French court rules- refund of a total that:
Acer was forced to pay back was made up of 135.20 euros for Windows XP Home, 60 euros for Microsoft Works, 40.99 euros for PowerDVD, 38.66 euros for Norton Antivirus and 37 euros for NTI CD Maker. On top of that Acer had to pay a further 650 euros in, among other things, legal costs.

A federal court in Utah ruled that Novell Inc., not SCO Group Inc., is the rightful owner of the copyright in the Unix operating system.

The ruling is a boon to the "open source" software movement and to Linux, the freely available computer operating system that has become an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

ICI EN FRANCE, there has been a grande victoire for Vole-hunters, as the French consumer association, UFC-Que Choisir, has won a court case entitling consumers to return their pre-installed copies of Windows XP for a decent discount.

"Ironically, as the hearing for the first out of three assignements introduced by French consumer association UFC-Que Choisir against systematic sale of pre-installed Windows with Personal Computers was held in Court in Paris, we learned that manufacturer Asus was condemned in Caen, Normandy (case Hordoir vs. Asus, 30 April 2008) to reimburse the client for unwanted software licences.

"A new directive in France could see peer-to-peer users cut off if they continue to share files. A memorandum of understanding has been signed by some French ISPs, the recording industry and the French government under which ISPs will hand over data on who is using file sharing networks to a new government agency..."

" France is about to filter internet content according to music and cinema majors’ request. We strongly oppose to the filtering of Internet content, either when the majors ask it, or when the european commissioner Frattini does. French government asked the CEO of FNAC, France biggest CD and DVD retail chain owned by the PPR* Group, to propose repressive measures against P2P file-sharing..."

The department at the French Ministry of Education that is handling purchasing of software and software licenses is increasing its Open Source offerings to some 1.5 million teachers and education workers in 250 institutes France.

A US court has ruled that users have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their internet surfing records and that police must obtain warrants from higher than usual courts in order to force ISPs to hand over records.

"Acer Inc. did not install the Ubuntu Linux distribution on a batch of Aspire notebooks for sale in Singapore, but the company is installing a different version of the open-source operating system on some notebooks, local dealers said."