The week in your words: news roundup

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 26 Oct 2007 at 18:32

Not so argues jimexbox.

"It's called business, or more accurately long term user investment. I'm sure MS will virtually give this XP lite away, thus folk who use the lost cost laptop, and then maybe in later life when economic circumstances are different, they will graduate to a full cost MS OS. I don't see anything evil about this at all. We live in a capitalist society, not a communist one."

US bill seeks to end net-firms cooperation with China

Unlike the Chinese of course, who could find their access to Google and Yahoo somewhat hampered in future as the US pushes a bill to restrict internet companies from cooperating with Chinese authorities. A story which kicked off a long argument on free speech; who has it, who doesn't, but which was nicely summarised by brumsta.

"Don't ever think Western governments are above the system they are criticising in China. They are just much, MUCH more subtle about it."

Government ready to legislate on file-sharing

Which leads us to the UK, which has been anything but subtle with its announcement that it could be ready to legislate on file-sharing should ISPs fail to self-regulate, a suggestion met with a broad shrugging of shoulders from our community, but most especially our old friend Amnesia10.

"The problem is that there are already laws that cover this. I think that this will only make a whole load more teenagers criminals and particularly middle class parents of iPod owning teenagers. A great vote loser."

Potentially, but there are those with somewhat stronger opinions, including the director general of anti-piracy body FAST. Click here to read our exclusive interview.

Thanks for reading, we'll see you on Monday.