, phishing attacks like websites that hijack web browsers to trick users into giving out personal information, and improving security against the buffer overrun attacks favoured by virus-writers," said Mr Goffe.

The author of Winny, the Japanese P2P software with encrypted networking capability, similar to Freenet, has been today officially arrested for abetment of copyright violation, after the raid in the last December. He started its development in May 2002 and occasionally appeared on the web forum 2ch with his anonymous codename "47", but today turned out to be an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Tokyo in his 30s. Winny was so efficient and popular that it generated problems even at the Japanese police and the GSDF. As the Japanese police is the most advanced among the world in pulling P2P into criminal cases, outcry of users in Japan is expected.

The appearance of a new version of the infamous Sasser worm shortly after the arrest of its admitted author has fuelled speculation that its creator worked with other virus writers.

Sasser-E was first spotted three hours and 45 minutes after the arrest of Sven Jaschan, 18, from Rotenburg in northern Germany at 2pm on Friday afternoon (local time). Either earlier sightings of the fast-spreading worm were missed or Sasser-E was released by someone other than Jaschan, who was released from police custody after the new version of the worm arrived onto the scene.

Sasser-E uses the same Windows vulnerability as previous versions to spread across vulnerable Windows 2000 and XP machines, causing them to become unstable and shutdown. Unlike previous version, Sasser-E gives a warning from the "SkyNet Team" about the vulnerability it exploits. Unlike the first four Sassers but like many NetSky variants, Sasser-E tries to remove the Bagle worm.

It's been a long road since Slashdot first carried the story that Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) was speaking out about the DMCA's trampling of fair-use rights. Well, his bill (HR 107) gets a hearing this Wednesday and the multi-billion-dollar music and movie industries have called out their Big Guns to stop it. This morning an urgent message from the Professional Photographers of America arrived in my inbox characterizing Boucher's bill as 'A bill that would make it impossible for photographers to protect their work' and other lies (apparently, the RIAA and MPAA have recruited the PPA into their Axis of Evil). The alert finishes by saying that 'a strong grassroots effort combined with [our] recent lobbying efforts should be enough to keep this harmful bill locked in the subcommittee ... until Congress adjourns.' Let's give these folks a little taste of the slashdot effect and do a little 'grassroots' contacting of congresscritters ourselves.

German police have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the Sasser computer worm, believed to be one of the Internet's costliest outbreaks of sabotage.

Since appearing a week ago, Sasser has wreaked havoc on personal computers running on the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows 2000, NT and XP operating systems, but is expected to slow down as computer users download antivirus patches.

Separately, police in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said they had arrested a 21-year-old man who confessed to programing the Internet worm Agobot, which was later renamed as Phatbot.

From the outset, Sasser baffled security experts. Unlike the most recent digital outbreaks, Sasser was programed simply to spread and knock out computer networks, not take over machines and possibly steal information stored on them.

If the Sasser author is part of the Netsky group, which calls itself the "Skynet antivirus group," this could be the most important arrest yet in cracking virus-writing crime.

Australian research suggests that about half of complaints emailed to companies fail to be addressed

Melbourne-based online benchmarking company Global Reviews found during a recent research exercise that 50 percent of complaints that it sent to companies via email were "either not addressed or ignored altogether".

In contrast, Global Reviews director, Adir Shiffman, said that businesses were very efficient when it came to handling sales enquiries over the same contact medium.

Schiffman conceded that while the research finding may only have confirmed what many consumers might have expected intuitively, however, he said the inconsistency was noteworthy.