Downloaders can stay private

Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecommunications companies hand over the names and addresses of people who are suspected of sharing copyright-protected music and movies online, the EU's top court ruled yesterday, reports ABC News.

But European Union nations could, if they want, introduce rules to oblige companies to hand over personal data in civil cases, said the European Court of Justice.

The court upheld the Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to hand over information that would identify who had used the file-sharing program Kazaa to distribute copyright material owned by members of Promusicae, a Spanish trade group for film and music producers.

Attorney-general Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers, with the backing of the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, are pushing a Bill that would crack down on sex offenders' use of the sites, says New York Times.

The law would require all registered sex offenders to submit any e-mail addresses and other Internet identifiers, such as screen names used for instant messaging, to the State Division of Criminal Justice Services within 10 days of their creation, just as with their home addresses.

Offenders who fail to do so would be violating their parole or probation, Cuomo said.

With more people finally switching to Windows Vista, the operating system is fast becoming a target for security researchers and hackers, reports PC World.

Though Vista is generally more secure than earlier versions of Windows, hackers are increasingly finding ways through, or around, its defences. Indeed, this is the first time since the operating system debuted last year that virtually every hole discussed in the PC World column affects Vista in one way or another.

Microsoft released three "critical" patches in December to fix security holes that affect earlier versions of Windows, including XP Service Pack 2, but they can also bite those running Vista.

A number of iPod owners have discovered that their recently purchased iPods will not work with Apple's new iTunes video rentals, even though the iPods have video playback capabilities, says Wired.com.

As of yesterday, the issue had been raised multiple times in Apple's support forums. So far, the company's only response has been to confirm that movie rentals work only with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Classic and the third-generation iPod Nano.

Earlier iPods, including fifth-generation iPods sold before the September 2007 release of the sixth-generation iPod classic, are incompatible with rented videos. "This is false advertising," says Raymond Blanchard, a disgruntled iPod owner. "I demand an upgrade or fix."