Week in Review: Digital Economy Bill takes a beating

Digital Economy Bill takes a beating

It was an interesting week in digital legislation. Really. Tech leaders came out swinging against a clause in the Digital Economy Bill that would let the government cut off websites for offering illegal content.

And now it seems that very clause was actually written entirely by a British music rights lobbyist.

There was also trouble from the Conservative Party, which promised in its tech manifesto to deliver 100Mbps broadband, making the bill's 2Mbps look rather wimpy.

Security

Security's always a big deal in IT, and this week was no different.

Microsoft issued a pair of patches, and then admitted yet another IE flaw.

Adobe Reader was named as the most targeted software, and a hole was found in Apache Web Server.

If that wasn't enough, researchers warned that using your mum's maiden name as a password backup isn't all that safe - unless your mum's from a Polish-German-Russian background, in which case it's so difficult to spell even her own daughter misspells it (but hey, that's just me).

Best of the rest...

Google's Street View now covers all of the UK, for good or bad.

Ballmer claims Microsoft is very serious about the cloud, while the company invests in advertising for Bing.

Just as the iPad is set to go on sale, HP mocked the lack of Flash support on Apple's latest gizmo, saying its own slate will have feature the Adobe tech. We're a bit surprised Apple didn't just point out HP's lack of actual, existing product, but the firm is probably too busy getting ready to count the cash coming in...