ZDNet UK Compliance Toolkit

Software licences are bogged down in tech sprawl

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Manek Dubash) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:24:02 +0000

ZDNet UK quizzes Ben Grimes, chief technology officer of management software firm Avocent, about key licensing issues

Ten tips for software licensing in a virtual world

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Manek Dubash) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:13:01 +0000

Virtualisation can cut costs, but only if you can avoid a number of software licensing pitfalls, says Manek Dubash

HP engineers vote to strike

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:43:02 +0000

Members of the Unite union at HP will take industrial action over the potential loss of pension benefits and pay reductions

Intel to use EC slip-up in antitrust defence

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:53:02 +0000

A administrative error by the European Commission has given Intel's antitrust defence some ammunition

UN agency plans database of tech devices

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Carly Newman) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:59:02 +0000

The International Telecommunication Union is launching a programme to give consumers a clearer set of standards on which to judge IT devices

OFT broadens online advertising probe

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:56:02 +0100

Following an initial consultation into the matter, the consumer watchdog is now gathering evidence for an inquiry into online behavioural advertising and pricing practices

Europe assisting US with IBM antitrust probe

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:51:01 +0100

The European Commission said it has provided information to US regulators looking into possible anti-competitive practices by IBM in the mainframe market

Europe to test Microsoft browser ballot system

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:40:02 +0100

The EC has said it is happy with concessions made by the software giant to provide a choice of browsers, while Microsoft will make technical docs available to developers

McKinnon case puts IT ethics in the dock

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (David Clarke) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:25:02 +0100

The Nasa hacker's case helps emphasise the importance of moves to improve IT ethics, says David Clarke

OFT cracks down on online electronics stores

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:24:01 +0100

As part of a Europe-wide sweep, the consumer watchdog is investigating four UK online stores over possible misleading advertising and unfair practices

Microsoft pushes for single global patent system

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Andrew Donoghue) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:03:01 +0100

The company wants to see a single world patent body established to "promote innovation, enrich knowledge and encourage competition"

Music execs put pressure on Pirate Bay owner

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Greg Sandoval) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:53:02 +0100

Music industry federation puts added pressure on Global Gaming Factory to hand over the money it intends to pay for the Pirate Bay

Contractors won't be subject to FoI

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:40:52 +0100

Third party contractors will not have to answer Freedom of Information requests, the government said on Thursday. The results of a Ministry of Justice consultation, published last week, show...

Berners-Lee sketches out plan for gov't data

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:12:02 +0100

Raw government data should be published using open formats to enable mash-ups, according to the inventor of the world wide web

Tories vow to publish more data online

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Kable) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:45:02 +0100

A new Conservative government would find the most useful data in 20 areas and publish it online for the public to mashup and use, according to David Cameron

NHS IT agency faces restructure

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Nick Heath) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:36:02 +0100

Consultation will take place over the future of the Connecting for Health name

Whitehall gives nod for increased IT offshoring

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Nick Heath) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:52:02 +0100

According to the Cabinet Office, sending some tech work abroad could result in cheaper IT services

First standard set for UK data protection

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:20:02 +0100

In the light of numerous security breaches, the BSI has formulated a data-protection standard that organisations can use for UK DPA compliance

Private companies to be subject to FoI law

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:18:02 +0100

The Freedom of Information Act will be extended to companies in the private sector doing work for the government, Justice Minister Michael Wills says

Autonomy begins integration of Interwoven

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:10:34 +0000

On Tuesday, Cambridge-based infrastructure software company Autonomy completed the purchase of Interwoven, the US content management company. The sale was due to be completed for £560m. The...

Rambus victorious in US gov't antitrust case

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Dawn Kawamoto) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:25:01 +0000

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by the Federal Trade Commission in its seven-year antitrust battle with Rambus

Vodafone cuts 500 UK jobs

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (David Meyer) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:13:02 +0000

The operator is shedding hundreds of employees as part of a cost-cutting drive to help it 'compete more effectively in the UK market'

Socitm: Cloud's more revolutionary than the PC

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tim Ferguson) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:46:01 +0000

Cloud computing could have a greater effect on public-sector IT than the advent of the PC in the 1980s, according to Socitm

Privacy Abuse by Technology

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:31:01 +0000

The RIAA using Internet Service Providers to hunt down IP "pirates" are going to do it without search warrants. There is no way for the RIAA or any other copyright owner to know when piracy is...

