Microsoft Security Essentials, as it is called, is the successor to the Windows Live OneCare service and is freely available from the company’s website without paying a fee. All the user needs is a fully legal copy of Windows and an internet connection and they can download the software for free, along with future updates to the virus definitions.

Windows Live OneCare was discontinued earlier this year to make way for this free offering after it suffered lacklustre sales in a very saturated market. Microsoft had hoped for it to challenge the market share of companies such as Symantec and McAfee but it ultimately failed.

Whether users will switch to this anti-virus and internet security suite over established free choices like AVG and Avast! remains to be seen, but with Microsoft trying to carve out a new niche for themselves as a more ‘caring’ software company, it could well help.

The group is responsible for, amongst other things, administration of the ‘top level domains’ available for use (think ‘.com’, ‘.net’, etc) and the available IP address allocations on the internet. Until the late 90s, the US government tended to run all of these areas directly but has gradually handed control over to the international organisation. While a complete detachment of ICANN from the US is unlikely in the near future, it is seen as a crucial step.

International observers from the EU (amongst others) wish for ICANN to become “universally accountable” to the international community – i.e. to give them as much say and oversight as the US government has had in the past.

Recently, ICANN and the IANA (an organisation run by ICANN in order to administer the addressing system) have been looking at ways of including a new series of TLDs for various industries – ranging from ‘.xxx’ for adult material to ‘.sport’ and ‘.film’ for sports and film related sites, respectively.

Plans unveiled in front of the BCS Chartered Institute for IT by the Minister for Digital Britain mean that everyone who has a fixed phone line will be required to pay a £0.50/month tax in order to raise an expected £175 million per year. This is earmarked for future upgrades to the broadband network, something the government has been keen to chase up as it tries to ensure that all homes in the UK have access to at least a 2mbit internet connection by 2012.

While various organisations have found the plans laid out in the ‘Digital Britain’ report something to debate over, primarily timeframes and how the government plans to finance this massive engineering undertaking, the government seems intent to steam on and bring about its planned changes.

The Conservative party will allegedly vote against the new tax, claiming it is another example of the Labour government’s intent to raise taxes. While it remains to be seen how many taxpayers will object against £6 a year more in tax and where it will, in fact, be spent, one thing that is clear is that in order to fund the plans laid out by the government, money will need to be found.

For a few years now, there has been a big debate rumbling about who should be footing the bill for the ever-increasing levels of content users have access to on a daily basis. With the advent of streaming TV and movies, along with downloadable games, the amount of data being transferred over the internet infrastructure has increased exponentially over the last few years. ISPs want to be able to charge the sources of this ‘fatter’ content (such as TV and movie companies) for the additional costs involved in providing it to end-users, with a charge being passed on to the users themselves if the content provider doesn’t wish to foot the bill.

This would essentially dictate that the internet becomes a multi-tiered system – those who pay get better service, whilst those who don’t will experience slower speeds and decreased availability. The ISPs don’t particularly care who pays or who gets this degraded experience, as long as they get the money at the end of the day to support their networks. For instance, a TV studio could be asked to pay the ISP in order to allow a full-speed experience when watching their streamed TV shows, and if the TV studio and ISP failed to reach a deal, this price hike would be passed on to the consumer. If they didn’t pay, well, they would have to make do with vastly reduced availability, if any at all.

However, all of this has come up against fierce opposition from those who wish to see the internet carry on as it has done up until now – that is, equal to all. Big tech companies are facing off against the big telecommunications companies, with the likes of Google and eBay fighting for net neutrality.

But now it seems that the new chief of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has backed the big tech companies, saying that the net should be a neutral venue for all who wish to use it, and that the very idea of having differing levels of service for different prices is not what the internet should be. He has gone as far as to formulate additional rules which would expressly forbid this kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation.

This is the first stance the FCC has taken on this issue after the new chief came in, appointed by US President Barack Obama – who has backed net neutrality himself.