US cable giant to throttle P2P

Cox Communications - America's third-largest cableco - is on the verge of testing new network technology that will fast-track certain "time-sensitive" Internet traffic during periods of congestion, says The Register.

This also means that "less time-sensitive traffic" will be slow-tracked.

As it announced late last night with a post to its Web site, Cox plans to test this new technology next month on broadband customers in Kansas and Arkansas.

Labour MPs are joining an opposition-led revolt against government plans to allow widespread sharing of information held in disparate public sector databases, reports Computing.co.uk.

The Tories have united with the Liberal Democrats and some left-wing Labour MPs in a bid to make the government "see sense" and withdraw "draconian" changes to data protection laws that would facilitate greater data sharing, even where information was obtained from individuals subject to limitations about how it would be used.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve and Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth said in the House of Commons that they would oppose sections of the Coroners and Justice Bill that are being used to introduce the new regulations.

The UK's Intellectual Property minister David Lammy has said the government will not force Internet service providers to pursue file sharers, reports The BBC.

There had been mounting speculation about government legislation on the issue as the music industry steps up its fight against the pirates.

Other countries, such as France, have supported tough action on file-sharers, who the industry claims cost them dear.

There's a war of words brewing, with several Internet safety organisations, researchers, and social-networking companies on one side and some state attorneys general on the other, says CNet.

Earlier this month, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, run out of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, issued a report stating that Internet predator danger to kids is not as high as some have claimed.

The report was immediately criticised by a number of attorneys general including Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. And on Monday, an Internet safety organisation in Oregon published a study that claims that data from press releases on Corbett's own Web site fail to back up his claims about Internet dangers.