Wellington - Internet users staged a protest outside the New Zealand Parliament Thursday to draw attention to an amendment to the country's copyright laws due to come into effect next week.

The change instructs internet-service providers to block online access to anyone accused of repeatedly flouting copyright regulations by illegally downloading films and music whether they have been convicted or not.

ComScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, has released a report on the top social networking sites in Europe, with a particular focus on France, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service.

According to study, around 22 million French Internet users visited at least one social networking site during December 2008, reaching 64% of the whole French Internet viewers.

Washington, February 17: Social-networking giant Facebook revised its user Terms of Service (TOS) without much noise on February 4, according to the Consumerist blog.

It was revealed that the free-access website could now use its members' photos, scribblings and status updates if it wanted to promote itself or create or sell advertisements - even after their accounts had been deleted.

The site declared that though the ownership remained with the users, yet it contained an everlasting license to use anything posted on its pages, which is stored in its archives, and at any time.

Fox News reported, "theoretically, it can even `license' a picture of your kids for use in a third party''s ad campaign."

A newly amended Information Technology Act has emerge as a warning for the people visiting ‘porn sites’, as browsing child porn online, will now become punishable under the IT Act.

Under the previous law, publishing and transmitting child pornography was subject to punishment by law.

The new bill has added up a new clause that makes surfing, transferring (downloanding) and viewing material showing children in an obscene or indecent or sexually explicit manner punishable under the law.

In a case pertaining to copyright theft, four men working at The Pirate Bay file-sharing Web site go on trial in Stockholm. All four of them - Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom, and Fredrik Neij - were supposedly accomplices in breaking copyright law.

If convicted, the four men face a fine of $143,500, and a two-year prison term.

The real value of Facebook's stock appears to have become a contentious issue - while a $240 million investment by Microsoft for a 1.6 percent stake in the company in 2007, puts Facebook's value at $15 billion, the company claims its own evaluation to be $3.7 billion.

In June last year, Facebook's self appraisal pegged the price of its privately held stock at $8.88 per share; while the Microsoft investment put the related figures at $35.90 per share.

The incongruity with regard to Facebook's actual worth has come to light because of the revelations pertaining to the Palo Alto-based company's $65 million lawsuit settlement with ConnectU.