Roy Mark

With a hard deadline set for the digital television (DTV) transition on his watch, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) now wants to mount a consumer education campaign for the switch from analog to digital television. Barton, the former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, introduced legislation late Monday that would require electronics retailers […]

A U.S. appeals court dealt another blow Monday to an effort aimed at a constitutional review of a 1992 law extending copyright protections to orphan works no longer in print. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected a challenge to the law by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive and film archivist […]

Mark Hurd’s selling of stock options just days before the company’s pretexting scandal went public was legal, the Hewlett-Packard president and CEO insists in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Hurd’s letter was in response to a December inquiry to Hurd by the House committee. The same panel conducted a high profile […]

Senators John Sununu (R-N.H.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced competing legislation this week calling for the unused spectrum between broadcast channels to be utilized by wireless broadband providers. Sununu and Kerry co-sponsored the unsuccessful Wireless Innovation Act last year. The bill sought to use the spectrum, known as “white channels” or “white spaces,” for unlicensed […]

Bloggers are breathing a little easier today after the U.S. Senate struck language from its ethics reform legislation, approved Thursday night, that would have required some online activists to register and report to Congress as lobbyists. On a vote of 55-43, the Senate agreed to drop provisions in Section 220 of the bill — The […]

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee today over the Bush administration’s abrupt change of direction on warrantless wiretapping of calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists. In a letter to the Congressional leaders of the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees yesterday, Gonzales said “any surveillance” would now be […]

WASHINGTON — While the new Congress drafts bills that aim to help curb identity theft, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday he plans to attack the problem through the agency’s existing regulatory authority over telephone carriers. According to Martin, the FCC may consider as early as February new agency rules that would […]

Jeffrey Brett Goodin has become the first person convicted by a jury for launching a phishing attack aimed at America Online (AOL) users. He faces more than 100 years in prison following the decision under the CAN SPAM Act late last week in Los Angeles. In addition to the CAN-SPAM Act charges, Goodin was found […]

Pretexting for personal telephone information is now a federal offense. Under legislation signed last Friday by President Bush, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006 targets those who do the pretexting, as well as the Internet sites that sell the telephone records. Pretexting is the practice of using false pretenses to obtain the […]

A coalition of technology companies and trade associations are urging Congress to reject any proposal that might delay the digital television (DTV) transition date of Feb. 17, 2009. After that date, television sets must have digital tuners to receive an over-the-air signal. The transition to DTV is expected to raise billions when the Federal Communications […]

U.S. Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have a simple solution to put a stop to identity theft: ban phone companies from selling personal information, bar Internet sites from selling the records and prohibit the sale or display of Social Security numbers without an individual’s consent. In the first week of the 110th […]

Businesses and government agencies would have to notify consumers under certain circumstances of data breaches under legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif). On the face of it, the Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act would require data breach notifications to individuals without an “unreasonable delay,” but exemptions in the legislation are broad. […]