Although the CFPB's "qualified mortgage" and ability-to-repay rules remain one of the most contentious rulemakings since the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted five years ago, credit availability appears to be gradually widening since they were implemented, according to multiple different studies.

"We didn't expect the ability-to-repay/Qualified Mortgage rule to have a large, immediate impact on the market. And nothing we've seen would suggest that there has been a large impact in terms of access to credit and people being able to do the kind of lending they were doing before," said David Silberman, the CFPB's associate director for research, markets and regulation, in an interview.  "If anything, there's been a gradual loosening of credit, but at a very slow pace." (Read complete article.) 

A data-analytics firm is using web-harvesting software to fraudulently access Indiana property records, 13 counties claim in a federal action.  DeKalb County and the other dozen plaintiffs say they have their own system for providing remote access to public records.

They say California-based LPS Real Estate Data Solutions Inc. began using that counties' system, Laredo, in 2010 to access mortgages, deeds, plats, real estate contracts and liens. In early 2011, however, LPS announced that it would start using its own "web-harvester programs designed to mimic and interact with the Laredo system in order to gain access to the computer servers and databases that stored the electronic public records," the Feb. 13 complaint alleges.

While Laredo allows the counties to track how much time end-users spend accessing the data, and how many pages they see, it also serves as a source of revenue for the municipalities. LPS for example had monthly subscriptions with each of the counties, and it paid them $1 per page it copied, according to the complaint. The counties say the web harvesters that LPS began "employing...on Laredo in late 2011" shuts them out.

"Through use of its web-harvesters, LPS effectively disabled the functionality of the Laredo system that tracked LPS's access and acquisition of copies of electronic public records," the complaint states. "As a result of LPS's unauthorized and fraudulent access via its web-harvester programs, LPS acquired millions of copies of electronic public records for free in violation of its contracts with the county recorders, and in violation of federal and state laws."  (Read complete article.) 

A group of researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich has found a way to preserve historical documents like Switzerland's founding charter for thousands or even millions of years.

Over the past several decades, a method has been perfected by which data could be saved and re-read in the form of DNA sequences. However, the longer the DNA was preserved, the more it broke down and the more difficult it became to retrieve what had been saved. Now, inspired by fossils, ETH Zurich scientists have found a way to encapsulate DNA in silica and apply an algorithm when reading it that allows data to be decoded after time has taken its toll. To test its method, the team encoded the Swiss Federal Charter - written in 1291 - as well as The Methods of Mechanical Theorems by the Greek philosopher Archimedes into DNA.

"We decided to preserve old information that is still important for our society today," says Robert Grass, the study's lead researcher and a lecturer at ETH Zurich's Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences. "The Federal Charter is an important building block for Swiss culture," he explained to Swissinfo.ch. "And in the scientific world there is this theorem from Archimedes that was written down by monks and preserved over thousands of years and is a very rare incident."

The team first digitized the works and then transferred them into DNA by assigning numbers to the four chemical letters, or building blocks, that make up a DNA sequence. Then the DNA was placed into silica capsules - the main component in glass - and exposed to temperatures between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius for several weeks to simulate aging by thousands of years. (Read complete article.)