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HARTFORD, Conn. - Facebook, the world’s second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies under an agreement with officials nationwide that was announced Thursday.

The measures include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users’ ability to contact subscribers under 18 and participating in a task force set up in January to find ways to verify users’ ages and identities.

“The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in other states.

Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.

Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its officials said Thursday.

“Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset,” said Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer. “The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena.”

Texas did not endorse the agreement or a similar one reached in January among the other states, the District of Columbia and MySpace, the world’s largest online social network with 200 million users worldwide.

Texas officials say they want the sites to work faster on verifying users’ ages and identities.

The attorneys general have been negotiating for months with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook.

“Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. “We’ve now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography.”

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue where sexual predators could lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person, law enforcement officials said.

The networks also have empowered cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said research shows online bullies are far more common than sexual predators.

“It’s very rare for an adult to meet a child on a social network and to do them harm, although the ones that do occur get a huge amount of attention, and they are terrible,” he said.

Online bullying, whether through instant-message programs or social networks, is on the rise, he said.

The issue has gained national attention after recent high-profile cases, including the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old Missouri girl who was victimized by an Internet ruse. Megan Meier hanged herself after receiving nasty online comments from a MySpace friend who turned out to be fictional, invented by two acquaintances and the mother of one of those girls.

Other children have been the subjects of harassment campaigns, including whole sites set up to deride them.

“What’s going on online is not much different than bullying on the playground,” Palfrey said. “It just happens to be playing out in public spaces where kids are spending a lot of time online.”

Facebook and MySpace let users block online bullies and others from contacting them. They also can conceal their “online now” status and use privacy controls to limit who can view their images and other measures.

Among other measures, Facebook agrees to:

• Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.

• Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.

• Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.

• Participate in the Harvard-based task force set up in January under the national agreement with MySpace. It includes scholars, a prosecutor, businesses, state officials and child safety advocates.

• Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.

• Review users’ profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.

The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.

“We’re entering a new era in social networking safety,” Blumenthal said. “This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids’ safety.”

Hate paying for Wi-Fi but want a reliable, decent connection that your corner coffeeshop might not be able to offer? (Mine can, but that's not uniformly the case.) Two developments this week may keep your pocketbook full. AT&T slipped out and Cablevision announced significant additions in Wi-Fi access for their current customers.AT&T is taking over the Wi-Fi service from T-Mobile for Starbucks corporate-owned, standalone stores–over 7,000 in the U.S.–and slipped their kimono last week by accidentally (perhaps) making an iPhone-tailored gateway page available at Starbucks that prompted subscribers for their cell number. Enter it, and you were in, gratis.That portal disappeared after a few days, but AT&T revised its iPhone plan features sometime in the last day or two to include access to all 17,000 of its domestic hotspots at no additional cost to iPhone subscribers. (That's 17,000 once the Starbucks transition is done, but T-Mobile and AT&T are engaged in a very goodsportsman-like handover in which subscribers to both networks will have access throughout; T-Mobile HotSpot subscribers will continue to have service for at least five years at Starbucks locations, too.)AT&T already offers free Wi-Fi on its domestic network (excluding hotels and some airports, but including McDonald's, Barnes and Noble, and Starbucks) to its 1.5 Mbps and faster DSL customers, all fiber subscribers, and remote business access users–12 million in all! (Just as I was about to post this, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer posted this story that AT&T had scrubbed that information from their site. Up, down, up, down, let's not call the whole thing off. It'll be back–but maybe not until the June 9 Apple developer's conference kickoff at which the iPhone 2.0 software, production software developer's kit, and 3G iPhone are all expected to ship or be released.)Cablevision meanwhile dropped a bombshell today when they announced that they'd be building a $350 million–yes, million–Wi-Fi network across a big hunk of their coverage territory in New York, especially focused on Long Island. This service will be built over two years and be free to its millions of cable broadband subscribers, who already get among the highest speeds of any cable system in the US: 15/2 Mbps (downstream/upstream) and 30/5 Mbps flavors are their two listed offerings. Non-subscribers will pay to use the network, which they claim will have 1.5 Mbps of downstream Wi-Fi service.Cablevision is building this network clearly to remain in play with a “quadruple” play: that is, voice, fixed broadband, video, and mobile broadband. Sprint and Clearwire's deal with Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable operators has both a direct and indirect impact on Cablevision, which while not in competition with other cable providers, must fight back other video, data, mobile, and voice firms.All I know is that additional services at no additional cost means a win for the consumer, and I'm happy to see it continue to expand. 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - Google Inc expects to launch new products for its YouTube Web video service in the next few months and sees reason for closer cooperation with Yahoo Inc, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Thursday.

