The Apache Software Foundation, a community of developers and users that provides support for the Apache open-source software projects, has announced the availability of XMLBeans 2.0. XMLBeans uses XML Schema to generate Java interfaces and classes that can then be used to access and modify XML instance data. Version 2.0 of the tool offers enhancements such as improved XQuery/XPath integration; DOM Level II support, which improves performance and reduces the memory footprint; extensions for adding custom functionality to generated XMLBeans; and improved error handling.

Source: InfoWorld

Sweden has outlawed the downloading of copyrighted movies, games and music in an attempt to curb rampant piracy.

About 10% of Swedes freely swap music, games and films on their computers, one of the highest rates in the world.

With no law banning file-sharing, Sweden had become a hotbed of piracy where films, music and software were readily swapped.

But experts believe the law will change little and that Swedes will remain rampant downloaders.

Prior to the law coming into force, Sweden was the only European nation that let people download copyrighted material for personal use.

The law was drawn up to bring Sweden into line with EU directives and is also part of a wider crackdown on net piracy.

Source: BBC

BetaNews has learned that Google is testing a premium service that will open up mainstream access to the “Deep Web,” allowing webmasters with restricted or subscription content to let in Google and provide the masses with free previews.

The service is being tested server-side with a small number of sites that are under strict confidentiality agreements.

Premium content will be indexed and tagged as paid, and will be displayed in a special content area on the right side of Google’s search results underneath the AdSense advertising links.

Some paid articles are “first click free” and will appear within Google’s “natural” aggregated search results—if the participating publication decides that the content should be accessible when Google is the referrer.

Source: eWeek

America Online quietly launched a new video-on-demand search service Thursday, opening the doors for millions of Internet users to view music videos, news segments and other content from parent company Time Warner, whose mountain of media holdings gives AOL an advantage over rivals Google and Yahoo.

The beta service, called AOL Video, offers free access to search and playback for more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets from Time Warner, including television programs and music videos, movie trailers from Warner Bros. and news clips from CNN, MSNBC and others. AOL’s Singingfish multimedia search engine, which the company acquired two years ago, will complement the new service by pointing visitors to audio and video from across the Web.

Source: News.com

Microsoft late Thursday confirmed a security flaw in its dominant Internet Explorer browser could be potentially exploited by malicious hackers to take “take complete control of the affected system.”

The software giant released a security advisory acknowledging the vulnerability and recommended that IE users set Internet and local intranet security zone settings to “High” before running ActiveX controls in these zones.

All supported versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 6.0 in Windows XP SP 2 (Service Pack 2) are affected.

Source: eWeek

The Bush administration announced Thursday that the U.S. government will not hand over control of the Internet to any other organization, a surprise move that could presage an international flap.

At the moment, the U.S. government maintains control of the Internet’s “root”–the master file that lists what top-level domains are authorized–but has indicated in the past that it would transfer that responsibility to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

The new principles, outlined by Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher, say the U.S. government will “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.” In addition, the principles say, the U.S. government will continue to maintain “oversight” of ICANN and prevent its “focus” from straying from technical coordination.

Source: News.com

Enlisting developers to help combat Google’s search dominance, Microsoft has quietly released documentation to extend its desktop search tool beyond the browser.

Microsoft has published application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow programmers to display the results of a desktop search in their choice of programs.

The APIs, which were released earlier this week, are still in beta testing.

Source: News.com