coondoggie writes to tell us that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be taking a look at contactless payment systems and the consumer protection issue surrounding them. "RFID technology provides obvious benefits, the FTC said. For example, the ability of producers using RFID to track exactly where in the supply chain their products are and by which retailer they were ultimately sold to a consumer has the potential to make product recalls more effective. However, there also may be costs regarding consumers' individual privacy rights associated with it."

Techdirt is reporting that Canada may be considering a "three strikes" policy which could see users internet access privileges revoked for file sharing violations. "Given how secretive the industry and the government have been about new copyright laws, perhaps this isn't too surprising. We do know that the industry was pushing for greater ISP liability as part of copyright law changes a few months back, so it wouldn't be surprising if ISPs were negotiating a "three strikes" type rule to avoid the liability issues. Of course, they probably want to keep it secret, as publicity (and resulting anger) about these types of laws in Europe has at least some politicians moving away from them. However, as the entertainment industry does keep succeeding in getting these types of laws to move forward, how long will it be before similar laws are proposed in the US, with "everyone else is doing it" as part of the reasoning?"

aacc1313 writes "An article that details how Open Source is being hijacked by Microsoft and the sort via 'Shared Source' licenses and how Open Source licenses have become so much more confusing. From the article, "The confusion stems from the fact that Microsoft's 'shared source' program includes three proprietary licenses as well, whose names are similar in some ways to the open-source licenses. Thus, while the Microsoft Reciprocal License has been approved by OSI, the Microsoft Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL) is not, because it allows users to modify and redistribute the software only on the Windows platform" and "The 'shared source' program was and is Microsoft's way of fighting the open source world, allowing customers to inspect Microsoft source code without giving those customers the right to modify or redistribute the code. In other words, "shared source" is not open source, and shouldn't be confused with it.""