Compliance - 2b Forensic readiness planning, really, you nee...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:49:38 +0000

Most businesses are aware of the need to keep personal and other data secure, and to have a disaster recovery plan in place, but haven't even heard of, let alone considered a forensic readiness...

ManageSoft tackles virtual licences

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:40:36 +0000

An upgrade to software from software asset management company, ManageSoft, offers tools for possibly reducing the cost of software licenses on virtual systems and addresses the issues raised. ...

EC calls for IT help in the energy battle

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:54:02 +0000

The European Commission has said that it sees climate change as an issue which IT organisations and managers around the world should do their bit to tackle and it now has a plan to make a start on...

When does Copyrighted Software cease to be Copyrighted?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:40:50 +0100

Assume I have the source code for the Linux 2.6 kernel. Suppose I want to use just a piece of it. How small a piece does it have to be before I'm no longer violating the GPL? What my question is...

Steve Jobs looks very thin

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:12:03 +0100

Although it was good to see that Apple might finally be staging a significant assault on the enterprise with the 3G iPhone, the one thing that struck me immediately from Steve Jobs's latest product...

Should the EU refuse to buy Microsoft?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:10:13 +0100

A Green Party member of the European Parliament has formally requested that Microsoft be excluded from EU public procurements, because it is in breach of EU competition law. It's been suggested...

Open Source is Gay?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:15:06 +0000

I can imagine Steve Ballmer casting aspersions on Linux' manliness back in the days when Microsoft didn't like open source. But actually, my headline is a tease lead in to a more serious issue -...

Wikileaks taken offline

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:06:09 +0000

On Monday, the main site of Wikileaks was ordered to be taken offline by a California judge. According to a press release from Wikileaks, which provides an anonymous, encrypted online...

Patent nonsense revisited

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:27:10 +0000

I really can't believe - can barely understand, given its dense legalities - this latest ruling, which seems to want to reinstate software patents in the UK. I had thought that the reasons software...

Another test for the GPL

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:36:53 +0000

You may have seen that another interesting legal wrinkle has popped up for the General Public Licence, the open source intellectual property agreement that holds so much of the movement together....

Mobile email backlash?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:05:12 +0000

Speaking to other users of mobile email devices that have been provided by their employer, I have come across more than a few cases of users who have decided to disable the mobile email...

Should we have a licence for our identities?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:36:13 +0000

Facebook and Plaxo are arguing over who gets to share their friends' personal data - but just owns that data? Last week, blogger Robert Scoble incurred the wrath of Facebook by harvesting his...

UK, US, Russia, China - surveillance blackspots

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:32:10 +0000

A report by Privacy International has again found the UK to be up there with such enlightened regimes as Russia, China, and the US in terms of how intrusive surveillance is in our society. Yes,...

Gmail spam decreases

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:45:32 +0000

Google has claimed that its spam filters are discouraging spammers, after a decline in attmepts to spam Gmail users. In a post on the Official Google Blog, Brad Taylor, Google "Spam Czar",...

Home-grown headaches

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:57:53 +0100

Just at the time when we are hearing more and more about self managing software systems, automation for lifecycle management, autonomic self-healing computing and pre-packaged tools and components...

Microsoft bows to EU antitrust ruling

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:35:54 +0100

Microsoft has agreed to comply with a 2004 EU court ruling on anticompetition, bringing changes that will "profoundly affect the software industry" according to European commissioner for...

SCO to appeal Nasdaq delisting

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:45:02 +0100

When some companies fall, they fall hard. For some odd reason, the Nasdaq stock exchange has decided it may not be a good idea to let the public (who?) continue investing in The SCO Group, which...

Breaking news: Microsoft press conference on EU ruling

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:34:36 +0100

I'm back in the office from a trip to Nairobi to look at how PCs from the West can be re-used in developing countries - and easing backing into the news agenda is not an option given the EU's...

ZDNet shortlisted twice in industry awards

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:14:16 +0100

ZDNet has been shortlisted twice in the AOP 2007 awards. The organisers, the Association of Online Publishers, say they received 320 entries overall this year - some 50 percent up on last year - so...

And the ZDNet Blogger at Large is...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:07:35 +0100

...research professional James B! He impressed our judges with his contributions to On the Road, the group blog about mobile working. His postings covered useful topics such as the difficulties of...

Microsoft Would Love to Hate Open Source

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:58:11 +0100

The recent news stories about Microsoft and Open Source represent, at face value, a very odd turn of events for Microsoft as only a couple of years ago they dismissed open source as anti...

