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Dutch lead the EU in Net Neutrality.

The Netherlands has become the first country in the European Union to enshrine Net Neutrality into national law. Legislation had been introduced on the issue in the country in June 2011, and it cleared the second legislative chamber yesterday.

Providers of mobile Internet services in the country, such as KPN, had hoped to throttle certain bandwidth intensive services, or even charge for access to particular types of service on their networks. With the new Net Neutrality law in place, they cannot discriminate in this fashion.

Exceptions to the rules include times of significant network congestion where it is unavoidable, and for reasons of network security.

Bits of Freedom, a Dutch lobby group, said that the law also includes provisions against wiretapping, making it illegal to use deep packet inspections on customers' Internet communications without their prior consent.

T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom is currently in serious discussions with MetroPCS in regards to a merger, sale or other transaction.

The company is considering a "stock-swap transaction that would give the German company control over the combined entity, which would be publicly listed. A second option is for T-Mobile to go public and third option is an outright sale of T-Mobile USA to MetroPCS.

Telekom has been looking to dump T-Mobile USA for over a year, and its $39 billion sale to AT&T last year was blocked by the US Department of Justice.

Despite cheaper prices and a fast network in metro areas, the carrier has been losing contract subscribers to bigger rivals AT&T and Verizon and there has been little stoppage to the exodus.

MetroPCS, a smaller but growing competitor, has been desperately seeking assets from the majors, and would welcome an infusion of customers or spectrum.

T-Mobile USA has 33 million subscribers but lost 1.65 million last year as rivals like Verizon gained over 2 million.

A group claiming to be the Russian branch of 'Anonymous' has taken down the websites of the Kremlin.

The group also claimed responsibility for shuttering sites linked to the Russian president.

More specifically, the sites kremlin.ru and президент.рф have been unavailable for periods although as of posting both seem to be available.

The group tweeted this morning that "Kremlin.ru - TANGO DOWN." Additionally, the company posted screenshots showing the site down across the world.

Although no one claimed responsibility, the Russian Federal Security Service wesbite, fsb.ru, has seen sporadic outages as well today, says RT.

The Kremlin responded to the attacks: "We received threats from Anonymous several days ago but we can't confirm it's exactly this group that attacked the Kremlin.ru website. At the moment we can't establish who's behind the attack. Unfortunately we live at a time when technology security threats have mounted, but we have the means to resist them."

MySpace shared personal information with advertisers, FTC alleged.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced yesterday that MySpace has agreed to settle charges that it misled its users about its practices of sharing information with advertisers.

The (former?) social network's privacy policy indicated that personally identifiable information would not be used for purposes other than for which it was submitted, and that data used to customize ads would not identify individual users to third parties.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs noticed in 2009 that MySpace was breaking its own privacy policies by providing the Friend IDs associated with visited pages to third parties. Every MySpace user has a unique Friend ID, and therefore this information would allow third parties to associate browsing data with users' full names.

The FTC found MySpace to be in breach of the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework in its data sharing practices and pursued it in May 2010. Now MySpace has agreed to settle the case and establish a comprehensive privacy program, submitting to third-party audits for the next 20 years.

Update addresses three security flaws.

Apple just released the latest update for its iOS devices, v5.1.1, in which it address three big security fixes.

The first fix is for a flaw that allows for the address bar to be spoofed in such a way as to trick a user into thinking they are on a certain website, when in fact they are on a completely different site. The address bar should not be spoof-able for this reason, as spammers and malware peddlers could use this flaw as part of an attack.

The second fix is for a cross site scripting (XSS) flaw that could be used to recover session authentication data or other information stored legitimately by a website in the browser. Such information could be used to impersonate a user online.

The third fix is for a remote code execution bug that could be used to push malware or other nasty code to your device without you even knowing about it, just by landing on a page that was crafted to exploit the flaw.

United States Magistrate Judge Gary R Brown laments "abusive litigation."

Brown criticised legal arguments that an IP address is sufficient for identifying an individual responsible for copyright infringement online. He made the comments in the K-Beech, Inc. v. John Does 1-37 case which deals with the illegal sharing of adult entertainment videos.

"The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time. An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones," Brown commented.

"Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function ? here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film ? than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call."

Brown also noted some of the defendants claims. One woman, for example, said that her wireless router was not secured and that she lives beside a municipal parking lot where somebody might have used her connection to download or share files.

Pandora is second most downloaded app from Apple's App Store.

Chief Executive Joe Kennedy said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless conference that the Pandora music service has passed 150 million users. The tallies of registered and active users have increased by 50 percent since the beginning of the 2012 financial year, according to Kennedy.

A lot of the growth was attributed to mobile usage, with 70 percent of the music streamed from Pandora in April being on mobile devices.

It estimates that about 52 million users are active. Last month, around 1.06 billion hours of music was streamed, which amounts to an 87 percent increase over the same period of 2011.

Pandora faces increasing competition from rival music services, such as Spotify, which claims to have 3 million paying customers now. Still, Pandora believes this is just the beginning for the company. It is currently working to get the service integrated into cars from several automakers.

Reports claimed 55,000 accounts were affected.

A Pastebin user posted five pages of Twitter usernames and passwords on Monday, fuelling reports that there has been a massive attack on Twitter's servers. Celebrity accounts were also reported to be among the bunch of compromised details.

Twitter has denied that any major successful hack has occurred, but admitted it was still investigating the situation. A Twitter representative told Mashable that the list contained 20,000 duplicates, and also spam accounts that have already been suspended by the service.

