Roy Mark

In a surprise move, the long awaited appearance of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov in a San Jose, Calif., federal courtroom Thursday didn’t happen. Instead, prosecutors introduced an hour-long videotape of Skylarov’s deposition in which he admitted writing a software program that, in part, was designed to bypass the copyright protections in Adobe Systems’ eBooks. Skylarov’s […]

As weather broadcasters began to breathlessly predict the largest snow storm in the last two years would hit the Eastern Seaboard by Thursday morning, a blizzard of traffic hit the two of the nation’s top weather Internet sites. According to AWS Convergence Technologies, more than 81,000 people in the last 24 hours downloaded its WeatherBug […]

President George W. Bush signed into law Wednesday the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002, legislation passed in the last few hours in the 107th Congress designed to create a “safe zone” for children on the Internet. The bill assigns the Department of Commerce, through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), with […]

The entertainment industry scored a victory Monday when a U.S. district court judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the peer-to-peer (P2P) service Madster, the file swapping site founded by Johnny Deep. U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen of Chicago ordered Madster to immediately disconnect any computers or services used in connection with file […]

Federal Judge Stephen Wilson disappointed lawyers representing movie studios and music publishers Monday when he decided to delay a ruling on whether or not the file swapping service operated by Kazaa can be sued in the U.S. The delay was part of a larger suit for copyright infringement brought by the Motion Picture Association of […]

Despite a lot of sound and fury, not to mention a raft of competing and conflicting legislation, the 107th Congress ultimately passed no laws to resolve the long-running and bitter digital copyright feud between the entertainment industry and peer-to-peer file swapping services. Events outside Capitol Hill, however, are pushing the issue to an acrimonious brink […]

Just two days after the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the security of the federal government’s computer systems, the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Agency will announce Thursday a partnership with Lancope to develop a device, code-named the Therminator, for advanced information security. The DoD was one of […]

Senators George Allen (R.-Va.) and Barbara Boxer (D.-Ca.) are circulating a draft bill to gain early support in the 108th Congress to promote a wireless approach to broadband deployment. An Allen spokesperson said the bill and accompanying “Dear Colleague” letter are efforts to “get beyond the stalemated debate of cable versus DSL.” The draft legislation […]

EchoStar has received its first good news from the Federal Communications Commission in months as the agency reversed its June decision to cancel the firm’s Ka-band license. The decision came earlier this week. The FCC’s international satellite bureau cancelled the license because its records showed EchoStar had not started construction of a satellite that operates […]

A broad range of consumer groups, trade associations and powerful computer and Internet companies including Microsoft , Apple , eBay and Yahoo! are joining forces to petition the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “protect broadband users’ ability to communicate across the Internet without interference that own broadband communications networks.” In a letter to the FCC […]

The Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Plans and Policy (OPP) is proposing the FCC reallocate spectrum to more flexible use and organize large scale, two-sided auctions in which encumbered spectrum, voluntarily offered by incumbents, would be auctioned together with presently unassigned spectrum. According the OPP, by making highly complementary spectrum available in a single auction, […]

The Federal Communications Commission ruled Thursday that wireless carriers will not have to pay the $16 billion they bid when the FCC offered the now-contested NextWave spectrum for sale. The FCC said any company that had successfully bid for the space could receive a full refund of their deposits and have no further legal liabilities. […]