The TUC, the organization representing trade unions in the UK, adds its voice to the big debate on what to do about Facebook and employee use.

In a practical approach to an issue that some companies see as a problem that can be solved only by banning it from the workplace, the TUC says that’s not the best approach:

Eighty-nine percent of American adults believe that sending text messages or emails while driving is dangerous and should be banned according to a new survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Earlier this month, in FIR #254, Shel and I discussed quite an interesting story of what one company did regarding employee access to and use of Facebook.

Google’s crackin’ down – some AdWords users have received an email stating that the company will soon forbid any advertisements related to the drug ephedra.

The last development in this story took place over a month ago, so here’s a little refresher: several videos on YouTube insulted the king of Thailand, and that country’s government responded by blocking the site.  It also threatened to sue, but that plan was abandoned, and the ban has now been lifted, as well.

The Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007 was introduced in the Senate yesterday and would extend the current ban on Internet access taxes for another four years.

A Defense Department decision to ban YouTube and several other sites from its unclassified network has been challenged by YouTube’s founders.

In the past, large organizations have been reluctant to switch over to a new Microsoft operating system due to factors of cost, new training, and the possibility unknown bugs still lurking about in the software. In this case, however, reluctance has given way to outright refusal.

Wired Magazine’s Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen says that the bloggers got it wrong about Ted Stevens "protecting children" bill. The Wired post ends: "Also the blog world famously claims it’s self-correcting. 27B anxiously awaits proof."

Wikipedia isn’t commercial? Yeah, right.

By the way, Ryan and Kevin’s blog post doesn’t have a link to the bill’s text that works. Anyone have a link that works? Post it in my comments. Thanks!

Senator Ted Stevens has already achieved a certain kind of blogosphere and Internet infamy for his comments about teh Internets being "a series of tubes" (click the image for a dance remix of his address to the Senate). Now, he seems to want to compound that infamy by passing legislation that would block most social networking sites – including not just MySpace, but virtually any site that allows user contributions, including Wikipedia – from any school that receives federal education funding.

There’s a lot of talk surrounding a bill currently being proposed by Alaska senator Ted Stevens, which would place restrictions on access to social networks within public schools. Legislation introduced in Illinois, however, seeks to completely ban these sites from the state’s schools.

Illinois state senator Matt Murphy, a republican, has introduced a bill entitled the “Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act” which would effectively ban the surfing of any social network sites from computers in public school libraries.