Schmidt has said getting the video sharing site to make money is the Web search company's top priority for the year. He did not give details of the products, however, and they are not even in initial, or beta, testing.

At the company's annual shareholder meeting, Google co- founder Sergey Brin said YouTube and DoubleClick, an online advertising company bought by Google earlier this year for $3.1 billion, are still small businesses compared with its core search and advertising business.

“They both have potential, but for it to be a sizable part of our revenue, you're going to have to wait at least a couple of years,” said Brin in response to a question about when those acquisitions would make a significant contribution to the company's bottom line.

Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006.

The Web search leader played a large role in the takeover battle between Microsoft Corp and Yahoo. During a two-week test, it sold search advertisements on rival Yahoo last month as part of Yahoo's attempt to find an alternative option to Microsoft's offer.

Schmidt said the trial run provided good reason for the companies to discuss cooperation, but there was no deal yet.

“We view the test as successful,” he told reporters before the Web company's annual meeting. “That's a good basis to talk to Yahoo some more.”

The Google CEO, speaking later at the shareholder meeting, said the company will continue to growth faster outside of its home market. Google generated 51 percent of its revenue outside the United States in the March quarter, but Schmidt said he expects that figure to grow over time.

Without giving a specific time frame, Schmidt said he expects 65 percent of Google's revenue to come from abroad. Eventually, non-U.S. revenue could be even higher.

Google co-founders Brin and Larry Page also fielded a request from one shareholder who asked the pair not to split the company's stock, which closed at $583 on the Nasdaq.

“I think that's the first time we've had that request,” Page said with a chuckle.

Brin played the straight man: “We have had no problem honoring that thus far and I don't expect that anything will change in that respect.”

(Reporting by Adam Tanner and Daisuke Wakabayashi in Seattle; Editing by Braden Reddall and Andre Grenon)

The world’s most popular social networking site MySpace is to allow users to make their information available to other websites.

Its “data availability” project will let members share public profile information with Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and Photobucket.

In the past sites like MySpace have locked users into their own site and jealously guarded member’s content.

“The walls around the garden are coming down,” says MySpace boss Chris DeWolfe.

The deal means that anyone with a MySpace profile can now share content with any web site. That includes things like photos, video, public profile information, friends’ lists and text.

MySpace claims their initiative “throws open the doors to traditionally closed networks by putting users in the driver’s seat of their data and web identity”.

Chief operating officer Amit Kapur says “This is an unprecedented move to further socialise the web and empower users to control their online content and data.”

More relevant

At the moment Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter have signed up but Mr DeWolfe says he looks forward to other sites coming on board including “mom and pop” sites and their chief rival, Facebook.

“This project is open to any site out there that wants to work with us. We are happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with our effort.”

Altogether the participating companies claim a total of 150 million users and reach 85 per cent of the internet market in the United States.

The move also offers MySpace the opportunity to extend its reach outside its core members. Recently it has been losing some traction with traffic falling 16% in April from a year ago. Nevertheless the online intelligence company Hitwise says the site accounted for nearly 74% of US visits to social networks.

Under “data availability” MySpace profiles are synched with partnering sites like Yahoo and Twitter. Users who make a change to their MySpace page will find that the accounts linked in will also be altered. The data is dynamic, which means it can be updated constantly.

MySpace stresses that users will have control over what information they share and who they share it with.

“Finding friends to follow is central to Twitter’s value as a real-time communication utility,” says co-founder Biz Stone. “This project enhances discovery and connectivity making Twitter more relevant and useful.”

MySpace takes the lead

As well as saving time and hassle it puts MySpace at the centre of the game because it encourages members to store all of their core data at MySpace to begin with.

As the internet becomes more connected and more social, storing content across a plethora of sites doesn’t make sense.

“Socially dynamic web destinations should be portable,” explained Mr DeWolfe in a telephone conference that included BBC News. “It should allow users to import and export aspects of their platform.”

“This is a pioneering new way for the global online community to integrate their social experiences web-wide.”

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch believes “By acting first, MySpace takes the lead and has a shot at being the long term winner - meaning lots of people use MySpace as the place to store data and share it out to other applications from there.”

” Look for Google to make their next move,” he hints.

Openness

All authentication will be handled through OAuth, an open protocol tool, embracing open standards that the company says will allow the implementation to be as non-proprietary as possible.

MySpace has announced that it is also joining the Data Portability Project to demonstrate its continued commitment to openness and open standards.