Junior doctor loses confidential patient data

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:10:59 +0100

Apparently junior doctors are toting unencrypted confidential data around on USB sticks, according to an article in E-Health Insider. One of the sticks, which contained highly confidential...

ID cards - compulsory or not?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:38:25 +0100

It's not going to be compulsory to carry around ID cards. Honestly. So said Stephen Harrison, policy director at the ID & Passport Service, when asked today at the Westminster eForum on ID cards,...

Chinese lawyer to take Symantec to court over XP file deleti...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:19:16 +0100

A Chinese lawyer has begun court proceedings against Symantec, alleging that a faulty antivirus update caused his computer to collapse. According to China View, Liu Shihui, a lawyer with the...

Google privacy policy 'is vague'

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:26:51 +0100

Speaking to the BBC, Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, has said that elements of Google's privacy policy are 'vague' and need to be made more precise in response to European Union...

CNET Networks journalists intend to sue HP

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:27:05 +0100

Three journalists working for news.com, a website owned by ZDNet UK's parent company CNET Networks, are preparing to file a lawsuit against HP for invasion of their privacy. The private phone...

Roaming legislation inches closer

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:03:34 +0100

Viv Reding's proposed legislation to put a serious cap on roaming charges passed another stage today, as it was OK'd by the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee of the European...

Oracle accuses SAP of "Corporate theft on a grand scale"

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:56:24 +0000

Real stop presss stuff as we close down for the evening. Oracle is suing SAP over massive corporate fraud. SAP, Oracle claims, has been running an illegal mirror of Oracle's online support...

Infinite choice=overwhelming confusion

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 07:18:48 +0000

Following on from my previous post, Ive been spending a lot of time looking at retail sites over the last few weeks and it struck me that they have the ultimate overwhelming choice problem. ...

The death of compression

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:24:46 +0000

The ins and outs of the Alcatel-Lucent case against Microsoft for MP3 patent infringement are complex indeed, lying as they do in the intersection between head-crushingly difficult mathematics and...

Googling yourself - fame at last!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:25:42 +0000

You may have seen this post back in November when I first started out with the blog here at ZDNet about how my Google ranking increased dramatically after a few weeks. Well after steady,...

AlwaysOn opening night

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:16:20 +0000

Started in NY tonight with Tony Perkins and Bill Cleary doing a double act where they presented video blogs from Davos and San Francisco respectively. These were a bit like "You've been framed"...

Maine rejects Real ID Act

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:44:40 +0000

Dissension in the ranks! Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for US national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation...

Cloning Cherie Booth and pals

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:21:51 +0000

Matrix Chambers, the legal home of Cherie Booth and, according to the Legal 500, "arguably the finest concentration of talent at the Bar", finds itself the victim of cloning. The web site of these...

iBuzz Two tickles your iPod's fancy

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:40:03 +0000

From the Not Safe For Work But You'll Probably Get Away With It department, the deliciously named LoveHoney.co.uk sends us news of the iBuzz Two. And what is this you may well ask. Well, it plugs...

Orange call-centre fiasco

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:50:51 +0000

According to an ex-employee, an unspecified number of staff at Orange's North Tyneside call-centre have been using the same login details and password! Not a terribly good security practice, I'm...

Lord Sainsbury steps down, won't be missed

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:06:06 +0000

Lord Sainsbury's departure as science minister will be hailed by software developers. He was the instrumental in steering the ultimately failed European patent legislation. My lasting impression of...

US spies use own version of Wikipedia

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:53:31 +0000

It seems US spooks are harnessing 'Web 2.0' ideas. According to Reuters, the office of the US director of national intelligence John Negroponte has revealed Intellipedia, which allows intelligence...

NHS IT problems

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:59:09 +0000

Funny one this. Only last week Lord Warner was claiming NHS patients would be able to opt out of the massive new NPfIT database, but today the Guardian reports this to be absolute nonsense. Not...

HM Govt vs The LSE, Round XII!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:25:40 +0100

Oh dear, the government does not seem to be getting on well with that pesky team from the London School of Economics, who insist on putting the ID card scheme under continuous scrutiny. Apart...

Rupert Goodwins' Diary

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 19:35:06 +0100

Wednesday 11/10/2006 More news from America, where the serpent of the SCO vs IBM lawsuit is stirring in its sleep. The latest information and the one thing in the past three-and-a-half years...

Rupert Goodwins' Diary

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:30:05 +0100

Thursday 31/8/2006 This is more like it. In response to the US patent system's cries for help as it descends into madness and beyond, people are doing it for themselves. And they're doing it with...