Sweden presents data storage bill

Sweden's government wants an EU-backed law obliging telecom and Internet operators to store traffic information for at least six months, reports AFP.

The European Commission has filed a complaint against Sweden for not yet complying with the 2006 EU directive on data retention, and Swedish justice minister Beatrice Ask says she hoped the draft law would help the Scandinavian country avoid massive fines.

Sweden had been dragging its feet on the matter due to concern over how storing traffic data would impact on privacy.

Data storage company EMC has acquired Bus-Tech, a company whose technology helps fetch information from mainframe computers, says Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

The price of EMC's purchase of privately held Bus-Tech wasn't disclosed. EMC says the acquisition won't materially affect earnings this year.

EMC will use Bus-Tech's technology to move customers that use mainframes from aging tape-based data storage systems and onto disk-based data storage.

SugarSync, a cloud-based data storage service, is increasing free accounts to 5GB of space, states PC World.

SugarSync's closest counterpart, Dropbox, still offers 2GB for free, and it's expected that SugarSync's move will set off a free-space war.

SugarSync CEO Laura Yecies says the company thinks a more generous free version will help it generate more revenue, since the 250% storage increase will make it easier to explore its potential.