Yahoo’s executive vice president of platforms, Ash Patel, says “Yahoo believes in an open internet that gives users the flexibility to make their web experiences as relevant, social and personalised as they can.”

Technology director Jim Benedetto says this proves “MySpace is no longer an independent island of data on the web.”

The changes will be rolled out on the site globally in the coming weeks.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc.’s top executives on Thursday expressed hope that the Internet search leader will be able to form a potentially lucrative advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc. — a deal that would lower the odds of Microsoft Corp. renewing its attempts to buy Yahoo.

“We have been talking to Yahoo and we are very excited to be working with them,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin told reporters before the company’s annual shareholders meeting. “We share a lot of values with them.”

Neither Brin nor Google Chairman Eric Schmidt would indicate how far along the two sides are in their negotiations after a two-week test was completed last month. During the trial run, Google supplied a small portion of the text-based ads that appeared alongside the search results on Yahoo’s Web site.

Because Google’s technology proved it could select more profitable ads, the alliance could help Yahoo snap out of a prolonged slump that made it vulnerable to Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout bid. Microsoft orally raised the bid to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, before pulling it off the table last weekend.

Microsoft cited Yahoo’s willingness to subordinate its own ad system to Google’s as a major reason for dropping its bid.

Google suggested the ad partnership to Yahoo as a weapon to fend off Microsoft.

“We really believe in companies having choices about their destinies,” Brin said. “It’s not about scuttling (the deal). They were under a hostile attack and we wanted to make sure they had as many options as possible.”

Schmidt left little doubt that Google was pleased to spoil the deal, however. He said he wanted to keep Yahoo out of Microsoft’s hands largely because he was concerned the world’s largest software maker would abuse the added power it would acquire in e-mail and instant messaging to limit consumer choices.

“Obviously, we are happy that is not going to happen,” Schmidt said. He described Google’s current relationship with Yahoo as “very, very friendly.”

If Yahoo were to sign a long-term ad deal with Google, some analysts believe that would repel Microsoft for good. Although Microsoft executives have publicly indicated they are looking for other ways to bolster the software maker’s unprofitable Internet operations, some investors still suspect another bid may surface if Yahoo continues to struggle in the months ahead.

The hopes for another bid have helped cushion the blow to Yahoo’s stock since Microsoft walked away. Yahoo shares rose 58 cents to finish Thursday at $26.22 — 8.5 percent below their price when Microsoft made its last bid.

A partnership between Google and Yahoo almost certainly would face intense antitrust scrutiny because the two companies together control more than 80 percent of the U.S. market for online search advertising. The U.S. Justice Department has already made inquiries about the two-week test they conducted.

“If there were a deal (with Yahoo), we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the antitrust concerns that have been widely discussed,” Schmidt said.

Although Schmidt wouldn’t specify how Google might address the antitrust issues, analysts have speculated that it could be done by running the partnership as an auction-style system that would allow other rivals, including Microsoft, to show ads on Yahoo.

Depending on the breadth of the partnership, Google’s ad system could nearly double 2009 profit, UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter estimated in a research report released Thursday.

Google shareholders attending Thursday’s meeting didn’t seem to care about the implications of a potential Yahoo partnership. One shareholder, though, did ask Brin and fellow Google founder Larry Page about their recent marriages. Brin deflected the question, saying they preferred to confine the discussion to business.

In an unusual move, Brin abstained on two shareholder proposals that the company’s board opposed.

One proposal sought to create a special committee on human rights to review the ramifications of the company’s policies. The other asked for Google to stiffen its opposition the demands of governments in China, Burma, North Korea, Iran and other countries that seek to censor search results and other Web content.

Although he said he didn’t fully support the proposals, Brin indicated he empathized with the issues they addressed. He holds a special class of Google stock that gives him 28.5 percent voting power over shareholder issues.

The results of Thursday’s shareholder votes won’t be released until later this year.

Anyone who still doubts there is a bright future for technologies that create hybrid, online/offline applications need only consider Sun's JavaFX announcement at JavaOne this week. The Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:JAVA) event demonstrates that JavaFX, which was announced last year, is closing in on, or at least gunning for Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's Silverlight, as a developer's tool for producing new applications.

But while AIR and Silverlight are oriented toward PCs, Sun hopes to leverage Java's broad adoption in mobile and embedded systems.

“We're focused on connecting business systems with people,” Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said. “If you're a bank, you want to reach customers on set-top boxes, car navigation systems, mobile phones. You want to reach them with your business systems to update them with their savings (account details) or credit-card bill. What's happening on the Internet today is, all these systems are being connected to one another.”

Java runs on 2.2 billion mobile devices and the majority of PCs.

