New European Commission data protection laws

In today's podcast: New European Commission data protection laws; SAP KPI resignations; and Baidu mobile search app.

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Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner who for the past five years has championed consumer rights in the telecommunications and IT arenas, has been picked to take charge of a re-write of the European Union's 15-year-old data protection laws due to start next year. Reding re-wrote Europe's telecom laws, and in her new role as Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship she will have to perform a similar modernizing task by bringing Europe's key data protection law, the 1995 data protection directive, up to date.
Competition Commissionner Neelie Kroes will take over Reding’s old job.

SAP insists that its joint project with user groups to demonstrate the value for money of its Enterprise Support program is still on track, despite the resignation of the two user group members leading the project. SAP and the SAP User Group Executive Network are developing a set of key performance indicators that will show whether SAP’s planned support price increases offer value for money. The KPI project was run by two members of the board of the German-speaking SAP Users Group, but they resigned earlier this month. There’s a lot at stake: the company has promised to delay a future rise in support costs if it did not meet targets related to those KPIs.

Chinese search engine Baidu.com has taken another swing at Google by launching a mobile search app it hopes phone makers will install on new handsets. Baidu’s app, now in beta, hooks users into its search, message board and question-and-answer online services. It also has a new quick-upload feature for pictures taken with a phone.

Secretive international trade negotiations to create the Anticounterfeiting trade agreement, ACTA, may undermine the openness and innovation-friendly nature of the Internet, according to EuroISPA, a trade group representing Europe's Internet service providers. ACTA is being negotiated by the U.S., Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia and the European Union. If the ideas under discussion are adopted, ISPs may be forced to snoop on their subscribers and cut them off if they are found to have shared copyright-protected music on the Net.

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.