Roy Mark

A key IT trade group found much to praise in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s approval last week of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization bill, but says work still needs to be done to reflect changes brought by the rapid advancement of the necessity of IT skills in today’s workplace. WIA […]

Charter Communications , the nation’s third largest cable provider, is the latest Internet service provider (ISP) to sue the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over the music industry’s use of the subpoena powers in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). St. Louis-based Charter wants a U.S. district court to quash the approximately 150 subpoenas […]

Sen. Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.) has added copyright infringement penalties to his laundry list of complaints about the music industry’s litigation campaign against individual file swappers, telling reporters Thursday he will introduce legislation to reduce the current range of $750 to $150,000 fines per downloaded song. Coleman, who chaired a hearing Tuesday on the impact of […]

WASHINGTON — Colorado Gov. Bill Owens told a House Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday that the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (STTP), which would require online retailers to charge and collect sales taxes, would negate one-third of President Bush’s federal income tax cut of 1991. Owens, who admitted the majority of the nation’s governors support the STTP, also […]

A House Judiciary subcommittee approved legislation Thursday giving states additional tax enforcement powers against Internet tobacco retailers and other remote sellers of cigarettes. The legislation requires Web cigarette vendors, including Indian tribes, to report sales to state tobacco tax authorities each month. Under the bill, state attorneys general will be able to sue tobacco vendors […]

WASHINGTON — While a Senate subcommittee prepares to hear testimony Tuesday from LL Cool J and Chuck D on the merits of the subpoena provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a Boston law firm went to court Monday questioning the constitutionality of the controversial power of […]

WASHINGTON — Executives from the music and motion picture industries told a Senate panel Tuesday that until peer-to-peer (P2P) software companies begin to act responsibly and proactively to discourage copyright infringement on their services, there is little chance Hollywood will negotiate licensing agreements with the popular file-sharing networks. Among the P2P reforms called for by […]

On the eve of a Senate hearing on the subpoena power provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says another 63 people have settled copyright infringement suits with the music industry. All were accused of illegally downloading more than 1,000 songs through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The amount […]

Transportation Security Administration Chief Administrator James Loy said Friday if no airlines voluntarily provide data for a 180-day testing period of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) scheduled for later this year, he will issue a security directive mandating the airlines provide the information. Delta Airlines had originally agreed to participate in the […]

Congress has killed the Pentagon’s controversial data mining program formerly known as Total Information Awareness (TIA). As a part of the Defense Appropriations bill, both the House and the Senate voted to eliminate funding for the Office of Information Awareness (IAO), the division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that included TIA. Despite […]

The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation Thursday intended to deter the most abusive spammers with jail sentences up to five years. The criminal provisions that make up the Criminal Spam Act of 2003 target those who use fraudulent and deceptive means to send unwanted e-mail messages. The Senate Commerce Committee passed the Can Spam Act […]

The primary author of a report critical of Microsoft is out of work. @Stake, a Boston-based computer security firm that does business with Microsoft , issued a statement Thursday that Daniel Geer, who presented a white paper Wednesday in Washington that said the government’s increasing reliance on Microsoft desktop software makes federal systems “susceptible to […]