Return of the Applet

But in a presentation at JavaOne, Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president for software, stuck to a desktop demo. He showed a JavaFX application sporting Twitter and Flickr feeds running in Facebook. He then dragged the application out of the Web browser and onto the desktop. The same app also runs Java-enabled phones, thanks to a mobile version called JavaFX Mobile.

One of the JavaFX sessions was called the “return of the Applet,” attendee Michael Levin noted on his blog. “Detachable applets can live outside the browser. This is a cool technology. Basically, you can drag an applet from your browser onto your desktop and leave it there, even after the browser is closed. This reminds me of widgets and gadgets. It's yet another move in a Web-centric direction.”

A key part of making JavaFX ready for prime time is JavaFX Script, a scripting language to speed up and simplify JavaFX development.

“We heard from a lot of people that (they) can do anything with Java. It just takes such a long time — it requires professional coding techniques and a very deep understanding,” Green said.

“JavaFX Script is going to bring Java to creative professionals — to orders of magnitude more contributors,” Schwartz said. “It's no longer the domain of object-oriented programmers.”

Rich Mobile Devices

Scripters and even designers have long used simple languages like Flash's ActionScript to program animations, interactive programs, and games. JavaFX Script will feature a similar time-line-sequence engine that will allow visual manipulation of animations, audio and video, said Param Singh, Sun's director or Java marketing.

JavaFX on mobile devices may have a “bright future,” Sam Dean wrote on the Ostatic blog. “With so many applications on our desktops dependent on Java, and our browsing and content consumption habits tied to Java, it seems natural that JavaFX could create a bridge to applications for mobile devices,” he said.

If Android and other Linux-based phones take off, “it would be good to see free rich Internet application software layers like JavaFX bring rich media to those new, open-source mobile devices,” Dean added.

I'm not embarrassed to admit it: I'm a big fan of Office 2007. I think Microsoft got a lot right with its latest release, starting with the ribbon interface and including any number of tweaks and improvements that make my day easier. I can't say I'm thrilled about the price of the suite, however; nor the countless SKUs to choose from. Plus, I'm also a big Linux fan. That's why I always try to keep my eye on the current state of OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite founded by Sun Microsystems.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 has just entered public beta, and it promises plenty of improvements from the previous version. Mac users, in particular, will be pleased with the new native Aqua UI. Unfortunately, however, the one feature that I was really looking forward to on the Windows side– compatibility with the Office 2007 XML file formats– could still clearly use a lot of work.

As an experiment, I saved a simple Word 2003 document in Word 2007 format. Office 2007 opened it just fine, but OpenOffice.org Writer only got as far as the first two lines of the text; instead of skipping the next line, the rest was truncated. An Excel 2007 template fared no better. OpenOffice.org Calc preserved labels, numbers, and formulae; macros, embedded graphics, and page layout options disappeared. A plain.xlsx file created with the same template yielded identical results.

I'm very disappointed to have to say it, but OpenOffice.org's support for the Office 2007 file formats simply isn't ready for prime time. I haven't had time yet to do a full review of the suite, but the tests I tried were extremely basic import/export operations on documents that were not in the least bit complex. Unfortunately, the beta OpenOffice.org struck out.

It's strange, if you think about it. Wasn't the whole point of XML file formats for Office to make the documents more compatible with other software? Isn't XML a self-describing, human-readable file format that should make reverse-engineering a breeze (compared to the old, binary Office formats, at least)? And isn't OOXML, the Office 2007 file format, a public ISO standard?

But then, if you've been following the news, you know that there's more going on with OOXML than meets the eye. Not to mention the fact that Office 2007 itself reportedly doesn't conform to the published standards.

The final release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is still a few months away (and, to be fair, the developers do not recommend the current beta release for production use). There may still be time to get involved and help iron out the bugs with Office 2007 support– but I doubt it. For now, my recommendation remains the same: If you're an Office 2007 user, like me, you'll probably want to keep saving your documents in Office 2003 format– at least until OpenDocument becomes more mainstream.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Activision Inc (ATVI.O) posted a quarterly profit on Thursday that blew past expectations as demand for its “Guitar Hero 3″ and “Call of Duty 4″ video games offset an absence of new releases.

The two games, which were released late last year, drove Activision to a profit of just under $55 million, or 17 cents per share, more than triple the 5 cents per share expected by Wall Street on Reuters Estimates.

Revenue was $602.5 million, up 93 percent from a year ago and burying the average Wall Street forecast of $373.6 million.

