A resounding "DOI!" came springing out of the Utah legislature late last week as lawmakers acknowledged they should have done a little background work, or at least listened to all the squalling, before they passed the Trademark Protection Act.

Arizona, California, Utah, and Virginia will partner with Google to make their public information more readily available online.

Utah lawmakers are at it again, mulling a legislative crackdown on open wi-fi connections because they make it easier for children to access online pornography.

The state of Utah has been in the news a lot lately for its heavy-handed approach to Internet regulation. The most recent curfuffle was over a law banning the use of competitor keywords in search advertising.

The Utah State Legislature has passed a bill that would make it illegal to purchase keywords relating to a competitor’s product in order to show up alongside them in search results. The Trademark Protection Act has come under much public scrutiny, most notably by Google.

The Utah State Legislature has passed a Trademark Protection Act that creates a new type of mark called an electronic registration mark; it probably will not survive a Constitutional test according to the state’s own general counsel.

At LIFT we talked about Internet addiction, that turned into an article on the BBC. I spoke up and said that my addiction got me lots of benefits. More friends. Invites overseas. And lots of interesting experiences including dinner with Douglas Engelbart (still one of the highlights of my tech tour).

Similar to the do-not-call lists focused on limiting telemarketing calls, the new registries aim to fight spam.

Scientists discovered the 125 million-year-old fossils of two-legged bird-like dinosaurs in Utah.