Of course you'd like to think that most of your daily conversation is weighty and witty but instead everyone chats about pedestrian nonsense with their pals. In fact, that ephemeral chit-chat is the stuff that holds human social groups together.

Google Street View, the controversial website that shows 360-degree street views of many of Britain's cities does not breach the Data Protection Act, the information commissioner ruled today. Hundreds of people complained that their privacy was breached by the service, which launched last month for 25 cities and towns. Today the Information Commissioner's Office rejected those complaints but said it would watch Google closely to ensure that it responded quickly to requests for the removal of images that identified individuals.

As the impact of digital advertising on consumer privacy comes under scrutiny, AT&T is taking a stance in support of stricter standards. In its testimony Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing on the issue, the telecommunications heavyweight is expected to advocate more transparency and consumer control in the fast-growing field of targeted ads.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German cabinet backed a new draft law Wednesday that would make it harder to access child pornography online and easier to prosecute those who use it. The bill will oblige Internet providers to block access to child porn sites by installing a "stop" sign when people try to enter them, the German ministries for justice, families and the economy said in a joint news conference.

TROY, N.Y. -- A former New York state tax department worker was accused of stealing the identities of thousands of taxpayers and running up more than $200,000 in fraudulent charges. Walter Healey gathered credit card, brokerage account and Social Security numbers that he used to open more than 90 credit card accounts and lines of credit between 2006 and 2008, prosecutors said.

Against widespread dissent and controversy MEPs in the European Parliament voted this morning to allow copyright term extension to pass a first reading. 4 out of the 7 main groups (ALDE, GREENS/EFA, NGL, IND/ DEM) together with a cross party platform of MEPs voted to reject the proposal. Internal opposition threatened the group positions of the two largest parties (PSE and EPP) as several national delegations and key MEPS also joined the fight to reject. We understand that, in total, 222 voted in favour of rejection, 370 against. The final vote was 317 in favour, 178 against, 37 abstentions. A key amendment to ensure benefits accrued only to performers was also rejected.

Privacy advocates urge people who want to set up a personal health record online to read the fine print. Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, said sites like the Mayo Clinic Health Manager aren't currently covered by national laws that specify cases in which health care systems can access and share information without patients' consent.

April 22, 2009: TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Legislative Yuan ratified yesterday the latest revision of the Copyright Law to empower Internet service providers (ISPs) to "strike out" Internet surfers who have violated others' copyrights and posted unauthorized content on any Web sites.

Recently, countries from China and Brazil to Malaysia and South Africa have passed laws promoting the patenting of publicly funded research [1,2], and a similar proposal is under legislative consideration in India [3]. These initiatives are modeled in part on the United States Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 [4]. Bayh-Dole (BD) encouraged American universities to acquire patents on inventions resulting from government-funded research and to issue exclusive licenses to private firms [5,6], on the assumption that exclusive licensing creates incentives to commercialize these inventions. A broader hope of BD, and the initiatives emulating it, was that patenting and licensing of public sector research would spur science-based economic growth as well as national competitiveness [6,7]. And while it was not an explicit goal of BD, some of the emulation initiatives also aim to generate revenues for public sector research institutions [8]. We believe government-supported research should be managed in the public interest. We also believe that some of the claims favoring BD-type initiatives overstate the Act's contributions to growth in US innovation. Important concerns and safeguards-learned from nearly 30 years of experience in the US-have been largely overlooked. Furthermore, both patent law and science have changed considerably since BD was adopted in 1980 [9,10]. Other countries seeking to emulate that legislation need to consider this new context.

April 1, 2009: China's powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and TV has tightened its grip on the biz by ordering all online content providers to apply for a license before broadcasting material on the Internet.

Spammers have already written software able to match humans at some CAPTCHAs. But when CAPTCHAs finally fail, their co-creator Luis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon University says there will be reason for celebration as well as concern. Software that can solve any text-based CAPTCHA will be as much a milestone for artificial intelligence as it will be a problem for online security.

April 21, 2009: Today the Malaysian government ordered prominent webhosting provider Shinjiru to close down BitTorrent site LeechersLair.com. The order came from the Content, Consumer and Network Security Division of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.

The Portal for Public Grievances run by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions.

Indian children on an average spend 34 hours online every month against the global average of 39 hours, revealed a recent survey. Children of only two other countries - China (33 hours) and Japan (31 hours) seemed to spend fewer hours online, according to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, which was based on a survey of adults and children in 12 countries.

The Global Forum for Health Research provides evidence, tools and discussion forums for decision-makers in research funding and policy to improve the health of poor populations through research for health.

Repository of Spanish cases on hyperlinking to copyrighted material. In Spanish.

The Internet has made Open Access publication - the free distribution of scholarly work - a powerful possibility for scholars, administrators and publishers alike. Leslie Chan takes an in-depth look at the potential benefits, and looming challenges, facing this new approach to knowledge dissemination.

South Korea's democracy seems to be deteriorating by the day - this time with the proposed 18-month incarceration of a blogger critical of the South's economic policy. The 31-year-old blogger's crime: falsely reporting that South Korea had barred banks from purchasing U.S. currency. The authorities said the blogger, Park Dae-sung, will find out his sentence on April 20 for posting the inaccurate story that prosecutors said undermined the county's credibility, The Associated Press reports.

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website. Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled "Facts about Goldman Sachs" - the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com - just a few weeks ago.

Account of a professor finding it difficult to get permission to use material for education "I couldn't get permission to use a particular article and it turns out that the publisher of the journal is a colleague of mine," the professor said. "So I called him ... he was perfectly willing to give me personal permission to use articles of his journal."