In USA Today, Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal points out that “

[i]n [their] milestone agreement with MySpace, the nation’s attorneys general have marked a profoundly significant step toward social networking safety.  The agreement includes more than 70 detailed specific changes to help purge predators, expunge inappropriate content such as pornography and protect children from contact by adults. Even more important long term, MySpace has acknowledged that age and identity authentication are important to safeguarding children. It has commendably agreed to create and lead a task force of social networking sites, technology companies and others to explore and develop age- and identity-verification technology.”

PCMag has an interesting article today explaining why “DRM-free music spells trouble.”

Reuters reports that “Google attacked European parliamentarians and privacy advocates on Monday for trying to have regulators consider competitive implications in its $3.1 billion takeover of rival DoubleClick.  The argument was the centerpiece of a European Parliament hearing to consider the burgeoning role of the Internet in impinging on the privacy of citizens.”

According to CNetNews.com, the CIA has warned that “[a] cyberattack has caused a power blackout in multiple cities outside the United States.  […]  The SANS Institute, a computer-security training body, reported the CIA’s disclosure on Friday. CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue told a SANS Institute conference on Wednesday in New Orleans that the CIA had evidence of successful cyberattacks against critical national infrastructures outside the United States.  ‘We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the U.S.,’ Donahue said.  ‘In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities.’  Donahue added that the CIA does not know who executed the attacks or why but that all of the attacks involved ‘intrusions through the Internet.’”

Jason Matusow on his blog (aptly named Matusow’s Blog) reveals that “IBM is supporting Open XML in IBM Lotus Quickr, IBM Websphere Portal, IBM DB2 Content Manager v8.4, and IBM DB2 9 pureXML.”  As Matusow points out, “[i]f National Bodies are trying to determine the marketplace viability of the Open XML document format – and the ability for other companies to implement it – this would seem to be a good sign that Open XML is in scope for international standardization.”