On Tuesday, it was reported that the FBI wants ISPs in the US to retain Web records for up to two years to aid with the investigation of terrorism and pornography. The request came during a meeting between US attorney general Alberto Gozales and FBI director Robert Mueller that included executives from Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, AOL, Verizon and Comcast. Gonzales is currently reviewing recommendations regarding the request. The Justice department says Internet companies would be required to retain the information, and the government could gain access through legal means, such as subpoenas.

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing to discuss the proposed .com deal between ICANN and VeriSign. The hearing will examine a deal struck between the two organizations as part of the settlement of a legal dispute. The deal would extend VeriSign's management contract for the .com domain registry, and make it possible for the company to increase the registration fees during that period. The deal has seen opposition from numerous Internet groups and registrars, who consider the arrangement tantamount to a monopoly. Some of those opposed are collaborating under the banner of the Coalition for ICANN Transparency.

While several of this week's biggest stories dealt with matters of over-arching Internet policy, this week's news also saw a collection of new product announcements from service providers that support Web hosting services.

On Monday, hosting software firm SWsoft announced that it had released version 3.1 of its SWsoft SiteBuilder for Windows, its browser-based site building and editing application. The company says the tool will be available as a free promotion until September 30. The new version includes complete integration with the Plesk 7.6 control panel for Windows, scheduled to be released later this month.

Also on Monday, server monitoring solution provider Hyperspin Internet Services announced that it had added an API to its reseller offering as part of the ongoing expansion of its reseller program. Hyperspin says the API enables resellers to integrate Hyperspin's services into their billing systems, and helps with an assortment of other tasks. The company says the API should provide resellers with increased flexibility and stability, as well as add to their revenue potential.

On Tuesday, Virtual infrastructure software firm VMware announced that it had launched VMware Infrastructure 3, the latest version of its infrastructure virtualization suite. The company says the third-generation system enables infrastructure capabilities for entire farms of servers and storage, separate from the application and operating system workloads and underlying hardware. VMware Infrastructure 3 enables customers to deploy applications on pools of continuously available hardware resources instead of specially configured server boxes.

On Friday, Web hosting software provider Positive Software announced that it had released the beta version of its NOC Monkey 2.0 remote server provisioning solution. PSoft says the software automates server provisioning tasks by providing a Web-based interface from which operating systems can be remotely installed, recovered and deployed. The new version includes support for Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP and Windows 2000, and incorporates a new API.

While much of this week's news dealt with new products, the most significant of this week's news related to matters of policy with far-reaching implications for Internet service providers. And, since neither the FBI or ICANN matters saw any conclusive ruling this week, we can expect this issues to remain significant in the coming weeks.