The managing body for the internet's domain name system will massively increase the 'real estate' of the internet, letting brands and generic words become top-level domains.

Dealing with staff who misbehave on the web may be hampered by office policies written without Web 2.0 sites in mind, an employment expert has said. The warning follows disciplinary action against 18 police officers who boasted about crashes on Facebook.

A new set of consumer contract laws to harmonise the rules that govern online selling across the EU will be proposed this autumn by the European Commission. The EU's consumer chief also promised fresh guidance on viral adverts and profiling technology.

Thirty-eight online traders and three high street shops have been caught selling 18-rated video games to children in a series of undercover investigations. Such sales are illegal and businesses can be punished by prison sentences and fines.

Scots face up to 10 years in jail for sending text messages or emails with sexual content. Scotland's just-published Sexual Offences Bill contains stiff penalties for any sexual messages whose intent is to humiliate the recipient.

Google and Yahoo! will face a competition probe over their proposed advertising deal. The inquiry will look at whether the deal gives the already-dominant Google too much market power.

A firm of stockbrokers has been fined for failing to adequately protect its customers from the risk of identity fraud. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said its mistakes included failing to manage the risk of staff using Instant Messaging and web-based email.

A major news agency has claimed that a blog's quotation of its stories is copyright infringement and has demanded they be taken down in a case which could redraw the lines of acceptable blog behaviour.

Most company data breaches are caused not by employees but by people outside of the company, a four-year study has found. Business partners are involved in five times more breaches now than in 2004, it said.

Virgin Media has begun sending letters of warning to some of its customers saying that artists' lobby group the BPI has evidence of illegal file sharing from their accounts. Virgin, the UK's second largest ISP, is the first to take such action.

The Government's hard line on the collection and use of information on travellers could isolate it within Europe and leave it with less information than other states, a parliamentary committee has warned.

A proposal to harmonise the way contract disputes are handled across Europe has been agreed by the EU Council of Ministers.

A Parliamentary committee has called on the Government to be more transparent about its uses of personal data and to adopt "a principle of data minimisation

Nine in ten web users want guidelines on what information the media can use from social networking sites and 78% would change the information they publish about themselves online if they thought it would later be reproduced in the mainstream media

An ex-employee of recruitment firm Hays has been ordered to disclose details of his profile at social networking site LinkedIn

Implementation of software is being delayed by complex procurement processes, according to 65% of IT directors and almost two-thirds say that dealing with vendors on software procurement has become increasingly complicated.

A Code of Practice to ensure that internet service providers (ISPs) offer greater clarity over customers’ broadband line speeds was published by Ofcom today

One in four Facebook users would consider leaving their bank to be able to obtain online banking through Web 2.0 gadgets, according to research published today