“It's the ongoing popularity of 'Guitar Hero' and 'Call of Duty'. It just shows what can happen in terms of performance when you have blockbuster hit titles,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets.

Shares of Activision rose 3.9 percent to $28.78 in extended trade from a close of $27.70 on Nasdaq, where they had gained less than 1 percent in the regular session.

Activision's results were the latest piece of evidence that the video game industry is shrugging off the concern about the broader economy weighing on other sectors.

“The video-game market fundamentals have never been stronger. There's no evidence that this growth will slow,” Chief Executive Bobby Kotick told a conference call.

Activision's results came the day after rival Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (TTWO.O) said its criminal action game “Grand Theft Auto 4″ had pulled in $500 million in revenue in its first week, making it one of the biggest entertainment launches ever.

“I think it's all about the games and if companies put out differentiated premium games then the gamers will scoop them up,” said Signal Hill analyst Todd Greenwald. “It's as recession-proof as any business can be.”

Activision also said that for its current first quarter, it expected earnings of 13 cents per share, excluding special items, on revenue of $500 million. Wall Street analysts, on average, have forecast 13 cents per share on revenue of $493 million.

But those forecasts do not include results from the games unit of France's Vivendi (VIV.PA), which makes the popular “World of Warcraft” game and is merging with Activision in a deal expected to close by the middle of the year.

Activision plans three new “Guitar Hero” titles in 2008: one for Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS) DS handheld device, an edition focusing on U.S. rock group Aerosmith, and a product ahead of the holidays that many speculate will feature more instruments like drums.

The company also expects growth to come from movie-based games such as the upcoming animated film “Kung Fu Panda” and the new James Bond flick “Quantum of Solace.”

Activision, which also makes the “Tony Hawk” skateboarding games and “Spider-Man” titles, competes with Electronic Arts Inc (ERTS.O), which reports earnings next week, and France's Ubisoft

(UBIP.PA).

(Reporting by Scott Hillis; editing by Braden Reddall and Carol Bishopric)

Microsoft plans to fix critical bugs in its Word, Publisher and Jet database software next week.

The software vendor also plans to release a less-critical update for its antivirus products, fixing a flaw that attackers could use to launch a denial of service (DoS) attack against products such as Windows Live OneCare and Microsoft Forefront Security.

The updates will be released Tuesday, the day set aside for Microsoft's monthly set of security patches. Microsoft provided some early details on the patches Thursday, in a note on its Web site.

Microsoft considers flaws to be critical when they could be exploited by attackers in order to run unauthorized software on a victim's system.

Although Microsoft's note does not describe the bugs in detail, it looks like the company is planning to fix a known bug in the Jet database engine, which was disclosed in late March. Attackers had figured out a new way to launch a malicious Jet file using Microsoft Word, Microsoft warned in a blog posting.

Jet files, which have a.mdb extension, are typically blocked by Outlook, but “attackers have figured out a way to work around the mitigations built into Outlook,” Microsoft said in its post.

The Jet flaw affects Windows XP, 2000 and Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

The Word flaw is rated critical for both Windows and Mac users.

Although rated only “moderate,” the DoS bug in Microsoft's security products is also a cause for concern. It affects many Microsoft security products including OneCare, Antigen, Windows Defender, Standalone System Sweeper and several Forefront Security products.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday introduced legislation that would bar network providers from discriminating against some Internet content.

Committee chairman John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, said the bill he and CaliforniaDemocratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren had introduced would require U.S. broadband providers to operate their networks “in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner so that all content, applications and services are treated the same and have an equal opportunity to reach consumers.”

“If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available,” Conyers said in a statement.

Verizon spokesman David Fish responded in a statement, saying such a bill would be “tough sell” in Congress.

“Broadband deployment is a bright spot in the U.S. economy that provides high paying jobs, unprecedented infrastructure investment, and innovation. Why would Congress want to jeopardize all that with this bill?” Fish said.

At issue is the so-called “network neutrality” controversy that pits open-Internet advocates against some service providers, who say they need to take reasonable steps to manage ever-growing traffic on their networks.

Some of network neutrality complaints have centered on charges that broadband companies were engaged in anti-competitive conduct, while others involved charges of political censorship.

The net neutrality issue has been spotlighted by a series of incidents in which network operators, such as Comcast Corp and Verizon Wireless were accused of hindering certain online data moving over their networks, such as file-sharing or text-messaging.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

In February the chairman of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee introduced separate legislation that would require regulators at the Federal Communications Commission to study the network neutrality issue and hold public hearings.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said that his agency was ready, if necessary, to step in and stop broadband providers from interfering with users' access.

(Editing by Carol Bishopric)