Additionally, many of the usernames and passwords were found to not match up. The microblogging site has sent out password reset instructions to accounts it thinks might have been affected by the release of the login information, but its unclear where any legitimate details may have come from.

App uses only data, without touching users quote of call minutes or texts.

Of course there are several alternative apps that have been around before Telefonica's new "Tu Me" app, such as Skype, Viber and Whatsapp, but Telefonica says it would rather keep the customer than lost them to other products and services. Providers have long viewed apps like Skype as a threat.

The app launches for iPhones first, with an Android app set to be released very soon.

Both the caller and recipient require the app to be installed to work. Users will receive a pop-up notification when someone is trying to get in contact, although unlike Skype, users cannot make calls to normal telephone numbers.

Messages transmitted using the app will also be encrypted to ensure privacy.

"We've seen the growing popularity of communication apps on smartphones but we believe we've gone one better with Tu Me using our knowledge and insights of how people use their devices," said Telefonica Digital's chief commercial officer Stephen Shurrock.

California Judge throws out Proview iPad trademark suit.

The Chinese firm told a court in California that Apple deceived it by purchasing the rights to the iPad name through a special-purpose vehicle. The lawsuit was filed back in February of this year, while Proview and Apple are also locked in a trademark dispute in China.

Judge Mark Pierce said that both parties had agreed to settle any disagreements in Hong Kong, dismissing the case last week.

A spokeswoman for Apple told Reuters that Proview is just truing to unfairly get more from Apple for a trademark that it already paid for.

Apple claims to have bought ownership of the iPad trademark in various countries from Proview, but the Chinese company argues that Apple only dealt with one unit of Proview, and that it retains the iPad trademark in the Chinese market.

ISP forced to take website offline.

Twitter announcements suggested that Anonymous was responsible for taking the site offline, although Virgin Media says it took it down itself for about an hour during a distributed denial of service attack.

The ISP recently began blocking access to the Pirate Bay in compliance with a High Court order. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2 have also been ordered to block access to the BitTorrent website by Friday, while BT has requested a few more weeks to consider its options.

"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour," Virgin Media said in a statement.

The High Court order in the UK is just another attempt to block access to one of the world's most notorious web services, which has survived raids and even legal proceedings against its founders in Sweden.

Lenovo's K Series smart TVs are powered by Android 4.0 and new Qualcomm processor.

As part of its PC Plus strategy, Lenovo has launched its K-series Smart TV products in China. The PC-maker is looking to gain more ground in the global market for "PC Plus" devices, such as Smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and so forth.

"While we continue to strengthen our position in the PC industry, we are also further expanding into the field of Internet devices, with innovative smart phones and tablets, and today, smart TVs," said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO.

"As a global leader in the PC industry, our customers look to us to provide new technologies, and as we drive further into the PC­­-Plus era, we will continue to introduce new products worldwide. The PC-Plus era is a great opportunity for our customers and Lenovo intends to remain out in front, leading as always with exciting new products."

Lenovo is releasing four Lenovo Smart TV K-series devices ? the 55-inch screen K91 and K81 and the 42-inch screen K81 and K71 ? priced from RMB14,999 to RMB6,499. They are the first television products to adopt the Android 4.0 OS and a new Qualcomm dual core 1.5GHz CPU.

Judge slams "arrogant" Motorola and Microsoft.

Motorola had won the right to force Microsoft to recall and destroy Xbox consoles and Windows 7 copies in a patent licensing dispute. Though Motorola had won this right in a Mannheim court, a U.S. court ordered Motorola to hold off from enforcing the ruling until it ruled on another related complaint between the two.

In a Seattle court, Judge James Robart slammed the companies for burdening the legal system with these claims. "The court is well aware that it is being used as a pawn in a global, industry-wide business negotiation," Robart said.

"To an outsider looking at it, it has been arbitrary, it has been arrogant and, frankly, it has been based on hubris."

He also commented that the legal fees involved in the case could finance a small country. Two claims are being examined by the court related to the patent dispute between Motorola and Microsoft.

Motorola claims that Microsoft failed to pay license fees for two patents related to the H.264 video technology. Microsoft has argued that Motorola is asking for far too much in fees, claiming that if it met Motorola's demands it would face an annual bill of $4 billion.

Verizon Wireless has announced that the Droid Incredible 4G will go on sale via the carrier in the "coming weeks."

The device runs on Android 4.0.x, is powered by a powerful 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and has 4G LTE support. The phone also features a 4-inch LCD quarter high definition display, dual cameras and a 1,700 mAh removable battery.

Although pricing was not unveiled, it is expected to sell for $299 with contract, just like most of Verizon's 4G Android devices.

HTC notes Beats Audio tech will be included and the Incredible will have "high quality photo and audio capabilities." Among those features are a camera quick activation feature and HTC Video Pic for shooting stills while capturing video.

(Pic via CW)

Debug option accidentally left enabled.

Last last week, it emerged that an OS X Lion security update released in February, 10.7.3, had a flaw relating to the FileVault encryption feature. A debug option appears to have been left enabled by an engineer, which resulted in users' FileVault passwords being saved in a plain-text log file.

The file is accessible outside the encrypted area by anyone with access to the disk, or by malware that knows where to look. Not everybody will be affected though.

According to Sophos, the issue affects those who used the FileVault encryption option for their home directories with Snow Leopard. It does not impact users who did not upgrade from Snow Leopard. It also does not affect users of FileVault2 or those who have full disk encryption enabled.

Vulnerable users who opt not to encrypt their Time Machine backups also risk replicating the log file in their backups.