Young girl sued for file-swapping

A coalition of companies that run Internet song-sharing services offered yesterday to pick up the cost of the $2 000 settlement a Manhattan mother reached with the music industry. This comes after it sued her 12-year-old daughter for copyright infringement.

News24 reports that Brianna LaHara was one of 261 defendants targeted on Monday by the major record labels and their industry trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, in a broad legal assault on people who swap songs for free over the Internet.

More than 11 000 delegates at the OracleWorld technology user conference in San Francisco were evacuated from the city`s Moscone Convention Centre, following a series of bomb threats yesterday. This came hours before the second anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US, reports Australian IT News.

Meanwhile, CNet reports that Oracle will not raise its unsolicited bid for PeopleSoft.

A new IDC survey shows more than a third of US respondents use an 802.11 LAN at home, but just 27% use one at work, reports TechWeb.

A survey of 2 500 members of the company`s Mobile Advisory Council found that tight economic times lie behind both figures. "The overall slowdown in enterprise IT spending has made wireless LANs a low priority for many IT organisations, while at the same time prices have dropped dramatically for home-based wireless access points."

A virus or worm that exploits newly revealed vulnerabilities in the current versions of Windows could emerge fairly soon, security experts say, in part because the vulnerabilities are very similar to the flaws exploited by the MSBlast worm. CNet reports that "this is essentially the same type of vulnerability".

Code that exploits the vulnerability is already being exchanged between researchers, and a new virus "could come out in the next few days, if not sooner".