Net users and ISPs in France are not very happy with the proposed law to make ISPs responsible for filtering online material for illegal content.

Derek Slater is looking deeply into the potential conflict between intellectual property and free speech, off the back of the recent Pew report which suggested that the RIAAs tactics of suing individual file sharers was having a significant impact on the volume of P2P traffic.

Ernie Miller is puzzled at HP CEO Carly Fiorina's attack on digital piracy. "How strange the spectacle of a major computer manufacturer calling for an all out war on what computers enable"

Broadband is to be the FCC's top issue in 2004 according to this report at CNet. "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said that he doesn't yet support regulating broadband telephone service providers, but thinks instead that a national "forum" to guide the young industry is more appropriate." He re-iterated his feelings on VoIP, saying it should not be regulated like the existing phone companies and even called California's and Minnesota's attempts to do this "scary". Good for him. I didn't agree with Powell's call on media ownership but he's got it right on this one.

IBM and Intel and others are creating a $10 million dollar defense fund to pay the legal costs of companies getting sued by SCO.

The Gaurdian reports that "The residents of one Yorkshire town got so fed up with being passed over for broadband access that they set up Britain's first ISP cooperative."

28 entertainment companies have agreed, in court, not to sue ReplayTV owners for skipping ads.

The RIAA are sending troops out onto the streets to crack down on street vendors - "Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked
like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid"
vests the unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled
lettering read "RIAA" instead of something from an official
law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot
attendant Ceasar Borrayo...
"They said they were police from the recording industry or something,
and next time they?d take me away in handcuffs," he said through an
interpreter. Borrayo says he has no way of knowing if the records,
with titles like Como Te Extra?o Vol. IV ? Musica de los 70?s y 80?s,
are illegal, but he thought better of arguing the point."

The Grocery Maufacturers of America have, none-too-cleverly, sent an email to a consumer group, CASPIAN, suggesting they are trying to dig up some dirt "about the
group's founder, Katherine Albrecht." Albrecht has spoken out strongly against RFID tags in the past.

Finally for today, check out lots of interesting stories at Instapundit.