Well, there's been plenty going on since I've been away.

The RIAA have started their avalanche of subpoenas, the first stage in tracking down and suing P2P file sharers.

MIT and Boston college stand up to the RIAA.

Red Hat have stepped prominently into the SCO linux-unix battle.

Tony Blair is apparently backing away from a national ID card

A UK government funded report supposedly to determine how to stimulate broadband rollout has declared that DRM is the only way to do this. (Do I hear 'interests' and 'vested' and perhaps even 'smells' coming together in some combination?) I can't put it better than Ross Anderson: "I deeply resent the use of my tax money to help Disney and Microsoft grind their axes. But this sort of nonsense cannot just be ignored - if not rebutted it will become policy."

The FBI are targetting VOIP as a threat to national security

The ACLU are challenging the constitutionality of the USA-PATRIOT Act

UCITA has taken a big blow as National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws put their support for it on ice.

The UK draft proposal on the implementation of the EUCD reaches its first birthday, as the UK Patent Office as putting the final touches to the final draft.

Queensland University staff have their pcs scanned for MP3 files.

Congress sees the introduction of the P4 bill with the stated aim of protecting children from P2P porn.

The UK Human Rights Act gets accused of fostering a culture of litigation

Dow Jones win a hearing in Australia to appeal the Gutnick online defamation decision.

Sony win the playstation mod chip appeal in Australia

EBay have $29.5 million dollars in damages awarded against them for patent infringement

The consumer commission in Australian rejects a complaint about copy protected CDs

Mitch Bainwol, a republican party staffer, replaces Hilary Rosen at the RIAA

The EFF issue advice on how to avoid getting sued by the RIAA

A US appeal court oks the evidence of a Turkish hacker in a child pornography case

The Pentagon propose and then withdraw the idea of a terrorism futures market.

The European Commission declare that they are likely to fine Microsoft for continuing anti-competitive practices.

Amazon begin working with publishers on the idea of an online searchable non-fiction books archive.

And that's just for starters. I'm really backed up with work so don't have the time to expand on these but there's plenty of background to be had on all these stories from all the usual suspects listed under my links.