Slashdot Mirror

Various readers are sending in good news from Europe on the rights front. First, at the EU level, Mark.J brings word that the European Parliament has canned a number of controversial amendments to its updated Telecoms Package, which could have resulted in ISPs being forced to disconnect customers for involvement in illegal file-sharing of copyrighted material. Next, SplatMan_DK writes from Denmark on a recent ruling by the Danish High Court that means that Danes are still innocent until proven guilty in copyright cases, even if their IP address has been confirmed as the origin of P2P traffic involving copyrighted music. Finally, from Sweden, an update on the draconian so-called Lex Orwell, which would have effectively resulted in the routine wiretapping of the entire nation. Eric Blair sends a link on an agreement reached between the Swedish parliament and the sitting government on a new form for the controversial signals intelligence law. Supposedly, the sting has been taken out of the law: only the department of defense and the cabinet may request data, and they'll have to get court approval for it.

radsoft, pointing to this HP press release, writes: "HP says silicon electronics will reach a dead end in 2012, and wants to have a 16KB prototype of its molecular memory working by 2005." Basically, it looks like they've worked out some of the details of interfacing molecular components (still in their infancy of course, but promising) with traditional silicon.

radsoft.net is reporting that DoCoMo phones arre under attack by new wormish i-mode attachments. According to the announcement, i-mode phone users shouldn't open emails from unknown senders. I used a docomo phone while I was in Japan a few weeks ago. They are so far ahead of us in phones: lighter, cooler, longer battery life, more features, and i-mode is cool. Anyway, the funny part is that these attachments, if opened, will do nifty things like call arbitrary phone numbers (your worst enemy? Emergency?) or simply freeze your phone. Docomo has market penetration that makes local cel phone mega corps look like mom and pop shops. Anyway, there's no doubt that consumer electronics will be targets of more attacks in the future.